Nico Harrison made the dumbest trade in NBA history. Nine months later, Patrick Dumont finally realized it
Prior to Michael Jordan’s final season in Chicago, Bulls general manager Jerry Krause uttered an infamous line that would ultimately lead to his downfall.
“Players and coaches alone don’t win championships,” Krause said. “Organizations do.”
Krause had built a fantastic roster around Michael Jordan that won six rings and turned the Bulls into the league’s premier franchise. He believed that he could do it again without Jordan, playing a part in breaking up that 1998 championship team before they had a chance to defend their title. The Bulls haven’t sniffed a Finals since, and Krause’s statement has definitively been proven wrong.
Nico Harrison worked closely with Jordan during those years in his role with Nike. Somehow, when he lucked into his own version of greatness, he made the same mistake that he had seen play out a quarter-century earlier.
Players do win championships, even if they are out of shape, have bad tempers, smoke hookah, and don’t play high-level defense. Those were some of the justifications that Harrison leaked after trading away Luka Doncic last February in a move that was so insane that most of us believed it to be fake upon initially hearing of it. I instantly called it the dumbest trade in NBA history. It only looks worse nine months later.
Harrison obviously didn’t feel the same. After the trade, he contended the Mavs were a better team. And when they flamed out to end their season, he doubled down on his logic.
“I feel like we have a championship-caliber team when we’re whole. We are going to hang our hats on defense and will be one of the best defensive teams in the league, and that’s going to be our calling card,” Harrison said at his end-of-season press conference after the Mavericks failed to make the playoffs.
The Mavericks have been even worse this year. Harrison has the built-in excuse that his team has been missing Kyrie Irving to start the year. But most of a general manager’s job is evaluating his roster. Harrison had no clue what he had built.
The Mavericks were 14th in the West at the time of Harrison’s firing. He had infamously claimed that defense wins championships. He has done a magnificent job of proving how wrong that logic is.
Dallas currently has the No. 3 defense in the league. But it turns out offense is important too. The Mavericks’ No. 29 ranking on that end of the floor has them at 3-8.
The offensive issues were easy to predict in the preseason. Harrison had a glaring lack of ballhandlers on his roster and did nothing other than adding journeyman D’Angelo Russell to the mix. Rookie Cooper Flagg has been overtaxed as the team’s primary creator. The can’t-miss prospect is going through a much rougher-than-expected season because Harrison has set him up for failure.
MORE: Dallas parts ways with Nico Harrison ugly start
Harrison did have some hits by going against consensus. The Kyrie Irving trade was largely panned when it happened. He was at the lowest value of his career, and he went for the low price of one first-round pick. That ended up being a brilliant pairing for Doncic, as were P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford. Trading down to select Dereck Lively in 2023 was another nice piece of business.
Harrison had the formula for perennial deep playoff runs, with very real championship equity. That makes it even more infuriating for Mavs fans after his hubris broke it up.
Harrison should have been fired at the end of last season. “Fire Nico” chants regularly reverberated through American Airlines Center, making it harder for the team to play at home than on the road according to NBA insider Jake Fischer. The environment was so bad that, according to NBA insider Marc Stein, Harrison had to exit the arena via portable stairs so as to avoid having to walk through sections of the crowd.
Mavericks fans were never going to accept anything less than his ouster. Owner Patrick Dumont recently hired a new Chief Communications Officer to try and rebuild the franchise’s shattered image. To reuse a line from SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell, Dumont would build better goodwill with Dallas fans by rehiring Harrison just so that he could fire him again.
The Mavericks are in clear need of a rebuild around Flagg, whose talent has been hindered by a nonsensical roster. Anthony Davis should still be able to return a nice package in a trade. That is priority No, 1. The team still has control of their 2026 first-round pick, so they could add a stud alongside Flagg if they continue to bottom out.
This thing does need to be turned around quickly, though. Harrison left the coffers mostly bare, trading away picks in 2027 (top-two protected) and 2029. The Mavericks will have to swap their picks in 2028 and 2030 if they are worse than the Thunder and Spurs, which is looking extremely likely. That means that the Mavericks will probably be out of good picks for four straight seasons after this current draft.
A one-year rebuild is not where the Mavs want to be. But landing a generational star is the hardest part of the job, and at least Harrison was lucky where he was not good.
Krause ultimately did get some redemption, being posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame for his earlier work with Jordan. Harrison made the same mistake, but he won’t get that same courtesy. Instead, he’ll be remembered as the guy who traded away Luka and had to wheel in a staircase to get out of the fire while he watched his team burn.
