Mavericks fans have been screaming “Fire Nico!” all around Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex ever since the stunning trade of Luka Doncic, and they finally got their wish Tuesday when the team fired Nico Harrison.
The trade left the franchise in a disastrous state and ruined Mavs fans’ belief and trust in the franchise. While some fans might never return, fans around Dallas celebrated the decision to move on from Harrison. On the newest episode of the SportsDay Insider podcast, Kevin Sherrington, Evan Grant and Calvin Watkins discussed the Mavs’ move to fire Harrison and discuss what steps the franchise can take to win fans back.
Below is their conversation on the Mavs’ move to fire Harrison, edited lightly for clarity.
(You can listen to the whole podcast here.)
Mavericks
Kevin Sherrington: Well, he certainly destroyed a fan base, and the franchise is not looking too good either right now. Calvin, besides covering the Cowboys for, I don’t know, 100 years at one point in his career, also covered the NBA for ESPN. He covered the Houston Rockets, so he has a reservoir of knowledge about the NBA and how it works, the ins and outs. Calvin, I wanted to get your take on this. And do you feel like at this point that the that the Mavericks had to make the move, as they said, the rumors were been circulating now for a few days, and the one was kept coming up was because of all the negativity around the team that they had to do this and and that might be officially the case, because this is a franchise that wants to put a casino on top of their arena, or vice versa, so they have to make nice with everybody. Do you buy that? Or do you feel it’s a combination of everything, with the with the Mavericks, lousy start, with Luka playing at an MVP pace for the Lakers, is it just everything you think, or is it one specific thing?
Calvin Watkins: I think it’s a bit of everything. I just remember the day of Anthony Davis’s first game with the Mavericks, right? And how he got hurt, and it just went downhill from there. I mean, they make this trade, and, okay, Anthony Davis could play. He’s a Hall of Fame player. He gets hurt the first game that he plays, and it was just a disaster. And then Kyrie gets hurt later that year, which was another risky decision, but ended up working out until he got hurt. So I think it’s just a combination of things. I think they didn’t understand the fan base. Nico was raised with Kobe Bryant and all that, and Kobe just is this crazy, egotistical, always in shape, always playing basketball guy, right? That’s why he’s among the top 10 players in the history of the game. Luka is not the most in shape guy in the world, but he plays basketball. He’s like James Harden. You know? He does what he needs to do. And I think Nico got caught up in all that and traded him, which was, as we now know, short-sighted. The fans obviously turned on the Mavericks. The media turned on the Mavericks. And Nico didn’t help himself, either, because he’s not a very warm and fuzzy guy, he had no allies in the media. He was very aloof, and that doesn’t help matters. I would say, regardless if the decision was bad or good by a team, if the guy who made that decision in the front office was was available to the media, we’re not as harsh with that guy, because we have a little bit of relationship with him, and so I think a lot of those factors played into Nico’s dismissal today.
Evan Grant: Forget harsh and forget the idea of the media for just a second. I mean, what you’re talking about is accountability. It’s accountability to the fans. It’s accountability of the fan base. And, yeah, the media is often the ones that did ask the questions, but he wasn’t accountable. And I differ a little bit. I think this was warranted because of basketball decisions, but I think ultimately the tipping point is that this Mavs ownership group knew that the arena situation was starting to get away from them, given the events of the suit against the Stars and how that has played out in public. The fact that they’ve started out poorly doesn’t really surprise me. They’ve got a rookie 18-year-old playing in their starting lineup, and they’re without Kyrie Irving. I thought this team was going to get off to a really rough start, and that’s why I thought the playoffs were kind of a stretch. I’m just surprised that the Mavericks decided to make this kind of move 11 games into this season. It’s almost like, why didn’t they do this after the 2024-25 season, and move on at that point. That’s why it makes it feel like it’s a pandering to the public a little bit.
Sherrington: Well look, let’s look at it this way. Every firing is pandering to the public at some point. When the drum beat gets so loud that there’s nothing else you can do, that’s when ownership or in college sports, and when the boosters and alumni say, “Hey, that’s it. I’m not supporting this anymore,” then they make a move. So I don’t think that I’m surprised by that part of it. I guess the first question we need to ask is, I want to put this in some kind of perspective. In my time here in Dallas, in my 40 years in Dallas, other than Jerry Jones, long-term effects as the general manager, I can’t think of another general manager who came in and did more to antagonize a fan base. I mean, really, if we just really look at it, there was, other than Jerry firing Jimmy, and Jimmy was wanting to go, and Jimmy orchestrated the whole thing, I don’t know that anybody ever did anything in this market to make a fan base more angry.
