The Dallas Mavericks fired general manager Nico Harrison yesterday, putting an end to a tumultuous run that really began when Harrison traded away Luka Doncic in February. Mavs fans have wanted blood since losing their beloved superstar, and now they got it. The question is, what’s next for the franchise?
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Dallas is off to a brutal start to the season. They currently sit near the bottom of the West with a 3-8 record, a resume that includes losses to the Wizards and Pelicans. Kyrie Irving isn’t expected back until sometime after New Year’s, while Anthony Davis has yet to play a game in November due to a calf strain. Klay Thompson has gotten off to such a slow start and that he’s now coming off the bench.
Meanwhile, Luka is leading the league in scoring while pacing the Lakers to an 8-3 start. It’s difficult to imagine a worse first few weeks of the season for the Mavs, in every way.
On the No Fouls Given podcast, Paul Pierce put forth a potential forward-thinking solution. “I think you actively start having to shop the vets,” he said. “Klay, AD, Kyrie. We got the No. 1 pick, we got a future. We got one building block,” he said, referring to Cooper Flagg.
It might seem like a rash move to give up on this season so quickly, but Pierce has a point. Besides that, it will take more than firing Harrison to wash the taste of the Luka-AD trade out. It’s no fault of his own, but Davis will forever have that negative association tied to him, and there’s really nothing he can do to make Mavs fans forget about Luka. Trading him and starting fresh might be the only option.
The Mavs were extremely lucky in landing the No. 1 pick in the lottery (unless luck wasn’t a factor at all, as some people believe). They effectively got a chance to reset the timeline of the franchise, after voluntarily handicapping themselves by trading a 25-year-old Luka for a 31-year-old AD.
Danny Green suggested that Daniel Gafford, Dereck Lively II and PJ Washington could stay, but Pierce had other ideas. “Everybody can go except for Cooper Flagg,” he said. “If there’s a deal on the table for them, they’re all expendable. There’s no other keeper than him.”
Obviously, the Mavs can’t expect to get someone like Luka in return for Davis and the other vets on the roster, but they should be able to get a haul from contending teams looking for the missing pieces to help them recover, at the very least. If they can stock the cupboard with draft assets and/or young talent to go with Flagg, they can set themselves up for a brighter future.
If the Mavs just ride it out with the team they currently have, then they might as well have just kept Harrison since this is his vision anyway. To really move forward, they need to listen to Pierce’s advice and hit the reset button.
