The Dallas Mavericks are dead, and Nico Harrison killed them

The Mavericks’ epic downfall is heartbreaking but amazing to watch

The Dallas Mavericks made a Cinderella run to the 2024 NBA Finals last season thanks to the brilliance of Luka Doncic and some sharp mid-season trades by lead executive Nico Harrison to build the team around him. Dallas entered the playoffs as the No. 5 seed, but pulled three straight upsets without home court advantage to win the Western Conference for the second time in franchise history.

The Mavs seemed set up for a long run of contention with Doncic at 25 years old. Only nine months later, the entire franchise has cratered to historic depths, and the situation just keeps getting more bleak.

The Mavericks made arguably the worst trade in NBA history one month ago when they sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in the middle of the night. As the Lakers have ascended to the No. 2 seed in the West in the wake of the trade, the Mavericks have collapsed in epic fashion in a way that’s equal parts amazing and heartbreaking to watch.

On Monday night, Kyrie Irving fell to the floor while driving to the hoop against the Sacramento Kings and immediately grabbed his right knee. Watch the video here. Irving hobbled back onto the floor and sank two free throws with the hopes of staying in the game while Dallas fans feared the worst. On Tuesday morning, the worst case scenario was confirmed: Irving has a torn ACL, and will miss the rest of the season and most of next season as he recovers.

The Kings blew out the Mavericks, 122-98, following Irving’s injury. During the third quarter, Mavs fans walked out of the arena in unison in a sign of their frustration.

Irving’s injury is the final blow for the Mavericks’ monumental downfall this season. Dallas needed everything to go right after the Doncic trade to save face, and instead anything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The Luka Doncic trade was always a historic disaster for the Mavericks

Luka Doncic has been named First-Team All-NBA in five straight seasons entering this year at age-25. He’s a generational talent, and arguably the second-best future building block in the NBA behind Victor Wembanyama. Doncic had lifted the Mavericks to undeniable team success since being acquired in a brilliant draft day trade in 2018, carrying the franchise to the 2022 Western Conference Finals and 2024 NBA Finals, but behind the scenes Dallas’ top decision-makers had grown to resent their superstar.

Why did Dallas trade Doncic? Here’s the blow-by-blow of what we know:

• The Mavericks believed Doncic refused to get serious about his conditioning. The star guard routinely “played his way into shape” during the season, which led to nagging injuries. Doncic has never been a good defensive player, and Harrison and Co. thought they couldn’t win a championship until their best player was buying in defensively.
• Dallas thought Doncic’s love for drinking beer and smoking hookah would age accelerate his aging.
• Doncic was up for a super-max extension this summer worth $345 million over five years, and they didn’t trust him to stay healthy and be worth the money over the length of the deal.

You could argue some of those criticisms of Doncic were fair, but it’s pretty remarkable he was still able to consistently play at a superstar level despite all of that. Trading Doncic would have been a wild decision no matter how Dallas did it, but the fact they put together a trade in secret without canvassing the league or extracting the Lakers for every asset possible made it even more indefensible.

Dallas traded Doncic, Maxi Kleber, and Markieff Morris to the Lakers for Anthony Davis, the Lakers’ 2029 first-round pick, and Max Christie. How did the Mavericks not come away with the Lakers’ 2031 first-round pick in this deal? How did they not demand Austin Reaves as part of the package?

Well, Lakers GM Rob Pelinka reportedly convinced Harrison that his concerns about Doncic were valid, and that the Lakers had no way of knowing if Doncic would re-sign when he hit free agency in the summer of 2026 with the super-max option off the table following the trade. The Mavs reportedly only went to one other team with a Doncic offer, asking the Minnesota Timberwolves if they would deal Anthony Edwards for him.

This was immediately deemed one of the worst trades in NBA history for Mavericks before Davis made his debut. It’s only gotten so much worse from there.

Anthony Davis got hurt in his first game for the Mavericks, and hasn’t returned

Anthony Davis was off to an amazing start in his debut with the Mavericks. The soon-to-be 32-year-old forward had 26 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists, and three blocks in 31 minutes before exiting with a left abductor injury. He still hasn’t come back.

Davis has a long history of injury problems, and he’s six years older than Doncic. At his best, Davis is one of the 10 best players in the NBA, but he’s not exactly a picture of reliability. It felt like the Mavs got the full AD experience in just his first game.

Davis was expected to return at some point this season, but at this point, the rest of the Mavericks roster has fallen apart with him. Now it sounds like Davis might sit out the rest of the season:

Who could have expected Anthony Davis would be a big risk when the Mavs made this trade? Other than everyone.

The Mavs’ rotation has been devastated by injuries after the Doncic trade

Dallas has had a ridiculous amount of the injuries to their key pieces since trading Doncic. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

• Big man Daniel Gafford went down with a knee sprain on Feb. 11
• Big man Dereck Lively II suffered an ankle fracture on Jan. 22
• Forward Caleb Martin is out with a hip strain
• Forward P.J. Washington suffered an ankle sprain on March 4
• Guard Jaden Hardy went down with an ankle sprain on March 3

Add in the injury to Davis and now the devastating injury to Irving, and the Mavericks have legitimately lost their six best players to injury after the Luka trade.

Mavericks fans are going through hell

Mavs fans revolted in the wake of the Doncic trade. They brought blue caskets to the arena, brought “Fire Nico” signs to games, and voiced their frustration online after every opportunity.

There was immense pressure on the Mavericks to go on a deep playoff run this season after the Doncic trade. Instead, their whole team fell apart. After the Irving news, the posts from Mavericks fans and national NBA writers reached a fever pitch:

Reminder that the Mavs made the Luka trade to ‘win now’

After the Doncic trade, Harrison said he believed the deal gave the Mavericks a better opportunity to win in the short-term. It was a bold statement considering Doncic had led the Mavs within three wins of an NBA championship just last season. The idea was that the Irving-Davis pairing would have a real window to contend, that Dallas’ defense would be far better with Davis in the lineup, and Dallas still had the assets to go get another key piece like say Kevin Durant in the summer.

Well, year one of this window is a complete bust. The Mavericks had no other on-ball creators other than Irving in the wake of the Doncic trade, and they rode him into the ground:

It’s hard to be surprised that Davis suffered a long injury, because Davis’ career has been defined partially by injuries, and now he’s reaching his mid-30s. The fact that Washington, Lively, and Gafford all went down too is just bad luck. We didn’t even mention how bad the Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin trade looks — as we predicted at the time — as Martin has been unable to play because of injury while Grimes just scored 44 points for the 76ers.

By the way, the Mavericks don’t own any of their first-round picks between 2027-2030. The time for Dallas to win is now, and the roster is crumbling. The Doncic trade looked terrible at first blush, and it’s only looking worse in the one month since it happened.