REPORT: Mavs Pursuing Anthony Davis TRADE | Inside The Dallas Mavericks Game of Thrones…

REPORT: Mavs Pursuing Anthony Davis TRADE | Inside The Dallas Mavericks Game of Thrones…

One more thing. The Dallas Mavericks were Game of Thrones over the last couple of months. What’s happened to them now? I’ll tell you why. They’re probably in a better position. And Anthony Davis has got to be traded. Sounds like they’re going to do that today. Locked on Mavs. And so one more thing, a bonus episode of locked on maps. You’re still locked on to the Dallas Mavericks. My name is Nick Hankstead. Medium member coming for 10 years. Thanks for reading every day. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5 if you bet wins. You get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Head to FanDuel to get started. Today’s episode breaking down Tim McMahon’s piece and ESPN. Talking about everything that went down with the Dallas Mavericks, the power struggle between Nico Harrison, Mark Cuban, and all that. And uh and there’s just a lot of different things in there. And I’m sure there’s people saying, “Why do you guys got to rehash all this stuff? Nico Harrison’s gone. He was fired.” All that. We’re not rehashing it. We’re hashing it. This is new things that we haven’t learned yet. So, I’m going to break down all those. Well, let’s start here. The one thing we may have learned in this piece from Timmy Man, everybody should go read it. You know, ESPN, all that. Even if you hate Tim McMahon, this just just learn about the Dallas Mavericks because there’s a bunch of things in here. So, one of the things that came out is that multiple team sources said the Mavs will also explore the trade market for Anthony Davis. This is something we talked about yesterday. The Mavs have to do it. They have to and they don’t have to trade Anthony Davis, but they have to at least explore it because there’s so many different things that go down with an Anthony Davis deal or go down with Anthony Davis on the team still. The Mavs are one squeezed for cap and salary cap and all that. Anthony Davis’s contract is big and it is uh the next two years and he’s going to be up for an extension this summer. Anthony Davis making 54 million this year, 58 million next year, 62.5 million as a player option in the 202728 season. And if you look at that, you’re like, “All right, well, if you’re win now team, you’ve got Anthony Davis. Kyrie is on it. You know, if Kyrie comes back into the fold as all NBA Kyrie, he’s making 39 next year, 42. That’s actually a pretty good deal if he comes back to form. If he doesn’t, that’s a different story. Anthony Davis, though, is just such a big deal. And we don’t know how much he’s going to play and all those things. And the Mavs don’t seem to be good enough for them to like be a second apron team. They’re already going to be in the Second Apron going into next season. So, there’s there’s all these things. You also like you have to be a win now team if you got Anthony Davis and Kyrie. So, you’re stuck on that path. You can’t do the the whole tank thing. You can do uh like there there’s just stuck in so many different ways. you’re also making Cooper Flag play out of position and like there’s just so many different reasons why the Anthony Davis fit is not a good fit for the Mavericks. There’s ways it could have worked. There’s ways that I I I tried to be optimistic this offseason and see all right well I could see this and this and this. Then AD gets hurt again. Then there’s just a bunch of things other things that went wrong. Daniel Russell hasn’t been as good. Obviously Kyrie went down the injury. The offense that the Mavs tried to install has not been very good in any way, shape or form. And so the Mavs exploring an AD market for the trade is absolutely something they have to do. They’ve got to at least explore the market. You’ve got to see what’s out there. You have to see what other teams are interested in Anthony Davis. My thing though is I don’t think they have to do an Anthony Davis trade. Isaac like this season. Isaac is very clear that they have to do it this season and they have to do it like within the next month or so basically like month and a half is what he’s really big on for different reasons. I think I don’t think you can just give him away for nothing. Even though giving him away for nothing and maybe clearing up some space does open you up to a bunch of different other opportunities that you can do and you can just start over. But man, to get rid of a like a top 10 player, a top 15 player just like that like that that is that is pretty tough. Like what are you getting back that is worth Anthony Davis potentially playing? Or maybe I’m just being way too optimistic about Anthony Davis and saying he’s going to play. He has had three different injuries since he’s been with the Mavericks. Cooper Flack has played more games for the Dallas Mavericks than Anthony Davis has already. Like what what are we talking about? What what is even what is even happening that Cooper Flag has played more games than Anthony Davis has so far and Cooper Flag just just got here. So that was the first thing that popped up in this in this piece. And then the rest of it is this Game of Thrones like whole thing where you just go through it and you go, “Man, it’s a wonder the Mavs even like got things done, trades