The Dallas Mavericks fired general manager Nico Harrison on Tuesday at a closed-door meeting, first reported by NBA insider Marc Stein and confirmed by ESPN’s Shams Charania and Tim MacMahon. The decision
comes four years into his tenure as Mavericks head of basketball operations and immediately begins a search for a new general manager.
The firing comes after an unprecedented call from fans and media to let Harrison go after he made the most controversial trade in recent sports history when he traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers late Feb. 1. Critics blasted all angles of the trade — trading him at all, the lack of an appropriate return for a generational superstar, and the disorganized press conference that followed a day later where he didn’t seem to have an answer to the most basic questions about the move.
Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont had become more and more involved in team decision making in recent days and ESPN reported that the negativity around the team had begun to wear on ownership. Dumont was seen in the arena Monday ahead of the Mavericks’ game against the Milwaukee Bucks for the first time since the season opener and heard ‘Fire Nico’ chants throughout the game, including during P.J. Washington free throws that could’ve tied the game.
It became clear to Dumont that this decision could not wait until the offseason; the damage had been done and a change was needed immediately.
The calls for Harrison to be fired were somewhat unprecedented in recent sports memory. Fans of multiple teams have wanted their general manager fired in the past, but it never spread like the calls for Harrison’s job did. Chants erupted at SMU basketball games, Texas Rangers baseball games, Dallas Cowboys football games, and Dallas Stars hockey games. The movement had spread to all DFW sports and it was unavoidable to anyone at the games, even those that weren’t Mavericks fans.
The mid-season firing ends a four-year tenure for Harrison, who’d built up a good reputation for himself pre-Dončić trade after making roster moves that put the team in the NBA Finals in 2024, the first time for the organization since 2011. His trades for Washington, Daniel Gafford, and the drafting of Dereck Lively II gave Mavericks fans hope that this group could put a second banner in the American Airlines Center.
But just as quickly as he built that trust, it was gone. Along with trading Dončić, Harrison also traded a very good younger player in Quentin Grimes and a valuable second round pick for an injured Caleb Martin, which on its own would’ve been a stunningly bad trade had he not made the move he did days earlier.
In the end, Harrison’s tenure with the Mavericks ends as Dallas sits at 3-8 on the season, the team’s two best players are nursing serious injuries, and the NBA Finals look about as far away as they possibly could. Harrison said at that now-infamous Feb. 2 press conference that “time will tell” if he was right.
Time has spoken. He was not.
