Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison presented the trade idea to Dumont, who signed off on it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two hundred and eighty-two days later, after unrelenting chants of \u201cFire Nico\u201d poured down from the rafters at Mavericks home games, missing the playoffs, three injuries to the star Harrison traded Don\u010di\u0107 for, a shocking stroke of good luck in the draft lottery and then a disappointing start to this season, Dumont was ready to move on from his GM.<\/p>\n By the time Dumont flew to Dallas on Monday morning, plans to fire Harrison were already in motion, league sources said. There were more \u201cFire Nico\u201d chants in the Mavericks\u2019 loss to the Bucks on Monday night. Word began to circulate<\/a> early Tuesday that Harrison was done. The Mavericks made it official in an 11:24 a.m. news release.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a humbling time for Dumont, his wife, Sivan, and her mother Miriam Adelson \u2014 the ownership group that purchased majority shares of the Mavs from Mark Cuban for $3.5 billion in 2023 and was in control when the team reached the NBA Finals in 2024. Not even two years later, Don\u010di\u0107 is averaging 37.1 points per game with the Lakers, the Mavs are in turmoil, and Harrison is out of a job.<\/p>\n In the immediate aftermath of the trade that is widely considered one of the worst in league history, Dumont had expressed almost blind faith in Harrison.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Nico we trust,\u201d Dumont famously said at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n So how, in a nine-month span, did Dumont decide he was ready to unceremoniously dump Harrison?<\/p>\n Injuries to key players were undoubtedly a factor. But Harrison hurt his own standing by making bad hires; creating and fanning the flames of a public relations crisis; and, most of all, displaying shaky basketball decision-making. The Mavs put a roster on the floor to begin this season that severely lacked offensive creators, producing an eyesore on offense and sinking the team to the bottom of the Western Conference.<\/p>\n If only they hadn\u2019t said goodbye to a generational talent who was one of the best of all time at that very thing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the losing,\u201d said a league source who spoke with Dumont about why Harrison was fired. \u201cCan\u2019t get off to a start like this (after making a trade like that) and survive.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Anthony Davis, left, was the centerpiece of the Luka Don\u010di\u0107. But he\u2019s struggled to stay on the court, exacerbating the Mavericks\u2019 offensive challenges with Kyrie Irving (right) sidelined with an ACL injury. (Candice Ward\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n The Mavericks are not just 3-8 overall, 2-5 at home and in 14th place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n They are injured, miserable and playing through taunts in their home arena. Near the end of Monday\u2019s loss to the Bucks, Mavs forward P.J. Washington was at the foul line needing to make all three shots to tie the game, and had to shoot them while fans chanted \u201cFire Nico.\u201d He missed his second attempt, ruining any realistic chance Dallas had of extending the game. Washington placed the blame on himself, but privately, other Mavericks players have expressed that so far this season, it\u2019s been easier for them to play on the road than at home.<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s loss to the Bucks marked the sixth straight game Davis has missed with a left calf strain. Multiple league sources said Davis has tried to convince the Mavs to let him return to the court, and Harrison urged him to return, but the team\u2019s medical staff forbade it, citing the potential for a torn Achilles if Davis returned too soon.<\/p>\n Kyrie Irving remains out with the torn ACL he suffered in March, and the player Harrison signed as a potential replacement, D\u2019Angelo Russell, quickly fell out of favor with coach Jason Kidd. Flagg, a 6-foot-9 forward who never played the point in his lone college season at Duke, has been asked to do so for the Mavs \u2014 and it\u2019s been ugly<\/a>.<\/p>\n Going into Wednesday\u2019s game against the Phoenix Suns, the Mavericks\u2019 offensive numbers look putrid. They are last in the NBA in scoring and 3-point percentage. Russell is shooting 27.8 percent from 3, while future Hall of Famer Klay Thompson is converting 26.7 percent of his outside shots. Thompson started his first 79 games in a Mavericks uniform, but last week, Kidd began bringing him off the bench.<\/p>\n With the losing, the injuries and the negativity mounting, league sources said Dumont was hearing from the man whose choice to sell the team to him opened the door to this disaster in the first place. Cuban, who still owns 27 percent of the team, was known to be frustrated with Harrison for freezing him out after the sale<\/a> and not consulting him on the choice to trade Don\u010dic. League sources say he made his case to Dumont over the last several months that Harrison was steering the franchise in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n Reached by email, Cuban declined comment to The Athletic.<\/p>\n Making the same case, from a different angle, were Kidd and other team officials who were loyal to the coach. While it is unclear if Kidd ever uttered a direct plea to Dumont for Harrison\u2019s removal, Kidd clearly was at odds with Harrison over the roster. In Dallas\u2019 first seven games this season, Kidd decided not to start a traditional point guard. In the Mavericks\u2019 second game of the season, Kidd stunningly played undrafted two-way signee Ryan Nembhard more minutes than Russell.<\/p>\n Last summer, Kidd contemplated leaving the Mavericks to go coach the New York Knicks. There was mutual interest between the two sides, league sources said, but the Mavericks refused to let Kidd leave and rewarded him with an extension. That gave Kidd power in any disagreement with his front office. He had more years on his contract than any of them.