happened and all that.” Um Tim McMahon reports and confirms that Patrick Deont making the call on Anthony Davis’s return when he was going to come back from remember he was going to come back from the injury and then all of a sudden Mark Steiner reported Patrick Damont has made the call that Anthony Davis is not going to return tonight and you’re like oh interesting that is the first time according to McMahon the first time Dumont has been directly involved in basketball operations since he bought the team. That is notable and that should have been our first sign that Nico was getting fired because he stepped back and Dumont even said the words in Nico we trust which he obviously regrets now but he said the words in Nico we trust and everything was was up to him and then all of a sudden you’re like all right I’m making a decision on this. Nico wants Anthony Davis come back. Anthony Davis medical team is trying to push him to come back. The Mavs medical team was like I don’t know you could reaggerate this thing or make it worse or anything like that and then and he made the call. That should have been our our one sign. I thought that was an interesting piece in this. Um the piece from McMahon talks a lot about the struggle between Cuban and the rest of the organization and and and really just Cuban versus Nico Harrison. Like this is the Game of Thrones power struggle between the two of them where uh Cuban said he was still in charge of basketball after the sale. Remember that Mark Cuban sells the team, the adds and and you know Dumont is in charge of the team now. And Cuban said, “Well, I’m still going to have say in basketball operations.” And it basically happened because he just thought that he was had the most experience in the room. He had the most experience in the front office of a basketball team and was like, “They’re going to want me to stay and I’m going to still be in charge because that’s how this is going to go down. They’re just here for the real estate.” He had nothing in writing. He had nothing like that said that this was going to happen. Just a weird thing that he just came out and said and all of a sudden the whole organization is like, “Hold on, wait a minute.” And nobody said, “Wait a minute.” louder than Nico Harrison. It apparently really rubbed him the wrong way that he said he was still going to be in charge of basketball operations. And this power struggle between the two of them, honestly, like the power struggle between the two of them may have like made the Luca Dodgers trade happen even quicker than it maybe it was going to. We’ll talk about that and uh and get into all that and more coming up. Today’s episode of Lock Maps brought to you by SKIMS. Skiims, the underwear I’m wearing right now. They fit just great. I love the way that they hold their shape. I love the way that they feel. It’s, you know, when you do your laundry and it’s like, “All right, the first the first thing that you’re you’re grabbing, like the first set or the first pair of pants or shorts or whatever, you’re like, “Oh, those are the go-to after laundry day.” Skiims are my go-to after laundry day. They have all kinds of great things you can go check out. Obviously, they have stuff for women, too, but the men’s is what we’re focusing on. They have the uh boxer briefs. They have different kinds of inseams. 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The Mavs are at eight point underdog now against the Knicks. It was five a half this morning. And it looks like Jaylen Brunson may play. Cooper Flag may be out and so Anthony Davis is obviously out. Kyrie’s obviously out. OJ Noi’s out for the Knicks. But man, eight-point underdog at home against the Knicks. That is an interesting one. But if you think the maths will cover that, again, if you’re a new customer, check out that $5 deal and you can do all that that kind of stuff over there and get the $300 in bonus bets. So, head to fan duel.com, sign up, play your game with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Please gamble responsibly. Shut it down. I didn’t know they had an extra flare at the end. All right, back here on one more thing, bonus episode of Lockdown Maps, breaking down Tim McMahon’s piece about the Mavs power struggle and everything that happened there. And so, let’s just go line by line through some of these things because I think they’re they’re they’re notable. So, the power struggle between Cuban and Nico Harrison was notable. And I think this power struggle actually led to the Luca trade because after Cuban said he’s in charge of basketball and Nico was like, “Hey, that no, I’m in charge of basketball.” There was this like now there’s this race for both of them to try and gain power within the organization. McMahon says this quote that Harrison had once told Mark Cuban he was nicknamed the silent assassin at Nike because of his ability to quietly maneuver to get his way in business matters. an incredible quote that you say to somebody and then eventually use against you. If anybody says that to you, they’re eventually going to use that against you, right? Like they’re eventually going to like, “Oh, you’re the silent assassin, so that means I can’t trust you on anything ever.” Like that maybe should have been his first sign of like, “Hey, I’m the silent assassin for you now, but as soon as you sell