Dallas Mavericks FINALLY FIRE NICO Harrison | Why Now? | How does Patrick Dumont Move Forward?

Dallas Mavericks FINALLY FIRE NICO Harrison | Why Now? | How does Patrick Dumont Move Forward?

On today’s show, the Dallas Mavericks do it. They heard you. Fire, Nico. Fired, Nico. According to reports, the Mavs make the right move. We’ll tell you why. Today’s locked on Mavs. This is Cooper Flag and you’re listening to Locked on M. Explain yourself. All these changes, you know, I still got my dog Dwight Pal. You are locked on M. Your daily Mavericks podcast. All part of the locked on podcast network. Your team everyday. I’m going to get a city right back. And welcome. You’re locked on to the Dallas Mavericks. Your team every day. My name is Nick Angstad, media member covering the Mavericks for 10 years. Thanks for being every day or making locked on Maps your first listen and helping us make the Locked On podcast network the number one sports podcast network out there. Today’s episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, use the code lockdown NBA for $20 off your first purchase. Joining me as always, my co-host, the media member covering the master for 10 years right alongside me, seen everything that we’ve gone through the last decade, the fired Nico nerd, the one more thinking. What you got for me, Isaac? What are you wearing for me, Isaac Harris? You know, just having a little uh little morning morning party over here. No uh no big reason. Um, today’s a good day to fire Nico Harrison. And today’s a good day. Today’s episode, we’ll talk about how the Mavs move forward from this, what’s next for the Mavs. We already kind of know who’s going to be in the interim. We’ll talk about um Nico Harrison, the job that he did, the mixed results uh in some way, the downhillness that that happened with this whole thing. But let’s start here, Isaac Harris. According to Sham Shrania and then Mark Stein as well, the Dallas Mavericks are moving on from Nico Harrison. firing Nico Harrison. The chance were heard. Mark Stein reported a couple days ago that the negativity and the frustration and all that had reached Patrick Deont, the Mavs owner, listener and friend of the show. And that had reached him and he heard it again when the Mavs lost to the Bucks last night. He heard it in the fourth quarter. The Mavs were winning the game. And I speculate I wondered if that was going to be a detriment to the Fire Nico movement because uh hey, they’re winning the game. Why are they still chanting Fire Nico? Are they just doing it because that’s just what people chant now. Is that is it just hype? Is it just all that? And no, it’s not. Mavericks fans are right to be frustrated. They’re right to be upset and they’re right to see that this is the right move for the Dallas Mavericks because the Mavs are three and eight and they’re built around Kyrie Irving who is a fan favorite. Helped the Maverick get to the finals. Incredible. Like great. Ended up being a really good move for the Dallas Mavericks, but he’s injured a lot all the time. And Anthony Davis is injured a lot all the time. And the Mavs are now built around this team and they were going to deal with that hamster wheel over and over and over again. Were those guys ever going to be healthy at the same time? I don’t know. They’re getting older and all that. And now the team is three and eight to start the season. Worst offense in the in the NBA for most of this and you’re built around two guys that you don’t know if they’re ever going to come back. And so the vision, the quote unquote now you’re seeing my vision. We don’t know if that was ever going to ever step on the court. That was the thing that we kept hearing from people. Well, wait till we see it on the court. Well, wait till you see it on the court. Well, wait till you see it on the court. And I don’t know if we were ever gonna see it. On top of that, the Luca trade is a fireable offense as it is. Yes. No, I thought you were going to keep on going through the timeline. I was dropping that I was dropping that one right off for you. Um, yeah. You know, it there’s the Luca trade, there’s the it’s so much bigger than like the Luca trade is a massive thing, but if someone’s like swooping in right now and they’re like, you know, I don’t listen to Mavs pods. I don’t I just want to hear the reaction to this because they’ve heard Nico’s name so much. It’s you’re like why why are you celebrating so much? This is it’s bigger than just like a failed trade. Like yes, it was the worst trade in NBA history. It was wrong. All of it. But it’s it’s so much bigger than the trade, too, because there’s a way that Nico makes the the Luca trade. He, you know, he gets the best offer. or he puts it out there and they they start taking, you know, and they get this massive deal. They and it happens over the summer. Like there’s a deal there’s a way that he tra he trades Luca an alternate universe in which fans are still pissed. It’s still the wrong decision and all that, but the the hatred isn’t as bad as what it is now. It’s