Nico Harrison is gone. The painful reality of course is that so, too, is Luka Dončić. Firing Harrison can’t bring Luka back.
The Dallas Mavericks have dismissed Harrison anyway, deciding that the perpetual doomsday atmosphere that had enveloped the American Airlines Center and really the whole franchise since the ill-fated Dončić trade had to be addressed somehow before anything else … no matter how bumpy the road ahead will almost certainly still be without Harrison doing the steering.
Miraculously winning the draft lottery in May and the right to select Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick could only offset so much. Constant losing and injury woe since the first day of training camp in Vancouver — through no fault of his Flagg’s — has forced the former Duke star to start his NBA career under a cloud that the Mavericks hope might finally start to dissipate. Eleven games into life in the pros, amazingly, Flagg is suddenly up to three GMs now that Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi have been named as Harrison’s co-interim successors.
We continue our coverage of the NBA’s latest bombshell development with nine newsy notes and insights — one for each month that the Mavericks stuck with Harrison after he gifted Luka to the Los Angeles Lakers — before Dallas announced his firing Tuesday:
🏀 Could Anthony Davis be made available to other teams between now and the Feb. 5 trade deadline?
