As soon as Nico Harrison’s sudden and overdue ousting hit the news circuit Tuesday morning, the entire basketball world exploded. The noise had reached a fever pitch after Dallas’ heartbreaking home loss to the Bucks on Monday, a night that featured Cooper Flagg’s breakout game amid controversial “Fire Nico” chants. Action on the Harrsion front seemed inevitable, and the Mavericks finally pulled the trigger on Tuesday morning. In the wake of the official announcement, everyone in the basketball space
rushed to contribute an opinion.
Though some delusional and ragebaiting pundits claimed that Harrison’s vision never got a chance to get off the ground due to injuries, the overwhelming sentiment was that the Mavericks made the correct, necessary decision. Things should never have gotten to this point, and it’s objectively insane to have let the general manager make this deal and reverse course in just nine months, but what’s done is done. The Band-Aid has been ripped off, and now the festering wound must be attended to. Where does Dallas begin? Firing Nico Harrison was always seen as the bare minimum. Now, the organization has whole lot of difficult, painstaking work to do.
Shortly after Harrison was officially relieved of his duties, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon published a report on the Mavericks’ rationale behind the move and what could be on the horizon for Dumont and the new-look front office. Dumont’s first order business was promoting assistant general managers Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi to interim co-General Manager roles. Finley, a franchise icon and longtime front office staple, and Riccardi, a rising star who some see as a candidate for the actual position, are stable choices to steady the ship while the search for a new GM gets underway. It makes sense to elevate both of them, from both a practical and public relations standpoint.
But the other big takeaway from MacMahon’s report is that Dumont has apparently drawn former Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban back into his circle of trust. Cuban, who infamously sold the team to a poisonous ownership group, relinquished control of his beloved franchise with the naive idea that he would still be in charge of basketball operations. Though Cuban never got this in writing, he believed the Adelson family would honor their word when they told him he would be allowed to make decisions for the franchise. Of course, that did not happen, and Cuban was slowly pushed out of any kind of meaningful role with the team altogether. The relationship between Cuban and Dumont had reportedly disintegrated, so MacMahon’s report that the two are now in regular contact is significant.
In the piece, MacMahon reveals that Cuban “has mapped out a plan for the front office’s future” centered around wooing former Harrison advisor Dennis Lindsey away from his position with the Detroit Pistons. And look, by all accounts, Lindsey did great work during his time in Dallas. If you believe the reporting, he had a large hand in many of Harrison’s most successful moves. If the Mavericks decide that Lindsey is a realistic candidate, and if Cuban can help to acquire him, that’s great.
But forgive me if I’m a little apprehensive about “Mark Cuban’s master plan” to save the franchise. The fact that Dumont is bringing Cuban back into the fold is more than a little alarming. After all, this entire disaster started when Cuban sold the team to dubious, non-basketball people. And it’s not like Cuban’s track record up to that point inspired a ton of confidence. Many fans actually wanted Cuban to sell the team due to a laundry list of bad decision making and public comments as Governor.
It would make sense if Dumont were leaning on Cuban in desperation right now. Nico Harrison had to go, but Dumont doesn’t know the first thing about hiring a new general manager. Hell, he doesn’t know the first thing about basketball, let alone making important basketball decisions. He’s proved this time and time again, from signing off on the Luka trade, to calling the NBA Finals “the championship games,” to his ridiculous post-trade comments that both trashed Doncic on the way out while supporting Harrison’s “vision.” Cuban is like the devil on his shoulder, whispering that he can fix everything if he gets authority to exert his influence again. And with so much pressure from fans, even in the wake of Harrison’s ousting, it stands to reason that Dumont would turn to Cuban as a familiar, experienced advisor.
But Mark Cuban has proven to be incapable of running a serious basketball team in the modern age. From breaking up the 2011 title team, to iteration after iteration of “Plan Powder,” to his disregard for the NBA draft, to the Haralabos debacle, to the Jalen Brunson saga, etc, the man was continually out of his depth as a basketball decision maker. He continually put his foot in his mouth while discussing the team, alienating players around the league and losing trust from the fanbase. And, most importantly, he presided over a rampant workplace culture of sexual harassment, domestic violence, and misogyny that continually gets swept under the rug. He is completely unfit for a prominent position in an NBA front office.
Cuban’s recent public appearances have done little to dispel the notion that he’s changed or learned anything. This is the man who got on a podcast before the season and asserted that the Mavericks will be good if Dereck Lively II can hit threes. And in a way, I guess he was right. This is also the man who spent the entire offseason warring with journalist Pablo Torre in defense of his billionaire buddy Steve Ballmer in the Kawhi Leonard/Aspiration scandal. Remember when Cuban said that banning Donald Sterling from the league and forcing him to sell was a “slippery slope?”
If Dumont is just using Cuban as an experienced voice in a difficult transitionary time, that’s fine. But I worry the reckoning with his massive mistake may lead Dumont to reason that he erred in banishing Cuban from the top of the organization. Cuban has been telling folks that if he were allowed to retain control of basketball operations, the Luka trade would have never happened. And while that may be true, no one else other than Dumont and the Adelson family would have signed off on that. Cuban doesn’t get any points for having the wisdom to not do the dumbest thing of all time.
The best way forward for Dumont and the Mavericks organization is to start fresh. Bring completely new voices into this thing at all levels of leadership. There needs to be a complete cultural and ideological reset for this franchise in conjunction with building around star rookie Cooper Flagg. Though the results and reasoning for it were anything but, pushing Cuban out of a prominent role with the team was the only smart thing Dumont ever did. Let’s hope he doesn’t decide to ruin that, too.