because you make a trade like that and all the other stuff that follows. It’s the the lack of awareness of the fan base. It’s the laughing and joking after you make the trade. It’s the arrogance that you know better than everybody else. That you are the the king of zagging because you are just you just know like this is the vision and after you have the audacity after you win a 1.8% 8% chance of getting Cooper Flag to say that like, hey, hopefully fans start seeing the vision now. Like, you had anything to do with Cooper Flag. But it’s the disrespect he had for not just the fans. Not just the fans, but people within the organization. There is a path of bodies behind him that are not in the organization now. I seen Mike Marshall tweet out earlier about just the hey it’s it’s you know it’s cool that he’s gone now after so many people lost their careers uh defending having to defend this guy uh over the past you know year or so. Um, it’s the relationship with Dirk Nitzky, the your franchise legend. Like you’re one guy that is like the the representative of your your whole organization, one of the best players of all time that uh is distant from the organization. Like there is so many things behind the scenes in organization. How you treat people matters and h and of course how you you know the decisions you make, you got to live with them. I asked Miles Turner last night in the away locker room when the Bucks were here about hearing, you know, these chants in the arena that he grew up going to Mavs games here in Dallas and he was like, “Hey, you just, you know, it’s a hard business and you got to live with the decisions that you make and it’s like this is Nico Harrison having to live with the decision and like you’re living with it.” You kept on telling everybody that would put their ears to you of, man, time’s going to tell. Time’s going to tell. told us at media day time’s going to tell. Well, time’s told. Like, it’s it’s done. Like, you’re you’re gone. This team was not going to win a title this year. 3-8 the start. There’s there’s very low chance under 14% that they are going to even make the playoffs this year, which is insane. And to go back to the Luca trade, which I don’t know is that is that a sentence I’ll say for the rest of my life. That spit in the face of every single fan and Durk Nitzky and everybody that helped set up that that career, set up Luca Donic and the Luka Donovich era and everything. It spit in the face of all that. They had just made the NBA Finals. That’s the whole thing. That’s the whole game is all right, can we make the finals? Can we be competitive? Do we have a player that we believe in that can actually that we can build to go to the NBA finals and to win? That’s the entire game. And Dallas Mavericks fans know that better than anybody because they watch Dirk Nitzky run through that whole thing and deal with 2007 or deal with 2006 where they made the finals and then lost in a way that was a little questionable. Then in 2007, losing in the first round after winning MVP and that in insane heartbreak and all that and then you thought that that chance was completely over and then he makes it back in 2011 in a team that nobody really expected to make the NBA finals and they go and they play LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosch and they go and beat them, the Heedles. An incredible like storybook hero moment. And that’s what Dallas Mavericks fans know. They know the hero moment of saying, “All right, just be patient. Wait with your guy cuz eventually it pays off.” and it pays off in a title that people say is one of the most like respected valid titles it’s ever been it’s ever had as he as he went through Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James like and he in the first round like Brandon Boycus Aldridge in the first round. An incredible moment and you were waiting for that moment with Luca. You had invested six, seven years in Luca Donic in his success seeing him make five first team allNBAs before the age of 26. An incredible feat and all of a sudden Nico Harrison comes and says, “Hey guys, guess what? uh everything that you guys just were celebrating and everything. It’s completely crap. It’s terrible. It’s not working. It’s not gonna work ever. I know better than everybody else. And I’m gonna bring in somebody in Anthony Davis that plays for the Lakers and is a big That is not what our team is built around right now. And I’m going to zag like you said and bring in this guy. And now guess what? Anthony Davis came into camp overweight and and is now dealing with a calf strain. And you never hope that somebody get that somebody is injured. That is just an insane irony in this whole thing that the same reason that Nico Harrison moved on from Luca Donas because Luka Donis was consistently uh out of condition and came into camp overweight and he was dealing with a calf strain for over a year even through through the NBA finals. And Nico Harrison looked at that and said, “I think we can do better. We got to get somebody that comes in here