the team, and as soon as you’re not in my best interest, I’m going to use this against you.” Like, man, what a snake quote, which ended up being true. Harris, because nobody saw anything of that coming. Harrison blamed Cuban for what he believes is the biggest personnel mistakes during his tenure. You ready for this? Summer of 2022 allowing Jaylen Brunson to get away in free agency. Actually, I’m with Nico on this. We hashed out that so many different times and talked about that that Brunson deal. And you go back to the first mistake was the Donnie Nelson mistake where he didn’t give him the uh like the full like the full the full rookie scale contract which would make him a restricted free agent at the end. He was an unrestricted free agent because Don Nelson trying to save some money on the front end of that Jaylen Brunson deal. And so that was a big mistake because he was he was an unrestricted free agent instead of restricted. And then Cuban comes out and says, “Hey, we’ll pay any amount of money for for Jaylen Brunson.” And then come the summer and they didn’t end up giving him any amount of money. They stopped at a certain point. They’re like, “All right, we’re only going to give him Fred Van Vleet money.” And then he ends up going to the Knicks for a deal that now looks really, really good because he’s an allNBA player. Imagine if they still had Jaylen Brunson. Wild. So that’s the first one. He he blames Cuban on and I actually kind of agree with him. The other one is trading away or trading for Christian Wood. A player kid a player kid didn’t want to coach and resented having on the roster. Those are the biggest those you think are the biggest mistakes of your tenure. Nico Harrison. Okay. Blames Cuban for those. Quote, Harrison was adamant in talks with Dumont that basketball operations department would function much better without Cuban’s constant interference. This is a thing that’s kind of a mixed bag because if you’re old enough as a Mavs fan, which is not that old, but you remember Cuban did meddal a bunch. And when Cuban sold the team, one of my first things that day was the grass may seem greener on the other side. People were like, “Yeah, Cuban finally will stop meddling.” Remember the Giannis thing? Remember the Dwight Howard? Remember the remember the Carmelo Anthony? Remember the LeBron James? Remember the Plan Powder? Remember like uh Mike Connley and Hassan Whitide? Remember Chandler Parsons? You just go down the list of all these different things that Cuban quote unquote meddled in. And Harrison was like, “All right, well, Nico was just saying, “All right, we be better without Cuban’s constant interference.” On one degree, I kind of agree with that, too, but not to do what you ended up doing, Nico. Dumont would occasionally ask Harrison to to keep Mark Cuban in the fold regarding personnel discussions and decisions according to a source that Tim McMahon said. And then Harrison would agree to do it and then blow it off later that day, which is not surprising at all in any way. And then here’s the part that I think got Nico in full trouble. Nico isolate himself, was really the only one talking to Damont, and he would only share like what he wanted Dumont to hear. He was trying to manage up. People always talk about managing up. you and whatever workplace you’re in, you have to manage up in some way. I have a boss here at Locked On, David Lockach. Incredible boss. One of my favorite boss, like probably the f most favorite boss I’ve ever had in my life. He is a visionary. He comes to you with all kinds of ideas and he’s pitching them all the time and he’s throwing back. You got to manage up. You got to manage. All right. What What can we What can we do? What is possible? What is my what is my staff capable of doing here at Locked On? You got to I got to manage up in that way. you in whatever work field you’re in, you probably have to manage up in some way unless you own you know your own business and then you have to manage out like you have to manage the customer like field that comes in but Nico was trying to manage up here and that is really how the Luca trade happened because Dumont was only hearing from Nico only nobody else really Nico had convinced Patrick Jamont that signing Luca to a 5year $345 million supermax was a bad investment I had heard that even going back to when Cuban was still in charge the Mavs didn’t think that was going be a good investment. That $345 million as a super max to to Luca was not going to be they were not going to do the super max. I don’t know if I believe that. I think when push comes to shove, they would have just given it to him. If under the old regime, like under the under the Cuban like leadership, they would have just I think they would have just caved and gave it to him. But they weren’t convinced. They like they were pretty sold that they didn’t think that that was going to be a good investment. So I don’t even know if I if I blame Nico for that because that was part of the organization before Dumont even took over. Harrison also quote quote Harrison also blamed the Mav’s five-game elimination of the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals on Donich’s defensive struggles and this is where you just get like this is where he just lost the plot completely. Yes, Luca’s defensive struggles were a big problem. Yes, Luca’s