Nico Harrison has been Public Enemy No. 1 in Dallas since the Luka Doncic trade, and even lucking into a draft lottery win and selecting Cooper Flagg No. 1 hasn’t changed that. Now that the Mavs have gotten off to a horrid 3-8 start to the season, the front desk seems to have acted on the “Fire Nico” chants from the fans.
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Firing Harrison won’t bring Luka back, especially since the perennial MVP candidate signed an extension with the Lakers this summer that will keep him in L.A. until at least 2028. It may be the first step though in repairing the relationship between fans and the team.
Part of that means bringing Dirk back into the fold. Dirk was famously close with Luka, and even attended Luka’s first Lakers game after the trade as a show of support. At the same time, he distanced himself from the Mavs, an understandable move given not only how the trade went down, but just how objectively terrible it was.
Dirk played his entire career for the Mavs, and most expected Luka to do the same. Back in Dirk’s day, the organization was loyal to him, and the feeling was mutual.
Chandler Parsons was Dirk’s teammate for two years in Dallas, and he said on the Run It Back podcast this morning, “I don’t wish anybody ill will or to be fired or lose their job, but the writing was on the wall here, and I think it’s the right move for the organization to go forward.
“I think guys like Dirk will now be more involved and invested without Nico Harrison there, and I think they can get back to that culture that they had before when they had success, rather than this,” he claimed.
Perhaps the most mind-boggling part of the Luka trade (and there are many) is that he had just led them to the Finals less than a year before he was traded. If that wasn’t a proof of concept for what a Luka-led team could do, then what was?
Rather than get behind a guy who had been named to the All-NBA First Team five straight times, Harrison hitched his wagon to Anthony Davis, a player whose age and injury history alone made this one of the most lopsided trades in league history.
Parsons said that Mavs fan will never forgive Harrison for trading away such a beloved player, and he’s right. Harrison was never going to survive that deal, even after having Flagg drop in his lap. Today’s firing is the closure the fans and franchise needed to move forward. What’s done is done, and there can still be a bright future ahead.