and is our brand of basketball is that comes in in shape that is a person that like uh takes care of their body and all that.” and got somebody that wasn’t doing that this season is just absolutely ironic and insane in this whole thing. But I just go back to that Luca trade and say it spit the face of every single fan and that’s why they’ve been chanting fire Nico. Yeah. And there’s just you know Nico since the beginning or since that trade has um there’s there’s just been no there’s no accountability, right? Like we’ve wanted them to sit there and like hey the P the PR of it has been a mess. The accountability is wait to see what happens judge me by April. It’s like all right. There was never accountability on his part of losing you know a good portion of the fan base of hey I want to gain back this trust. there’s always been this arrogance about him to media day which we’ve referred to this offrecord conversation I had with him and I don’t care to talk more about it now and because I I’ll post a picture of him on Twitter but one of our the biggest things about that conversation was Nico comes in our our media room there we start talking for a second we start talking me and him start talking about the question I ask him about why you shouldn’t be fired and Nico just goes in on that was the most disrespectful question I’ve ever been asked in my career and goes in on why he said I summed up his career in that moment and like all this stuff and it’s like bro it’s still about you man like it’s still like it it’s still like for him it it’s still like man I I’m being you know it’s there was always popular to I couldn’t I couldn’t do anything right after that it was it was just all these different things instead of yeah maybe I did do something like wrong like not just the decision like not not that you expect him to like Oh, the decision was hor like you expect and he’s always going to stand by the decision for sure. But you could like step out and be like, “Yeah, I could have handled things a lot differently.” And there’s a lot of stuff I would have taken back. I should have done this. I should have done this, this, that. I should have wait for that. And there was just never, it was never that. It was always he was the one ahead of the curve, puffing out the chest. And uh it it was always the Nico show. and it’s it’s leaving town now. Why is this the right move now for the Dallas Mavericks 11 games into the season? We’ll tell you more coming up. [Music] Today’s episode of Lock on Maps brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. FanDuel sports book. All kinds of props and odds things you can use just to get in on the action on games. If you’re frustrated Dallas Mavericks right now, you can go check out other games and all that. The Dallas Mavericks finals odds I don’t think have changed. They’re plus 6,000 which is more than the Bulls and the Heat, which I find interesting. 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You can get texts and messages from us all the time on rumors and things that we hear and everything like that because stuff is going to be happening. Isaac Harris because the Mavericks have reportedly fired Nico Harrison. They’ve made the move and I’m right now Nick right now. We’re recording right now as the meeting is in. So maybe we scrap this episode if it actually doesn’t happen because we’ve seen crazier things happen. We’ve seen crazier uh zigs and zags. But the Mavs are making the right move right now because we said this a couple days ago. I don’t think you could trust Nico Harrison to put the best interest of the franchise longterm right now in front of him. Going back to the the Luca press conference, he talked about a three-year window and a three-year timeline because that was what his contract had. And honestly, I don’t know if you could tr you could trust him right then and there. Then you get Cooper Flag and you’re like, “All right, now we have a future. Now there’s something beyond this three-year window.” Because I was skeptical that the three-year window was going to lead to a championship. Anyway, I thought that team could be good. I thought they could be solid and I thought it could be fun. Has been anything but to begin the season at all. And we’re talking I talked about the hamster wheel of the injuries as well. But I think it’s the right move because you’re gonna have to make some decisions on Klay Thompson, maybe on Anthony Davis, on some of these contracts with some of these guys. And I don’t know that you could let Nico Harrison, all right, you still have the reigns after you made this crazy move and after you made some other moves too that we could talk about to build around Cooper Flag for the long-term future because I think you would would have leveraged some of the future to for a win now move to try and either save his job or to save face because of this whole situation. Yeah, I mean, we’ve been saying over the past few days, um, we called for his firing before the weekend. That’s correct. Um, it it was just it’s just Yeah, you can’t