Don’t know which section will start it off tonight. But you’d think that within a few minutes during the Mavericks’ home game tonight against Phoenix, all of American Airlines Center will be united in a full-throated chant of “Sell The Team.” And that chant will continue throughout the game, and during Friday’s NBA Cup game with the Clippers, and so on, and so on.
Everyone’s still mad about the Luka Dončić trade, right?
Or did the pound of desired flesh by the Mavs’ fan base end, along with its months-long siren song of “Fire Nico” during home games, with the sacking of the now-former general manager who recommended trading Dončić to the Lakers, rather than the ownership group that okayed it? Is everyone good just watching Cooper Flagg do work from now on?
Nico Harrison is gone, his place in sports lore cemented alongside John Holland, the Chicago Cubs general manager who, in 1964, traded outfielder Lou Brock and three other players to the St. Louis Cardinals in a six-player deal for two players, including pitcher Ernie Broglio, who was supposed to be the centerpiece of the deal for Chicago. Instead, Brock helped the Cardinals win the ’64 World Series, became a six-time All-Star in St. Louis, one of the greatest base stealers of all time and a Hall of Famer, while Broglio won exactly three games in two-plus seasons with the Cubs.
Harrison will now be remembered alongside Mike Lynn, the Minnesota Vikings GM who, in 1989, traded five players and three draft picks to the Cowboys for running back Herschel Walker, then considered one of the best backs in football. Except, Dallas attached a conditional future draft pick to each of the five Minnesota players it got in the deal, allowing the Cowboys to convert the players into picks if they waived the players by a certain date. This, the Cowboys had planned to do all along, and as a result, Dallas’ haul rose to eight picks from the Vikings between 1990 and 1992, including three first-rounders.
When the Cowboys were done moving up and down in those drafts, using the Vikings’ picks as lubricant, Dallas had drafted running back Emmitt Smith, safety Darren Woodson, defensive tackle Russell Maryland, and cornerbacks Kevin Smith and Clayton Holmes. Smith became one of the greatest running backs in NFL history and a Hall of Famer. Woodson made five Pro Bowls and was a three-time All-Pro. Maryland played 75 games for Dallas over five seasons. And all five players were on each of Dallas’ three Super Bowl-winning teams between 1993 and 1996.
Walker didn’t lead Minnesota to any Super Bowls. (He ran for the Senate a couple years ago. Didn’t go so well.)
And, of course, there’s Harry Frazee.
Actually Frazee is a good place to pick up this tale. For Frazee was the owner of the Boston Red Sox in 1919 — and, Boston’s de facto GM. He was the person who, infamously, traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in December 1919 for $100,000 — roughly equivalent to $1.87 million today — in part to pay the bills from theatrical productions on Broadway that he was bankrolling at the time. He was the guy who traded Babe Ruth. There was no middle management involved. No Nico Harrison.
Just to reiterate: Nico Harrison doesn’t own the Mavericks. Sorry; did not own the Mavericks. Patrick Dumont, and the Adelson/Dumont Family, which is headed by Dumont’s mother-in-law, Miriam Adelson, own the Mavericks. And Patrick Dumont runs the Mavericks. Nico Harrison works — worked — for him, not the other way around.
Sure, Dallas’ 3-8 start, even with Kyrie Irving rehabbing a torn ACL and Davis in and out of the lineup with injuries, was a factor in Dumont’s decision to move on from his GM. But the overarching, overwhelming reason was that the fan base never — ever — was going to forgive Harrison.
Dumont and his family purchased a controlling interest of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in 2023 and quickly made it clear that they would be calling the shots going forward, not the man who’d run the Mavs without challenge for the previous two-plus decades. It was thus Patrick Dumont’s absolute right to say, when approached by his GM about trading the team’s franchise player, ‘That’s crazy, Nico. We’re not doing that. Figure out how to be comfortable with Luka, warts and all. Or, you can go.”
Instead, Dumont went with, “Sounds good to me.” Left unsaid, in public at least, was, “We’re not at all interested in giving Luka a five-year, $345 million max contract next summer, thank you very much.”
Patrick Dumont (left) signaled the Adelson-Dumont family’s control after acquiring the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban in 2023. Jerome Miron / USA TODAY Sports via Imagn Images
Dumont’s not going to fire himself. So, as Harrison continues to be raked over the coals for pushing the Dončić trade to the Lakers, along with Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris, for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and L.A.’s 2029 first-rounder, with Jalen Hood-Schafino and two picks going to Utah to facilitate the deal, let us, again, not lose sight of the fact that general managers recommend. Owners decide. And if the Dumonts/Adelsons didn’t think Dončić was worth that big a contract, given his history of injuries and not being in optimal condition, that’s their right as owners.
But that would be their call. Not Harrison’s.
Fans, of course, have every right to express their anger at games, as long as they don’t come on the floor. They didn’t care if Dončić was surly to a team physio, or chilled with some adult beverages postgame, as long as he was cooking folks when it mattered. And they understood that wagering the farm on the oft-injured Davis to anchor another championship contender in Big D was … well, there’s a reason the Dumonts/Adelsons own casinos, rather than bet in them.
I’m good with fans not spending money on a team they think let them down. I’m good with fans booing in an arena, or chanting whatever they want, as long as it’s not vulgar. I’m not good with anyone getting death threats because they traded a basketball player from your team to another team.
Harrison will own this, forever. One could make an argument for moving Dončić — hey, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain got traded. But the execution of the trade with only L.A., and not turning the bidding for Dončić into a league-wide auction, was folly. Harrison came to believe that keeping Dončić, and building a team around him, was no longer worth the trouble, based on Dončić’s attitude and actions during the three years Harrison was Dallas’ GM, even though Dončić led Dallas to the 2024 NBA Finals against Boston. He thought that Dončić would never get in shape.
And he was wrong.
But, that means Dumont was wrong, too.
He was 10 toes down last February in backing Harrison, and the decision to trade Dončić.
“If you look at the greats in the league, the people you and I grew up with — (Michael) Jordan, (Larry) Bird, Kobe (Bryant), Shaq (O’Neal) — they worked really hard, every day, with a singular focus to win,” Dumont told the “Dallas Morning News” in February. “And if you don’t have that, it doesn’t work. And if you don’t have that, you shouldn’t be part of the Dallas Mavericks.
“That’s who we want. I’m unwavering on this. The entire organization knows this. This is how I operate outside of basketball. This is the only way to be competitive and win. If you want to take a vacation, don’t do it with us.”
If you think Dumont was talking about, say, P.J. Washington, you’d be wrong.
Nine months later, Dumont made an, let’s say, unusual accommodation, letting a fan in a Dončić Lakers jersey sit courtside with him during Monday’s loss to the Bucks, during which time the fan apologized to Dumont for foul language he’d hurled at him before — while Dumont expressed regret about the trade, and how he wanted to make things right with fans. That encounter just happened to be visible for everyone to see, and hear and read about, just before the Mavs fired Harrison, and just before Dumont penned an open letter to Mavericks fans Tuesday.
This isn’t personal. I met Patrick Dumont during those ’24 finals, and Dumont couldn’t have been nicer in introducing his family members, and expressing his excitement about his team’s future. But, he runs the team. And he approved the deal. Everyone has to be held accountable here, not just the idea man. A lot of people chime in before a sticky subject hits the owner’s desk. Such subjects almost always involve incredibly hard decisions to make. But that’s the job. You have to own all of them, not just the ones that work out.
How fans and media hold Dumont accountable for Luka Dončić wearing Forum Blue and Gold the rest of his NBA career will be illuminating. And, especially, if it is materially different from how Harrison was judged — and found wanting.