Grant: Since I’ve been here for 30 years, there’s been nothing that’s made a fan base this angry. And Calvin was talking before we got on the air, Kevin, just about how this Mavericks fan base has been consistent in its hatred. It has not let up one bit, not even after they won the lottery pick of Cooper Flagg. And so sometimes fan base voice does matter, and that is good to see.
Sherrington: Yeah, it is. The little bit of a parallel to me, is the Nolan Ryan exit from the Rangers, and not even nearly the same kind of impact anymore, but the fan base was so attached to Nolan, the fact that this legend is one of us, and they just couldn’t get past that. No matter what Nolan was actually doing for the franchise, they couldn’t get past the fact that Nolan Ryan is one of us. And I think that there was a feeling of that with the with Mavericks fans, with Luka, this kid was 25 years old. He was an MVP candidate every year. He’s, frankly, a once-in-a-lifetime player. As great as Dirk Nowitzki was and remains in the hearts of Mavericks fans, as I had the conversation with Jerry West, he said Luka’s a better player. When Jerry West says that, that means something. So I think that, to me, was the thing that they misjudged, and that’s what Rick Welts the CEO of the Mavericks, he said later, “We just didn’t see this kind of reaction to it,” and they didn’t get it. They didn’t get the local fan base. And I think a lot of places, they wouldn’t have understood. But when you’re in a market like this one, where the NBA team, to me, is still relatively new, since 1980, that’s not like you’re the Boston Celtics or the New York Knicks and some franchise has been around for 100 years. This is a place that attached itself to Luka and and looked at him as, even if the team’s not any good, we still got Luka.
Grant: This is a fan base that attached itself to this team, partly because of the previous owner and his passion and how much he involved the fan base and how much he made the fan base central to what he was trying to do. And Mark Cuban was exceptionally successful in building a very fervent fan base, and so then when you get the opposite of that, you get out-of-town ownership, an out-of-town president, a completely disassociated ownership group that makes it clear that their emphasis is business, it’s just a tectonic plate rubbing up against one another. And I think that’s why this went so sideways on Nico and this ownership group, the administration, they just didn’t grasp exactly what the Mavericks had built over the last 25 years,
Watkins: I think they also alienated Dirk. Like Luka has his first game with the Lakers last year, Dirk is there.
Grant: That was a horrible look for the Mavericks.
Watkins: Yeah, it was a bad look, a terrible look. And then I think Dirk was at the Laker home opener I think this year. That’s a terrible look, you know? I mean, we got a statue of you outside of our building, and you’re with Luka? I think whoever they hire to be the GM, they need to call Dirk. That’s like the first call you make is that you need to come home. We need you here. I’m not saying make Dirk the GM, I’m just saying you need to bring Dirk home. They’re gonna retire Mark Aguirre’s jersey, right? And that’s cute and all, but you need to get Dirk home. That, to me, is number one on the list. Get Dirk back in the building.
Sherrington: Dirk dealt the death knell to Nico Harrison, in my mind, just the other day, on a national broadcast. He said, “They can’t shoot, they can’t make plays. This is hard to watch.” You got Jason Kidd paddling over here trying to tell us all, “Things are gonna work out. This is all good for for Cooper Flagg.” No, this is not good for Cooper Flagg. If you wanted it to be a situation where he’s learning on the fly here, and if you’re gonna put this much in his lap, what you were saying then is that this team is no good. And we’re just gonna take our lumps here, and we’re going to let our young superstar learn because of it. Well, if that was the plan, that’s fine, but that was not the plan. The plan was to win right now, right? Nico Harrison said so. We got a three-to-four-year window here, and that’s it. Well, now the window is broken, right? So now that’s all out the window at this point. If that was the plan, then you need to consider, what are you going to do going forward? Can you keep Anthony Davis on this team? Because at some point, the way his contract is structured, they’re gonna have to make a decision about him. They can’t give him an extension. Anthony Davis is done. He can play right now for somebody, but that’s been part of the problem to start the season, he hasn’t been very good. His numbers have been below his career averages, and certainly below what he even put up in a limited time last year.
Grant: He’s brittle. End of story on that. He’s brittle. He was brittle when he was traded for, you made that point, and he’s been brittle since he’s been part of the Mavs.