<\/p>\n \u201cSmooth.\u201d<\/p>\n That was how Ralph Greene Jr., a former Nike executive who spent 22 years with the company, remembered Harrison in his younger days<\/a>.<\/p>\n That was also the word Russell used to describe Harrison in September at Mavericks media day.<\/p>\n If people in the basketball world view Harrison as a slick operator behind the scenes, publicly, Harrison has often come across as awkward and clumsy, which has made him an even easier target for criticism and, ultimately, blame.<\/p>\n Harrison\u2019s rationale for trading Don\u010di\u0107 for Davis, a 10-time All-Star, past NBA champion and Olympic gold medalist, was \u201cdefense wins championships.\u201d<\/p>\n That message wasn\u2019t well-received by the Mavericks fan base, which in 2011, watched a team built around one of the greatest offensive players in league history \u2014 Dirk Nowitzki \u2014 win a championship. Davis, a 6-10 big man with nimble feet who can protect the rim and guard on the perimeter, was the favorable comparison Harrison thought he was making to Don\u010di\u0107 with that \u201cdefense\u201d quote. But it fell flat because Davis, who was hurt when the trade went down, re-injured himself in his first game for the Mavericks on Feb. 8 and missed the next 18 games.<\/p>\n \n Dallas has asked No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg to play out of position as a point guard, a difficult assignment for the 18-year-old rookie forward. (Manuel Velasquez \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n In June, after the Mavs had not only missed the playoffs but also lost Irving for the foreseeable future, Harrison addressed the media on draft night. The Mavericks had just selected Cooper Flagg No. 1 overall, earning the right to do so thanks to an NBA Draft lottery miracle. Harrison delivered two lines \u2014 \u201cfortune favors the bold\u201d and his declaration that \u201cfans are finally starting to see the vision\u201d \u2014 that further angered Mavericks fans. Harrison seemed to be taking credit for Dallas\u2019 lottery luck, which Mavericks fans found nonsensical.<\/p>\n The Mavericks\u2019 public messaging had been a problem for a while. Back in February 2024, the team hired a new head of public relations who held no previous experience in the field \u2014 Victoria Martinez, who came over from the FBI. Martinez\u2019s area of expertise within the federal government was combatting terrorism. The transition to a top public relations role with an NBA team was rough. The Mavericks dealt with a string of public embarrassments starting in February, when Don\u010di\u0107 was traded.<\/p>\n One of the most well-known gaffes was a closed-door question-and-answer session the team held in April. Harrison and CEO Rick Welts spoke on the record, but there was a catch: the Mavericks initially told reporters they weren\u2019t allowed to record the meeting themselves. The Dallas local media pushed back, arguing that the Mavericks could change any of the answers that didn\u2019t portray them in a positive light. So the Mavericks relented.<\/p>\n Five days before media day in September, the Mavericks fired Martinez as part of a broader restructuring in the department. Martinez, co-workers felt, had been set up to fail. She had been hired without adequate experience and then asked to do clean-up duty following the Don\u010di\u0107 trade.<\/p>\n Multiple team sources told The Athletic it was illustrative of part of a larger pattern of Harrison\u2019s poor hiring practices and perceived lack of accountability. In May, Harrison was forced to fire athletic performance director Keith Belton, who did not have proper certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, as first reported by ESPN. Earlier in the season, Belton had gotten into a heated argument with one of his superiors over the handling of Dereck Lively II\u2019s return to the court. The incident was serious enough that it required the involvement of the human resources department.<\/p>\n Besides hiring unqualified people for important roles, Harrison also didn\u2019t have much tolerance for anyone who disagreed with his way of doing things, multiple team employees told The Athletic. Casey Smith, the Mavericks\u2019 long-time director of health and performance, was let go weeks before the start of the 2023-24 season. Smith was widely respected throughout the NBA and had strong relationships up and down the Mavericks\u2019 roster. But he wasn\u2019t retained, team sources said, in part because he sometimes pushed back on Harrison\u2019s rigid way of doing things.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you offend Nico\u2019s sensibilities any stretch of the way, that\u2019s it,\u201d one former team employee told The Athletic. \u201cHe\u2019s a sensitive guy.\u201d<\/p>\n The full extent of the damage done by the Don\u010di\u0107 deal \u2014 both to the organization and the All-Star players who were impacted by it \u2014 won\u2019t be known for years. Yet while Irving was able to enjoy some good times before it all fell apart, leading the Mavs to that 2024 finals run alongside Don\u010di\u0107 while rehabilitating his reputation along the way, the same can\u2019t be said for Davis and Thompson.<\/p>\n For Thompson, the 35-year-old who left the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2024 for the chance to play with Don\u010di\u0107 and contend for a title, he now finds himself in a far worse competitive position than the one he left behind. What\u2019s more, the specific issue that caused such a divide between him and his old Warriors team \u2014 Thompson being asked to come off the bench as a sixth man \u2014 has returned anew. And the irony of it all, in terms of the free agency choice that brought him to Dallas, is that he likely would have been playing alongside Don\u010di\u0107 with the Lakers right about now if only he\u2019d known how this would turn out.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-2241321702-scaled.jpg\")
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