Former MVP and NBA champion Dirk Nowitzki warned the Dallas Mavericks. That part is confirmed now.
Mark Cuban was on the “House of Haymaker” podcast recently and shared something he admitted he hadn’t shared publicly before. When the Mavericks were putting together their front office in 2021, Nowitzki was not on board with hiring Nico Harrison.
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After former head coach Rich Carlisle and Donnie Nelson both left, Cuban gathered a group of familiar faces to discuss the organization’s next steps. Nowitzki was in that room. So were Casey Smith, Michael Finley and Dr. Donald Kalkstein
Nico Harrison got hired anyway.
Nowitzki’s gut feeling about Harrison called it
The Mavericks had a reason to hire Harrison, which made sense on the surface. Dallas has long struggled to attract top free-agent talent, and Harrison brought a Nike background and relationships across the league. The idea was that those connections would do what the franchise has not been able to do on its own
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Cuban believed that was the missing piece, and he tried to explain the same to Nowitzki. But he wasn’t convinced.
“Dirk didn’t agree with everything that was going on,” Cuban said. “He didn’t agree with the Nico hiring. I don’t think I’ve said that publicly before.”
He further shared exactly what Nowitzki had said at that time.
“Dirk was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if that’s the way to go.’ So, to his credit, he called it,” Cuban added.
Standing up to Cuban is not something any player can do. Moreover, he isn’t someone who gives that kind of acknowledgment casually. Nowitzki could see where the decision would take his beloved franchise, but they moved forward anyway.
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Everything that followed kind of explains why Cuban is bringing it up now.
Harrison forced Mavericks’ hand
Give credit where credit is due. Harrison’s tenure had one genuine high point. The Mavericks reached the NBA Finals in 2024, and that doesn’t get erased. But the few months after that eroded most of the goodwill he had earned.
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The Luka Doncic trade happened in February 2025. He was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, who had been dealing with injuries for stretches of his career. That concern did not go away in Dallas either. He played 20 games before the Mavericks shipped his contract off to the Washington Wizards at the trade deadline.
The team finished 26-56 and missed the playoffs for the second straight year. Even landing Cooper Flagg in the 2025 NBA draft felt like something that happened to them rather than something they built toward.
Things got messier internally, too. Casey Smith had been with the organization for a long time. He was among those who left. Nowitzki later described the period as a ‘black cloud’ over the franchise.
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Harrison was eventually let go in November 2025. Finley and Matt Riccardi had to step into interim roles and were handed a roster that needed more than a few tweaks. The network of relationships Harrison was supposed to bring. Basically, the whole reason Cuban made the hire. Never really materialized into the talent pipeline Dallas was hoping for.
The Mavericks fanbase has put it all behind them as Masai Ujiri takes over now. The rebuild has a name attached to it, Flagg gives them something real to work with and the front office looks completely different from what it was four years ago.
But somewhere in that 2021 room, when Nowitzki said he wasn’t sure about the direction they were heading, if the majority could see what the legend had in his mind. Things could have been completely different.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Jun 8, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.