Sherrington: This is a going to be very important at this point to determine what are they going to do going forward? Are they going to rebuild the team at this point? Are they going to trade Anthony? Are they going to try to just stick with what they have here at this point? Because the Nico Harrison experiment has failed miserably. I mean, we’ve said all along there were reasons that the Mavericks would make this move, right? But one of them is that, clearly, it has failed. Besides the the Luka trade, let’s not forget the Quentin Grimes trade. They traded him to the 76ers with a second-round draft choice for Caleb Martin. Quentin Grimes is averaging 17 points for the 76ers and shooting 39% from 3-point line. Caleb Martin is averaging 1.5 points for the Mavericks. So that was a bust. There have been a couple of bad moves here, and then the way he structured the roster, it just hasn’t worked. Their defense has been okay, not great. It’s been okay, and the offense is the worst in the NBA, and that makes it look even worse, right? You traded the guy who’s the biggest offensive force in the league, and now your offense is awful. All the critics, and I would hear from them all the time, all of the Luka critics would say, “It’s no good because he just dominates the offense and he doesn’t get the other guys involved enough and they won’t play a good enough defense if that’s the case.” Well, I don’t know, but that formula got you to the NBA Finals, and you lost there because you didn’t have enough offense, not because you didn’t have enough didn’t have enough defense. So I think that this has been an abject lesson for everybody, and just how good Luka really was and how we probably all should have appreciated him a little bit more.
Grant: I think right now it’s easy to say that this season is going to be a disaster. If you can trade AD, you trade him when you can, and if there are other pieces that you can move, then you move them. But I think in the short term, I think Calvin brings up a great point. First thing you can do right now is try and win back your fans, and you took a huge step by getting rid of the most unpopular person in the building. I think the second step to build on a comp that you made Kevin would be bring Dirk back in some kind of front-facing role. I don’t expect him to be the GM, but I do think the Mavericks need to figure out a way, much like the Rangers did when they were at the height of disenfranchising their fans, they brought Nolan Ryan back into the building, and Nolan sat his ass down in the front row every game, and people came back to this club. I think the Mavericks need to try and figure something out with Dirk. I don’t know what the TV arrangement for Dirk this year is like with Amazon, but the Mavericks need to bring him back into the building in some kind of front-facing role. I think we all are big fans of the move the Mavericks made in the in the front office, on the communications front and messaging is going to be really important. And they brought back a Dallas-raised Mavericks fan in Gina Miller, who gets this market, who’s really well-positioned to get their messaging forward. Now they’ve got to have make sure they have the right messaging.
Sherrington: Yeah, I think that’s all true, and I agree with all of that, except that Dirk’s motives are the purest of anybody you can possibly imagine. And the deal is, is that it wasn’t so much I don’t think that he was upset with how he was treated by the Mavericks. It’s the fact that they traded somebody he loved. I don’t know that this is going to be the easiest makeup, right? It’s not that Dirks gonna be obstinate about it or anything, he’s not being a jerk. It’s just that, “This was my guy, and y’all traded him, and he’s not coming back.” So I think that this is going to be really difficult for the Mavericks. It’s gonna be interesting to see who takes the job. There’s some names out there and certainly the former great GM of the Warriors would be available. So I think there’s possibilities there. And this is, frankly, all a good sign, right? One of the things you all alluded to earlier was the unaccountability of the general manager Nico Harrison.
Grant: You make a move like that, you gotta answer for it.
Sherrington: He was never available. I mean, he was never around. We went out there for the first practice and, of course, he’d been there for the opening day, but he’s not available for that. It’s like, how can this be? How can this guy not be standing out here to stand up for what he has done, and he didn’t do that. I’m guessing that we won’t get him now either. So he’ll go out the door pretty much the way he’s been the entire time he’s been the GM. So it’s a mess, and this is the first step in rectifying the mess, no question about that. But the Mavericks have gone from two years ago being in the NBA Finals and looking like everything is headed in the right direction to implosion. We’ve just not seen anything like that. You can compare the Cowboys if you want to. But after Jerry fired Jimmy, two years later, they won a Super Bowl.
Grant: As we discuss this in real time, apparently Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi are going to lead basketball operations in the interim.
Sherrington: Michael Finley’s been up for other jobs, he’s interviewed for jobs as a general managers at this point. I think that’s find if he ends up with it and that’s the easiest thing to do in the middle of the season is to at least give him the interim role to be in charge of that, so we’ll see how that works out.
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