Klay Thompson is one of the greatest Golden State Warriors of all time. He deserves a jersey retirement, a statue outside the Chase Center, and free parking at San Francisco Boat Works for life. But by the summer of 2024, it was clear that Thompson’s career was on the downswing, and when Nico Harrison shuffled his roster to sign-and-trade for the Splash Brother, it helped lead to Harrison’s firing on Tuesday.
To be clear, Harrison was mainly fired because he traded five-time all-NBA first-team guard Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, less than a year after he led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals. Even typing these words out now, nine months later, it still seems unbelievable that the Mavericks would trade a 25-year-old superstar, a consensus top-5 player in the NBA, for 32-year-old Anthony “Street Clothes” Davis, former second-round pick Max Christie, and a single first-round pick four years in the future.
Harrison was booed, mocked, and subjected to chants of “Fire Nico!” at every Mavericks home game. The chants even spread to other sports, including Dallas Stars hockey games, SMU football games, FC Dallas soccer games, and even a Medieval Times tournament in Dallas.
This season, the Mavericks started putting portable stairs, normally only used for hockey games, near Harrison’s seats so he could escape angry fans. Davis is hurt again, the Mavericks are 3-8, and Cooper Flagg’s mom is retweeting fans who call Harrison “a stain on this franchise” — clearly, the GM had to go.
But focusing on solely the (admittedly disastrous) Doncic deal ignores some of Harrison’s other terrible decisions. The most costly one may have been the team’s decision to follow up their surprise Finals appearance in 2024 by betting big on Thompson. Harrison gave Thompson a three-year deal for $50M after a 2023-24 season where he lost his starting spot with the Warriors and showed a noticeable decline on defense, especially since his return from two devastating injuries.
Harrison and the Mavericks bet on Thompson becoming a key outside shooting threat alongside Doncic and Kyrie Irving and even promised him a starting spot. That was part of the reason former starter Derrick Jones, Jr. left in free agency for the Los Angeles Clippers, who he helped to the NBA’s No. 3 defensive rating. His replacement, Naji Marshall, was big downgrade on the defensive end and couldn’t make threes, going 27.5% from deep to DJJ’s 35.6%.
To afford Thompson, the Mavericks salary-dumped Tim Hardaway, Jr. on the Detroit Pistons, where he started 77 games and made 168 threes on 36.8% shooting last season. That’s not as good as Thompson’s 216 threes on 39.1% shooting, but Hardaway also played five more games and nearly 200 more minutes. Dallas also traded Josh Green in the Thompson sign-and-trade, a player who’s a decade younger and shot 39.1% on threes himself, albeit on half of Thompson’s volume.
The real problem was that Thompson simply can’t defend at nearly the same level anymore. His effort is unquestionable, but his body simply can’t keep up with younger and more athletic guards. And when Harrison swapped Doncic for Davis, the frontcourt-heavy Mavericks had to lean on Thompson even more for defense and ball handling, neither of which are strengths for him anymore.
It didn’t help that Harrison also inexplicably traded shooting guard Quentin Grimes, a solid defender, to the Philadelphia 76ers for forward Caleb Martin, and including the Sixers own second-round pick, which ended up at No. 35. Grimes is averaging 17.2 points for the Sixers this season while playing on the $8.7M qualifying offer.
Thompson would make more sense on a team that had Doncic running the offense, especially given his incredible ability to find open shooters behind the arc. Now he’s part of team that’s full of other injury-prone players on the wrong side of 30, with 18-year-old Cooper Flagg trying to carry the team. He’s lost his starting spot, his three-pointers aren’t falling, and he’s signed through 2027. Thompson has been a solid veteran presence for Dallas, especially during the tumultuous 2024-25 season, but he’s an expensive one.
Ultimately, Thompson’s decline of one of many risk factors Harrison ignored, along with Anthony Davis’ injury history (he’s played 14 games for the Mavericks since the trade), Kyrie Irving’s injury history (likely out for the season), and Caleb Martin and Naji Marshall being Caleb Martin and Naji Marshall. The Doncic trade was a killer for Nico Harrison in Dallas, but the Klay Thompson sign-and-trade was another nail in his coffin.