let the same guy who created the mess try to fix it. You just can’t. Like, it’s, you know, I joked the other day. I’m like, this isn’t trying to trying to teach my toddler right now when he spills something in the kitchen like, “Well, you spilled it. You got to clean it up.” This is professional sports. So, like if you you spill it, like you he shouldn’t be in charge of trying to Now, I get it. I was um I was I was asked last night were reminded by a member of the front office last night at the game of, hey, there’s been a lot of good things that Nico has has done over his time. Yeah, there are trades that Nico has made that were great trades and we could go down through some of them. But for everyone that was good, there’s also the Brunson fumbling. There’s also the Christian Wood. There’s also like it it’s not just the it’s not like hey here is a huge slate of every decision made was awesome and he was 10 for 10 and then the Luca trade happens and that erases all of it which very well like it would because it was that bad of a bad of a trade. Erases it a bad way. But there were a lot of other bad decisions too on top of burning bridges with people and all the disrespect and the arrogance and all the different stuff of like how you just don’t like um manage and manage people and stuff. So um I said it the other day in the way of he can’t be the one leading the Mavericks to this next chapter of what needs to happen. So whatever the next steps are, he can’t be the one to determine that because what he’s determined over the past, you know, 3 years is not it didn’t work. So you need someone else to come in and start charting course for like where are we going now? Are we going to try to ride the two timelines? Are we still in now? Are we going are we going to build around Cooper Flag? Are we like what? Whatever direction you pick, it just can’t be him that put you in this spot right now. Well, it did work two years ago. Say that. But the thing about it is the thing about it is while that was happening, he said they did not win a championship, which was one of the reasons why of like when ref I thought it worked. He didn’t think it worked, which is why we’re in this situation to begin with. But the thing is during all that run and everything, there were little things here and there. Casey Smith was not with the Mavericks anymore. Other, you know, other longtime employees were gone. Uh different things like that where you go, what is happening? Like all of a sudden the sh like the shape of this organization is starting to look different. Like moves are being made and by the end by now it’s like all right, it’s his way or the highway and he has the most power in the organization. And it’s like the only way Patrick Deont could get that power back I think was firing him, right? Right. Like I think that’s the situation we were in because he Pat Fat Jamaat was the other one that that you know signed off on the Luca trade and we could talk about his culpability. Do you know he met with a fan in the middle of that game and had a Luca jersey? He was wearing a Luca Lakers jersey. Did you see that? I didn’t I didn’t know. We covered that extensively on the show last night. But I think that that was the that’s the only way that he could have gotten the power back because Nico had positioned himself as the one that had this the say. He’s like, I built this finals team and I have, you know, I whatever I say goes because I know exactly what’s right over everybody else. Patrick M, you should you should listen to me. You don’t have a lot of experience managing or leading or owning a a sports team. I’m the one you should listen to. And that trust was was eroded. That had been reported for, you know, a couple of weeks. And now here we are. He made the decision, moved on from Nico Harrison. And it was it was the right one. And it was the right one to do it now because it it should have been done back then. And the the Luca trade should have never should have ever happened, but you already made that catastrophic mistake. You can’t let him make another one. And it’s bigger than injuries, right? Like I was reminded last night too from someone works for the team about the injury part of like, oh, well, oh, everybody that works for the team is reminded you about the injury part. They tell me too like you remember, you know, we’re missing X, Y, and Z. And it’s like, hey, you also knew that Kyrie was going to be out. Did they bring up XM too? No. No. that that’s like a chair on top of guys we’re missing XM too. That’s like the people forget about Frank. But it but it’s like you knew that Kyrie wasn’t going to be playing for a long time this season, right? And you chose to build the team this way and to have this air quote vision. Um fortune favors the bold, you know. Uh but like you cho you chose to build the team this way and you chose to lean into point Cooper Flag at 18 when he’s first come into the league. Man, Cooper Flag had his best game last night. You know what? Cooper Flat when he looks good playing with another point