Don't Hate Nico Harrison, Hate the Adelson Family
- Fred
- Apr 23
- 5 min read
Hate is a strong word, but there's a lot of passionate feelings pulsating through the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area.
Nico Harrison is the General Manager of the Dallas Mavericks who famously traded team cornerstone Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers and got Anthony Davis and magic beans in return.
That's not just me saying that, former owner Mark Cuban said the same exact thing. Every injury at the end of the season made the Mavs Fans angry. Every loss made the Mavs Fans angrier. When the Mavs fell out of the Top 6 guaranteed playoff spots and into the play-in game slots, the Mavs Fans were furious. When the Lakers secured the 3 Seed in the West, the Mavs Fans were like hornets having their nest swatted.
Through each failed challenge, Nico Harrison sat stoically and repeated the mantra 'Defense Wins Championships' over and over. After the Mavs were eliminated from the playoffs, in only 2 games, Harrison smugly met the press and declared "I think I've done a really good job here."
How, in good conscious, could Nico Harrison utter such a blatant lie?
Because his reality is not the fans' reality.
I am going to make this as personal as personal gets. At your job, is your boss happy with you? If your boss could fire you, would he/she do it?
Nico Harrison has a boss. His boss' name is Patrick Dumont (of the Adelson Family) and he is the current owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Patrick Dumont's Family made their billions in the casino business. Did they make their money gauging public opinion? No. They made their money in a game where, if you're smart, the house always wins.
The Dallas Mavericks were in line to pay Luka Doncic a 5-year, $345 million Supermax Contract. (That's almost $70 million a year). Someone in the Mavericks' organization thought that was a bad bet. Was it Patrick Dumont? Was it Nico Harrison?
Or was it both?
It is entirely feasible that Dumont told Nico Harrison to do anything to win a NBA Championship....but don't go deep into the Luxury Tax. Nico Harrison could have (correctly) replied, "if we sign Luka, we will possibly be paying the Luxury Tax every year for the next 5 years." Both men could have simply agreed that the bet wasn't worth the payout.
This is from Beacon of Speech on February 6, 2025:
"So let me get this straight. Nico Harrison thinks the oft-injured, 32-year-old Kyrie Irving, the oft-injured 31-year-old Anthony Davis (who has averaged 50 games a year over the past 5 years), and the oft-injured 34-year-old Klay Thompson (who missed 2.5 years straight due to injury in 2020) is going to win him a championship?
If I was in Vegas, I would say a smarter bet would be that all three players would be INJURED when the Mavericks crash out of the playoffs in the first round in a few months."
My entire opposition to the trade wasn't because of any loyalty to Doncic, but because building a team around oft-injured Kyrie Irving was foolish. Almost predictably, Irving blew out his knee a month after the trade.
From Beacon of Speech on March 15, 2025:
"Kyrie blew out his ACL and is done for the rest of this season, and probably most of next season. There is a very real possibility that Irving won't play another basketball game until he is 34 years old."
So in 5 years, Doncic will be 31 and Davis, Irving, and Thompson will all be hobbled or out of the league.
If this debacle was ALL on Nico Harrison, it's a simple fix. Season ends, the owner fires Harrison for being an idiot, end of story.
But that's not what happened.
No boss holds on to an (unrelated) employee that has catastrophically crippled the business.
On some level, Patrick Dumont is at least partially to blame. Let's say Dumont hypothetically fired Harrison last week. Harrison would be pissed that he only did what his boss told him, and would be sure to let Dallas Reporters know that as he walked out the door where the buck stopped. Then Dumont would be screwed because instead of the fans hating Harrison, they would hate HIM and stop buying tickets.
The circumstantial evidence points to Dumont as being MOSTLY to blame.
It's much better for jerk writers, like Fred at Beacon of Speech, to hate the hired hand (Harrison), than to hate the owner (Dumont).
I know you're shocked to hear this, but we do get some push-back here at BOS. Some people think that this website sucks. At the end of the day, that criticism falls back on me. If I was a billionaire and could spend a couple of million to hire someone to get all the hate for my bad decisions, I would do that in a second.
If I was too busy counting my billions of dollars and delegated the day to day running of my website to someone else, then said "just make sure I keep making money." In that scenario, I would also keep that employee around as a scapegoat for my poor decisions. I would also keep that employee around to take the heat when things went south.
And, to circle back to the beginning of the article, Harrison's insistence that he's doing a good job means his boss is telling him he's doing a good job. Rumors are, privately, Dumont is shocked at how angry the fans are.
I cannot stress this enough. If this is all Nico Harrison's fault, the easiest thing in the world to do is to fire him.
Dumont's definition of a good job is very different than the fans' definition of a good job.
True Dallas Mavericks fans are terrified that they're heading back to the 1990's.
Editor's Note: Part of me is upset that Mark Cuban sold the Dallas Mavericks, but I'll tell you what, he did a very good job of running the Mavericks. He also did a good job of buying low and selling high.
Full disclosure, he is the only billionaire that I follow on social media: Bluesky
He is the only billionaire I would consider voting for in the 2028 Election.
Mark Cuban said he would have traded Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis....and 4 first round draft picks. And of all the people in Dallas, Mark Cuban was the most right. As a franchise, you can trade anyone, as long as you get a proper return on investment. Anthony Davis is a damn good player, but the ages don't match. More draft picks would have compensated for the difference.
Instead of shopping Doncic around for the best deal, Harrison took what he could get under the guise of secrecy.
The question that no one has asked is: Why the secrecy?
And the answer points back to the owner.
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