Nico Harrison and the Mavericks front office think this is how to control the narrative

Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison and CEO Rick Welts invited select members of the Dallas sports media apparatus to a curated “roundtable” with a Q+A session on Tuesday, where cameras were not permitted.

Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison and CEO Rick Welts hosted a last-minute, curated media “roundtable” on Tuesday, with only select media members invited — the first time Harrison has spoken on the record about the Luka Dončić trade in 72 days.

The invite, which, to no one’s surprise, Mavs Moneyball did not receive, said that “no cameras or audio recording” would be allowed in the session and that “a transcript of the discussion will be provided.” We took a brief look at someone else’s invite to confirm the exact language because after the thing was over, Dallas Morning News reporter Mike Curtis confirmed that audio recording actually was permitted once they were in the room.

Pardon us for not holding our breath for the team to release the transcript they said they would. There are some initial reports already out there from some of those who were allowed into the sit-down, so we will report on the reports like the rest of the b- and c-list cretins, because we know our place.

Some of the major takeaways include the following, from Harrison:

“There’s no regrets on the trade. Part of my job is to do the best thing for the Mavericks, not only today, but also in the future, and some of the decisions I’m going to make are going to be unpopular. That’s my job, and I have to stand by it.”

When asked about the fanbase’s calls for his job, he trotted out this oldie but goodie:

“Well, the beauty of Dallas is it is a passionate fan base. For us to reach our goals, we need that fan base. And to be honest with you, every trade I’ve made since I’ve been here has not been regarded as a good trade, and so sometimes it takes time. When I traded for Kyrie, it was met with a lot of skepticism and it was graded as a terrible trade and you didn’t see it right away, but eventually everyone agreed that that was a great trade. When I traded for [Gafford] and [Washington] again, it was like, ‘Oh, he gave up way too much. These guys aren’t going to help us.’ Now that trade, you saw the evidence a lot sooner. So I think a lot of times trades take a little bit of time. But our philosophy, like I said, going forward is defense wins championships and we’re built on defense. And this trade cements us for that.”

And, speaking of the “defense wins championships” line, which Harrison brought up 72 days ago, the last time anyone in the media heard from him regarding the dead-of-night deal to ship Dončić and his generational talent to Los Angeles, in an ill-fated pre-game presser before being dismantled by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Harrison reportedly leaned hard on that crutch throughout the proceedings on Tuesday.

According to DLLS’ Tim Cato, who was one of media members smiled upon with access, Harrison repeated the line no fewer than four times in his justifications of the trade and his professed confidence in its results. “Defense wins championships” was certainly something that a lot of people said about several different sports, and the degree to which that remains true in today’s NBA is debatable at best. But even if it remains true, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon rightly noted in his report on the state media roundtable that in the last 20 games of the 2023-24 season, the Mavericks, with Dončić as the head of the snake, were the NBA’s top-ranked defense. Their 109.2 points per 100 possessions in the five-game loss to the Boston Celtics in what Mavericks Governor Patrick Dumont later called the “Championship Games” would have been good for the second-best mark in the league last year.

A lack of defensive ability didn’t lose the Mavericks the NBA Finals (that’s the term you were searching for, Patrick), yet this front office saw fit to dismantle the team anyway, using “defense wins championships” as the headline reason. This year, though part of the season came before the trade and another part came with severe losses due to injury, Dallas holds the 20th-best defensive rating in the NBA (115.0).

Here’s another interesting little nugget. When asked if he sees himself in Dallas in the long-term, Harrison reportedly said:

“Yea, I have three years left on my contract. I see myself finishing it out. In terms of Dallas, this is our home. My family, they’re going to finish school here. This is where we live, so this is where I’m living.”

The man really thinks he has mastered the non-answer answer, but the “I see myself finishing it out” puts it plainly. A large-looming implication in that sentence is that he doesn’t see himself going further than that with this team. Whether Dumont or majority owner Miriam Adelson want him there even that long will be living rent free in the heads of Mavs fans everywhere until that contract is up or until he is disappeared as unceremoniously as he disappeared Dončić, the team’s erstwhile Golden Boy.

Does Harrison think he and the rest of the front office interlopers may have, just maybe, underestimated what Dončić meant to the fan base and the effect that trading him would have on the team’s relationship with the fans going forward?

“I don’t think there was an underestimation, but clearly we knew afterwards, his impact on the fan base.”

Again, Harrison going with “clearly we knew afterwards” shoots holes in the rest of his argument here, because the grand implication is that if this is what showed you after the fact, you clearly didn’t know beforehand. He’s just awful at this. His answer continues:

“I do think our intended roster we put on the floor would’ve subsided a lot of the fan base’s vitriol, you know, because they would be out there winning. Obviously, with a lot of the injuries we weren’t able to do that, and that increased and brought a lot of people that may not have even had an opinion. So that’s unfortunate.

What’s even more unfortunate is that the injuries this team battled through this year to its two most important players after the Dončić trade were incredibly predictable. To describe 33-year-old Kyrie Irving or 32-year-old Anthony Davis as “oft injured” over the course of their respective careers would be putting it mildly.

When he spouts lines like these, it becomes easy to see why he ran and hid from the spotlight in the wake of The Trade That Is And Should Not Be. He pokes holes in his own arguments or leaves an open goal for easily verifiable rebuttal every time he opens his mouth. He can’t defend the indefensible. He makes it clear that his own distaste for Dončić, not some precognition into a future where Dončić has flamed out in two years due to his habits off the court, is what led him to push initiate the self-destruct sequence.

I want to get to one more here, because it speaks more to both Harrison’s underlying motivation and his cold-blooded aloofness throughout this process.

Harrison has no obligation to the fans in his mind. He does not see you or consider you, the paying customer, as part of his calculus in deciding to let go of a franchise cornerstone and possibly a top-five basketballer in the history of the universe. You will be swayed, he thinks, into submission when his thought process proves out and this team begins winning. You will all be brought over to his way of thinking when his subtle genius proves out once again.

Damn you and the green dollars you pay for your tickets and jerseys with. Doesn’t that make you want to follow this team even more closely next year, the Age-33 season for Davis and Age-34 season for Irving, who will miss most of 2025-26 after having his knee put back together?