guard. I mean they started Brandon Williams. They played Brandon Williams a lot. DLO a lot. I would assume I don’t have it in front of me right now that there’s hardly any minutes last night played without one of Brandon Williams or DLO and it just helps like this is what we’ve been trying to say of like can we get Cooper playing off ball a little bit he can still initiate he can still do all those things but like don’t make him bring be the primary facilitator and bring him up like bringing the ball the floor and like all this random crap and like this is the vision that he built. He thought that he built a team good enough on offense to hold out until Kyrie got back and it wasn’t working. So, this wasn’t and you didn’t see any signs of life. This is what I I I told someone last night like there isn’t any thing that you can point to right now and be like, “Well, that gives me hope. They just got a breakthrough. They just got to have a breakthrough. One, get one injury back and all of a sudden you’re back on top.” You can’t say, “Hey, look how good we were before 80s injury. That’s what we’re going to be here here in a little bit.” No, you weren’t. You can’t say that, oh man, we’ve seen a lot of signs of like Cooper as the point guard, like this is going to be great right now to win games right now. No, you haven’t. You haven’t seen that. Like there were just no signs of like what you’re trying to point to besides this like hope of like something brand new was going to happen. So, um the record tells you that it was time. Whatever ch whatever, you know, direction they need to steer the ship now, um it just has to be somebody else. And that’s what Patrick Deont and now now Patrick Deont has a has a job of you got to win you got to start winning back the fan base and absolutely feels like that’s what he’s going to do. It starts to be built now. Coming up we’ll tell you how he starts winning back the fan base and building this whole thing back up. Coming [Music] today’s episode of Lock Mavs brought to you by Game Time. 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All right, Isaac, we’re talking about the Dallas Mavericks reportedly firing Nico Harrison. And I’m seeing a tweet from Bobby Marks that says uh the Dallas Mavericks under Nico Harrison. It’s a big chart and it has players traded in one column, picks traded in one column, players acquired in one column, and player and picks acquired in one column. And uh there’s a a glaring omission of the players traded column. What do you do? Forget Luca? He forgot Luka Nic in the uh the players traded column, which is just hilarious. And a lot of people are saying it’s rage bait, which I I don’t think Bobby Marks would do, but that I just found that very funny. I don’t think he’s a Yeah. A lot of people are questioning, all right, well, what do you do now? Why do this now? Disastrous to fire the GM less than a year after the Luca trade. All right. I don’t think that’s a bigger disaster than the Luca trade itself, right? Like if it was a bigger disaster and we could come on here and say, “Wow, this is a bigger disaster than the Luca trade itself,” then maybe I’d be upset about it. But I’m not because I think this is the right move. The Mavs need to move forward. And honestly, the fans needed this to move forward. Fire Nico, maybe it had become a meme. Maybe it just become the slogan for the frustration of the fan base. But it did for a reason because he’s the one that came in, like you said, and spit on the fan base and said, “Hey, whatever you guys know, I know better.” and this guy that that is beloved that took you to the NBA finals. He’s not it. And I’m I’m going to go show you what is it with basketball and and bring in Anthony Davis and do all this and if we win a championship, they’ll all come back. And I’m like, I don’t know even if you win a championship if they’re all going to come back because I’ve talked to many of them. I I talked to maybe more Maps fans than anybody. And I don’t know that a lot of them are coming back even if the Mavs had won a championship with that roster. Yeah. No, I was kind of in the camp of like, hey, if they won a title, you know, if they won two titles, like the streets would be filled with pass fans and like the the magic of a playoff run. I think people were underestimating of the legends that are born of role players and all the stuff and those deep long playoff runs and that. Do I do my Christmas day analogy again? Are the children listening? Are there children listening? Stop. No, not on this pod. This will be listened to a lot. It’s like Christmas day when you No. No. No. When you learn things. So, still still special, just not the same magic for for Dumont. Deont needs to get in front of a mic right now and and say with a prepared statement. Honestly, I don’t know. Prepare vetted by somebody. The last time he got on a microphone, he one he said championship games. He’s also said that we need somebody that’s going to, you know, take their conditioning seriously. And he brought up Shaq. He said, “We’re