Harrison was finally fired nine months after the stupidest trade in history. Four years of operation left the Mavericks with too much pain.

"I have three years left on my contract, and I intend to fulfill this contract. When we win the championship, your minds will change. It will take some time to see how effective the transaction will be."

In April 2025, Nico Harrison continued to be tough in the interview. At that time, the Mavericks had just staggered through 82 regular season games and barely squeezed into the play-offs. Less than three days later, the Mavericks lost to the Grizzlies in the playoffs and missed the playoffs.

Harrison was fired seven months later, just nine months after Harrison completed the stupidest deal in history.

9 months is enough to break a seemingly solid alliance. In the past, Mavericks boss Dumont obeyed Harrison and believed in every decision he made. But when the team was in a quagmire with no hope in sight, Dumont's patience with Harrison ran out, and the dam of trust burst.

Whether he deserves it or he becomes the scapegoat, Harrison has been at the helm of the Mavericks for four years and has left Mavericks fans with too much pain. The glory of reaching the finals in 2024 and the luck of selecting Flagg with the No. 1 pick in 2025 are not enough to heal the wounds. The aftermath of the stupidest trade in history will continue for several years. "The excesses far outweigh the merits" is the fairest evaluation of Harrison.

Harrison was relatively well-known on the court back then. If he hadn't suffered injuries one after another in the last two years of high school, he would have had the opportunity to join a pretty good school. Harrison averaged 9.7 points per game as a freshman at West Point and later transferred to Montana State University. As a senior, Harrison helped the team reach the "Crazy Three" and was elected to the school's Hall of Fame in 2015.

After graduating from university, Harrison received an overseas league contract and played professional basketball for six years in Belgium, Japan, France, and Lebanon. After retiring, Harrison planned to go into medicine. He first went to Johnson & Johnson to be responsible for drug sales, and planned to take the postgraduate entrance examination while working. By chance, Harrison successfully applied for a job at Nike to be responsible for player docking. In 19 years, he established relationships with superstars such as Kobe Bryant and was promoted to vice president of basketball operations.

The NBA is often a league that focuses on relationships and connections, such as Leon Rose’s CAA agency in the Knicks. Industry insiders like Harrison who have a lot of star resources in their hands are very popular with NBA teams, and many teams have tried to hire Harrison. In the summer of 2021, Cuban successfully persuaded Harrison to transform into the team's general manager.

As a rookie in this industry, most of Harrison's operations before the 2023-24 season have no highlights, and some can even be called "failures." For example, Porzingis was sold to the Wizards at a low price. Even though Porzingis was "brittle", Harrison treated him as a negative asset and raised questions from many people in the industry. Including the three-year, $17 million contract he gave McGee, and the long-term contracts he gave to veterans such as Bullock, Hardaway Jr., and Kleiber, the ratings were all very low.

The biggest failure of Harrison's career in the first two years was undoubtedly losing Brunson for nothing. They clearly had the opportunity to renew Brunson in advance at a relatively low price but missed the opportunity. Brunson left as a free agent to join the Knicks.

Harrison likes to emphasize the "delayed effect" of the transaction, largely because of the reversal in Irving's reputation for the transaction. After the Mavericks traded for Irving, they missed the playoffs that season, and Harrison was criticized. The next season, Irving's performance improved and helped the Mavericks reach the finals. Harrison's bargain hunting of Irving became another masterstroke.

But in the 2023-24 season, when the Mavericks reach the finals, two mid-term transactions are also key. The Mavericks introduced Gafford and Washington, and built a lineup around Doncic and Irving that emphasizes defense and interior offense, reduces reliance on three-pointers, and is both offensive and defensive. It's hard to say how much this change in philosophy has to do with Harrison. Anyway, when the US media dug up afterwards, they discovered that Dennis Lindsay, a consultant to the Mavericks and former Jazz general manager, has a huge say in the operations of the Mavericks' basketball affairs.

In the 2024 offseason, Lindsay was poached by the Pistons as an executive to assist new general manager Langdon. Subsequently, the Pistons, who had only won 14 games the previous season, rose quickly and won 44 games to return to the playoffs. They started this season with 9 wins and 2 losses, ranking first in the Eastern Conference. Is this just a coincidence? not necessarily.

After losing the strongest support in his brain trust, Harrison acted on his own initiative and planned to purge Doncic without telling everyone except his boss Dumont, completing the most controversial deal in history. In addition, Harrison also traded Grimes for Caleb Martin.

Harrison built a tall but top-heavy team through a series of operations. He boasted that "defense wins championships." When the Mavericks encountered serious injury problems, he said, "When healthy, we have the ability to win championships. Don't judge my operation based on this year's injuries."

This season, the Mavericks have the second-lowest offensive efficiency, with a record of only 3 wins and 8 losses. They have not played even one game with a complete lineup. Irving will have to wait until the end of 2025 at the earliest to return. Davis only played 5 games before he was knocked down by injury again. What's heartbreaking is that Doncic performed strongly with the Lakers, Grimes averaged 17.2 points and 4.4 assists per game with the 76ers, and the Mavericks were struggling with the lack of players on the back line.

Draymond Green, who has a personal relationship with Harrison, believes that Harrison is just a scapegoat for the Lone Ranger's poor record. He blames Harrison and says that injuries are the reason for the Lone Ranger's current misery. This sounds true at first glance, but are so many injuries to the Lone Ranger just natural disasters?

The Mavericks have made major adjustments to their team's medical team for three consecutive years. After Kyle Smith, the team's doctor who had been with the team for nearly 20 years, was purged by Harrison, the Mavericks fell into an injury cycle. Davis' physical weakness is well known to the world. Playing 76 games in the 2023-24 season was just an accident. He was injured when he was sent to the Mavericks in the middle of the 2024-25 season.

The most outrageous thing is the Martin deal. When the Mavericks traded for Martin, Martin had an injury to his hip and had problems with his physical examination. But the Mavericks asked for an extra second-round pick and insisted on completing the deal.. The result? Martin, who has an annual salary of more than 9 million U.S. dollars, has played in 23 games in total since coming to Dallas, scoring 33 goals in 88 shots, with a accuracy of 37.5%. He made 5 of 21 three-pointers, with a accuracy of 23.8%.

Ironically, Kyle Smith and his team won the Best Training Team of the Year award in the Knicks last season because the Knicks' main players were fully healthy and finished the playoffs. Considering the way Thibodeau uses people, you can imagine how difficult this is.

When the angry sounds of "Fire Nico" continued to echo over the American Airlines Center, when the Mavericks were in free fall into the abyss, and when the Mavericks players began to show dissatisfaction and frustration because they were passively trapped in an unfair situation, Dumont was finally driven by reality and surging public opinion to make that inevitable decision.

But time will not go back, and what is lost cannot be regained. Even if Flagg grows into a superstar in the future, even if the Mavericks mess up a year and choose another supernova to partner with Flagg in 2026, the scar left by Dallas' loss of Doncic is destined to never heal.

Where does the Lone Ranger go?

According to the latest news, Du Meng has had frequent exchanges with Cuban, who was previously excluded from the decision-making circle, in recent months, and the Mavericks intend to bring back Lindsay, who Cuban has always supported.

If I had known this, why would I have to...