The Dallas Mavericks are a franchise in turmoil after firing general manager Nico Harrison as the team failed to live up to his vision following the disastrous trade sending Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers.
With Harrison gone, the Mavs desperately need to create a new vision for the team that they can sell to fans, and the obvious way to do so is to shift the focus to the future and build around No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg. To do so, they will need to unload high-priced veterans, most notably the centerpiece of the return for Dončić, Anthony Davis.
Ever since Harrison was fired, the expectation has been that Davis’ days in Dallas are numbered, and on Wednesday we got our first strongly reported confirmation of that from ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. MacMahon cites multiple team sources who said the team will “explore the trade market” for Davis ahead of the February deadline.
However, minority owner Mark Cuban (once the team’s majority owner) told The Athletic that the Mavs would not be trading Davis, saying simply, “We won’t. We want to try to win.”
That call won’t be Cuban’s to make alone, as he does not have final say in personnel decisions anymore but does have considerably more input now than he did under Harrison’s front office — as evidenced by him being blindsided by the Dončić trade like everyone else. Cuban is now serving as an adviser to majority owner Patrick Dumont as part of a committee that is leading the Mavericks’ basketball operations division after Harrison’s ouster.
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It would make sense for the Mavericks to state publicly their intentions to keep Davis while still exploring the market for him. If the rest of the league believes Dallas is in a hurry to move off of Davis, they’ll struggle to field strong offers.
The biggest challenge in moving Davis was already going to be that there is no chance they get back anything close to what they gave up to bring him to Dallas. At this point it seems like they are treating the Dončić trade as a sunk cost. That can’t be the bar a Davis trade is held to, and if they go in with a realistic expectation, then a deal could get done. Even so, they’ll want to maximize their return and that means doing their best to negotiate from a place of strength rather than apparent desperation.
Even being more realistic, the Mavs will need Davis to eventually return to the floor and play like the All-Star caliber center he long has been. His latest calf strain has forced him to be held out for multiple weeks. And given his injury history, teams acquiring the 32-year-old will have their concerns about giving up a haul to bring him in given the injury risk.
As for which teams could be interested in Davis, if the Warriors are serious about going all-in on trying to win another title with Stephen Curry, they have a glaring need for frontcourt reinforcements to aid Curry and Jimmy Butler. Davis would give them another high-end veteran to chase another title, and Dallas could finally be a landing spot for Jonathan Kuminga, giving him a fresh start on a team with a more future-facing timeline alongside Flagg.
If Davis is on the market, it’s fair to wonder if we’ll be headed down a mini-fire sale route in Dallas come February. They could look to sell off a number of their veteran pieces, like PJ Washington, Daniel Gafford and Klay Thompson, not to mention Kyrie Irving, who is hoping to return to the court at some point this season. It might be difficult maximizing return for Irving if he hasn’t played before the deadline, but he could certainly be on the table this summer if they want to fully shift focus to a youth movement around Flagg.
Everything will be on the table now that Harrison is gone. The first order of business for many would be finding a way to undo as much of the Dončić trade as possible by trading Davis, but the team is, at least publicly, insisting they aren’t ready to hit the reset button just yet.