going to bring up somebody. We want somebody that’s going to be good for the culture.” And brought up Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Like, I need the statement to be prepared. Man, I’m not saying that Dumont needs to get down and do a breakdown of schemes. I’m saying I don’t need him to talk basketball. Listen, we need more zone. We need more player screens. Dumont, we don’t need a basketball breakdown video of Damont. It is I don’t need him talking basketball. I need Damont in front of a mic addressing the fan base and saying, “Hey, I underestimated some things and I wish I could do things differently. I want to win you back.” Like that’s th this is the thing. I want to I want to get the trust back with the fans. I want I want to get Dallas Mavericks basketball back to where, you know, the respect and how the city has the best fans in the world. like all all the all the cliche stuff and and just acknowledge that you’ve made some mistakes with that and you want to turn the page and and I get it. There’s a lot of fans that won’t buy it and be like you you approved it. You know, you approved the trade and all this stuff. Very valid. I get it. But we can’t you can’t do anything about that right now. Like this is the thing that you need the page to be turned and hopefully over the next 24 hours we get that. That’s completely right. And you know what’s wild about that statement you just made though? I think the only person in the in the organization that was like we got to win the fans back was Anthony Davis. It was Kyrie. Well, I mean Kyrie was like was the better spokesperson than anybody in the whole organization. Kyrie was the leader in all of it connecting with the fans. But Anthony Davis in his introductory press conference that we put in the intro says I’m going to give the city life back. just even just acknowledging that like something had happened that had frustrated and upset the fans that was like valid and like okay yeah I’m g we’re gonna give the city life back now that’s not happening right now but the uh but yeah the so all right how do they how do they move forward you you mentioned Patrick Dumont making making a statement and they have appointed Matt Ricardi and Michael Finley at in the interim right now uh I don’t think they can hang with an interim for for a long time either because is the is does the interim just try and and tread water on this do what what do they do? Do they plan for the future more even though they may not be there? Like there there’s all kinds of questions with that. I think they’ve got to make a decision on somebody and you you move forward now by bringing in somebody that’s going to be here for the long term. You’ve got to sign somebody up for for a long haul here like a fiveyear something like that maybe six. Yeah. I’m I’m fascinated with what happens next. Um this was the first needed step. Yes. Does firing Nico right now automatically make the team 10 times better on Wednesday night? No, it doesn’t. But this was the first step needed. Don’t discount vibes. No, no, no, no. Oh, no. I’m not discounting that because I do think that there is a vibe shift. You don’t tell me that. I mean, you can’t tell me that the players we I know the players have felt the like, man, the fans aren’t fully like behind us type of thing. And what a relief for them knowing that like, hey, I’m gonna be able to go to a free throw line and people are not going to be chanting for my GM to be fired while I’m shooting free throws in the fourth. Cooper flag should never have that. Cooper flag should never have to hear that. The funny thing is PJ Washington didn’t hear it until he missed the until he missed the second one and then the fans came back and like, “Oh yeah, fired a co.” It was kind of a hilarious moment to me. But that was but but that’s the that was the moment right there that I’m like looking down in the arena last night and Dumont’s sitting in front row and I’m like this is the moment you should be thinking about everything when your new star player Cooper flag is shooting free throws and your arena of fans is chanting during his free throws for Nico to be fired. Like you got to be doing something about this. Like that moment uh can’t really happen. It was almost like the fans realized, hey, we’re running out of time in this game. We haven’t done the fire Nico thing yet. Like, we’ve we’ve got we’ve got to get it this in so that the owner can actually hear it because it’s Well, the Rams were just good enough in that game, right? Well, they started the fourth quarter when they were winning. Seven minutes left in the fourth quarter was when the chance really really got started. They were like, “Hey, uh, I think we got to start these or else we’re not going to have enough time to chant fire at the end of this game.” Well, so, so what as far as like what’s next and the next hires and stuff? Um it’s fascinating because yeah, you have Ricardi who has a lot of experience in the league. Michael Finley has been with the team for a long time in a bunch of different