injuries were a big problem. He’s also the only reason why you got there, right? Like him creating so much of a vacuum on offense that you had PJ Washington getting wide open shots all the time. You had Lively and Gaffford leading the league in dunks in the playoffs because they were just open all the time because of Luca’s gravity. And you lose that gravity and all of a sudden what are you? You’re the 30th offense in the NBA. And so like to blame him on his defensive struggles. Yes, but he was hurt. And so you’re like, “All right, well then it then it goes back to you have to deal with the star that you have instead of like hoping that you can get the perfect star that you want.” In the NBA, you you you cannot just look around and be like, “All right, let’s try and get the perfect star.” It doesn’t happen like that. You got to deal with the one that you got because it is so hard to get that guy, especially a top four or five guy, man. Like four out of four out of maybe now five with WBY, but WBY’s out too. Four out of 30 teams have a player like Luca. Four out of 30. You don’t get to decide like which one you get and like or you have to just deal with the one you have. That was a thing I just done over and over again. Last thing is that um this is this was maybe is maybe the funniest thing that happened in this whole saga. Quote, Dumont had urged Harrison to undergo media training after his quote fortune favors the bold press conference after the Mavs got the number one pick in the draft. So, Dumont told Nico Harrison to do media training because one of the things we’re starting to see in some of these reports is that Dumont wants somebody in as the GM that can that could talk to the media, talk to the public and present a good picture that can can present like a good face of the franchise in a way. And Nico Harrison was not going to do that. And so Nico Harrison comes out after the after the lottery, they get the number one pick and he’s like, “Hey, fortune favors the bold.” Enrages everyone to no end. Dan’s like, “Hey, let’s do some like you should do some media training.” Then the draft happens. And then he says, “People are starting to see my vision. Imagine, oh my gosh, imagine doing that. Imagine like your boss asks you to do something and then you come back and do something worse to like you don’t fix it, you just do something worse. Oh my gosh. D asked to do media trading and he refused. And then then he said they’re starting to see my vision. Game of Thrones, man. This whole thing has been Game of Thrones. I think they’re in a better position now after all this. I I guess I should should tell because now some of this stuff is out of the way. Now it’ll be a different thing. Dumont has hopefully learned his lesson as the owner of the Mavericks that hey, you can’t just let one person make decisions. It’s got to be a group effort. It’s got to be multiple people involved. got to be people with experience involved and I don’t know if he’s going to be I hope he’s not going to be duped again right like fool me once shame on you fool me fool me can’t get fooled again and so hopefully that is what happens with all this because Dumont is looking like he just got taken to the like taken to the cleaners and all this and it just been like the wolves put over his eyes like he was the I forget all the Game of Thrones references Isaac’s going to be so mad at me for forgetting but he’s he’s the king that just like let everybody make decisions for him Whoever was in charge when Littlefinger was was doing his thing, like Littlefinger was the one that was like making all the decisions and the King just had no idea what was going on in that in that neck of the woods. God, that’s that show ended so badly. We’ll have more stuff. We’ll have a postgame show a little bit later today with uh with me and Slightly talking about the Knicks game and we’ll see what happens with the Mavericks then. But guys, thanks for hanging out with us on Locked on Mabs. Again, check the QR code links in the description for different ways to follow the show. Thanks so much for listening to Locked on Mabs. Peace out. Boom.

The Dallas Mavericks are facing a power struggle that’s shaking up their NBA future, with intense debates about trading Anthony Davis and reshaping the Mavs’ roster around Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving. Get the latest insights into the Dallas Mavericks’ front office drama, roster changes, trade rumors, and key decisions impacting Cooper Flagg, Anthony Davis, and Kyrie Irving in the NBA.

Nick Angstadt breaks down the fallout from Tim McMahon’s ESPN report, analyzing what the power struggle between Nico Harrison and Mark Cuban means for the Mavs, and how Patrick Dumont’s involvement impacts future basketball operations. Hear details about player movement including Jalen Brunson, Daniel Gafford, PJ Washington, Dereck Lively II, D’Angelo Russell, and leadership questions involving Jason Kidd. Explore how emerging stars like Cooper Flagg and executive decisions regarding Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving could alter the trajectory of the Dallas Mavericks in the competitive landscape of the NBA.

0:00 Mavs Exploring an Anthony Davis Trade?
8:38 Cuban vs. Nico Harrison
13:00 Luka Doncic Trade Fallout

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