Luka Donc’s trade surprised me, but just because I still didn’t know Nico Harrison.
In his apparently ever useful effort to explain it, Harrison has given an incriminatory number or conferences. It is totally out of contact, showing a cognitive dissonance of psychology text level on how “Kyrie, Klay, PJ, Anthony Davis and Lively … That is a championship caliber team.”
But through all noise and annoying appointments, journalists are beginning to rebuild an image of whom Harrison really. And he is starting to make all this meaning.
In the last of several articles that offer a notebook, Tim Macmahon from ESPN brought us behind Harrison’s scene in front of his own medical staff, and how he fired Director of Health and Performance of Mavericks of Vegle Mavery Smith through a video call while visiting his sick mother. The renovated staff never gellified with Doncic or its people, and that can be one of the many reasons why Harrison decided to cut the bait in the largest fish he has ever seen.
But I don’t see it that way. I see a megalómano who saw the enemies everywhere, one who was so convinced of his own correction that a world was built where Donc’s trade was right. And if that is the one who really is Harrison, and each appointment paints that image more clearly, it was him Always Going to exchange Luka. Because the stars are real power figures in any NBA franchise. And Luka, as a star with which Harrison did not have a previously collaborative relationship of his time in Nike, was Always It will be a threat to your authority.
Someone did not need to have as much influence as Luka for Harrison to see them as a threat. Take Casey Smith, for example. The lifelong coach was a pillar of the organization of the Dallas Mavericks, which should make it one of Harrison’s most important allies. Instead, Harrison saw some with the potential to undermine their decisions and provide an alternative point of view, so he eliminated it. According to a source that Macmahon cited: “He was 100 percent threatened by him.” Another source told ESPN that his shot was “too negative.”
Until now, he did not have a reading about Harrison as a person, since he did not know how a real person made such a bone decision. Where was the disgusted voice? Where was the only guy in the room that said “Uh, maybe we don’t exchange Luka Doncic”? Where was the logic?
Fundamentally, NBA teams make rational decisions. It may disagree with their reasons, but the groups that manage the companies of billions of dollars do not simply do things “just because”. Sometimes it is a massive risk of a backwarded team in a corner, but it is never completely Inexplicable. That is why I could not understand this trade, and why so many have resorted to the conspiracy to explain it.
But it is increasingly clear that aluminum paper hats are not necessary, and this trade was carried out by the organization; It was made by an irrational actor, Harrison, who had been so convinced so much that Hey He was in charge of making irrational decisions to strengthen his position.
When Mark Cuban was around, Harrison could have had some supervision. But when the new property group entered, it is possible that Harrison painted them a pink image of how perfectly he was handling everything and how little help needed them. Cuban’s story about the last year since the team says to say that he had control of basketball operations for not even Beeing told Luka’s trade until after it was too late to stop him because “in Nico we trust”, certifiably both
And it is strange to say it now, but to be fair with the new group owned by the Mavericks, the Dumont family, Harrison was legitimately doing a good job; He had the exchanges of Irving, PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford to point out, as well as the Draft selection of Drack Lively. But it seems to have approved those successes to eliminate anyone who can disagree with him.
Perhaps the internal sanctuary of the basketball operations of Mavericks Becophical Circle of Yes-Men, or perhaps Harrison had just created a fantasy world where the opinions of the ethers no longer mattered … or were in a position to be sacrificed. Whatever the situation, Harrison seems to have been looking for the power of exclusive decision making, and saw a single person who could resist it: Doncic himself.
And here is Harrison’s greatest crime: do not exchange Luka, not to try to defend him, but what he led to everything: to think that it was about him, only him, and that eliminating those who could question their primacy was the only way to worship in the world. That was what destroyed Dallas.
Because it is Nico Harrison. These are the players, Doncic among them. They are the only ones who decide if the Mavericks win or lose, and NBA executives are at their best when everyone forgets them. There is a reason for your most common GM work: they are managers, In charge of putting everyone in a position to succeed and let them do exactly that. Once Harrison made the Mavericks about Nico, it was already.