roles. Um Dan also likes to swing big. So yeah, you look at Rick Welts. Weltz was retired enjoying life. All right. Considered one of the, you know, he is a legend in his own right of like everything he did with the Warriors and NBA. NBA is like a whole um dude’s just enjoying life. All right. And uh Dumont came calling and I’m I’m going to don’t know Rick Welt’s salary, but I’m going to say it’s pretty an ungodly amount for you to come out of retirement. Yeah. Um to to take this job as a CEO of the Mavs to take this job for like seven years till the arena is built like this whole Yeah. the project and everything. They just recently appointed a new COO to help with a bunch of the communication side and Gina Miller. And now who do they come who who does he go after for a GM? And that’s where I put like everything on the table. Like he could go big name hunting. Um you know, does he go after a Bob Meyers and like I don’t care what you’re doing, Bob. I will pay you more than anything that you’re doing right now. Um who has worked with Rick Welts before. Um, does he It’s just like does he go big name hunting? How long do they let the interim situation happen? Do they look at it and say, “Hey, for the rest of this year, we just kind of want to like play it out and just like, hey, we’ll just see what happens. Let’s don’t we won’t do any crazy trades. Ricardi, Finley, just keep things status quo. Maybe make some smaller trades here.” And they let the interims last the whole entire season. Yeah. Um there’s just a bunch of different Does Jason kid try to make a play? He’s done it before. I know. Uh is there a is there a little sneaky kid angle of this of hey, you know, uh Stan Van Gundy, Doc Rivers, there’s been some play there’s been some coaches that had GM powers, too. You know, Papovic between the uh the Javel McGee thing and the Dante Exom thing. I don’t know if I want Jason Kid in the front office. I’m not say I’m not saying it’s a good thing. We know those are his moves though. Like I’m just saying like there’s a bunch of stuff at play. There’s a bunch of different directions. But at least Dumont is listening now. At least we know he cares and he’s making a decision. He made it. And now we can like, hey, flip that page. And now, all right, now we now you can go a bunch of different directions. And that in itself brings me a little bit excitement because with Nico at the helm, there was one direction, one defined way of like here’s your time. Here’s the timeline. Here’s the vision. Here’s what you’re here’s the players you’re committed to. He was never going to trade Anthony Davis if that’s your next move or not. Now everything’s on the table outside of Cooper Flag and that first round pick next year. I think whoever the next person is, I mean I me personally Kyrie’s off the table and PJ Washington’s off the table. Like right now you’re not like touching that, but it’s like you don’t know what direction the Mavs can go. And that that’s exciting instead of the defined path that Nico had, the path that hasn’t proved that it was a good path to be on and that’s why you had to you make that decision. If you’re a Mavs fan, you’re in 2018 again. Remember when the Mavs got Luca, but you’re in a better position right now roster-wise to to rebuild and to to move forward than you were in 2018. And so that is that’s that is exciting. And so we’ll talk about it. We’ll have bonus episodes. We’ll have all kinds of stuff. We’ll continue to cover this all throughout the week and all throughout. So, subscribe wherever you’re listening, watching this. Check the QR code for different ways to to follow the show. Go listen to Locked on Fantasy Basketball, Josh Lloyd. Go listen to Locked on NBA. I was on there today. So, we’ll have all kinds of great stuff coming. Thanks so much. Listen to Locked Ons. Peace out.

The Dallas Mavericks have fired Nico Harrison, sending shockwaves across the NBA and dramatically changing the future of the Mavs. What does this mean for the Mavericks’ rebuild around Cooper Flagg, the health of Anthony Davis, and the future with Kyrie Irving at the helm?

Nick Angstadt and Isaac Harris break down why the Dallas Mavericks made the decision to fire Nico Harrison, how Cooper Flagg’s development impacts the Mavs moving forward, and what fans can expect from Patrick Dumont and other team leaders. They discuss the fallout from the Luka Doncic trade, the roles of key players including Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, PJ Washington, Klay Thompson, D’Angelo Russell, and the impact on Mavs management with names like Jason Kidd and Mark Cuban addressed. Plus, insight on injuries, accountability, and how the Mavericks can begin restoring trust and build toward a winning future in the NBA.

What are the Mavs’ next moves after firing their GM, and how will Cooper Flagg, Anthony Davis, and Kyrie Irving shape Dallas’ future?

0:00 Nico Harrison Fired Reaction
13:46 Why Firing Was the Right Move
24:41 Next Steps for Mavericks’ Future

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