The Mavericks' Window Had Been Small
When Nico Harrison made the dumbest trade in NBA history, and the second-dumbest trade in sports history (nothing will ever be dumber than the Mookie Betts trade), he claimed he did it because he felt the Mavs had a two-to-three year championship window. What he seemingly didn't realize at the time was that they had already been in such a window, and the Luka Dončić trade helped slam it shut.
There are lots of types of trades a GM can make. But the type that puts a team's future in the greatest peril is when you trade draft picks for role players. And that's precisely what Harrison did starting in the summer of 2023. A few months prior, in February of 2023, he had traded two first rounders and a second rounder for Kyrie Irving, and at that point, a window began to form, with a nucleus of Luka and Kyrie. Kyrie was about to turn 31 at the time, a full seven years older than Luka, and as such, any championship window was irrevocably NOW for the Mavericks. Which Harrison had to know, because he was skating on thin ice even then considering that Jalen Brunson – who he let walk in free agency for nothing – had become a superstar.
From here, the Mavs traded four first-round picks for role players:
- July 12, 2023: Traded a 2025 second-round pick and 2030 second-round pick to the Boston Celtics, and Reggie Bullock and a 2030 first-round pick to the Spurs in a multi-team trade where they acquired Grant Williams, a 2025 secound-round pick from San Antonio, and a 2030 second-round pick from San Antonio
- Feb. 8, 2024: Traded Grant Williams, Seth Curry, and a 2027 first round pick to the Charlotte Hornets for PJ Washington and two second-round picks
- Feb. 8, 2024: Traded a 2028 first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder for a 2024 first-round pick
- Feb. 8, 2024: Traded Richaun Holmes and the 2024 first-round pick (that they had just got from OKC) to the Washington Wizards for Daniel Gafford
Collectively, these trades worked, in the sense that the result at the end of the season was a trip to the NBA Finals. But Harrison seemed to believe he had created a lengthy championship window in assembling this team, when in reality he had reduced their window by mortgaging away a great deal of the team's future, all in support of a two-person core with a seven-year gap in their ages. That is really shaky ground to be on before you acknowledge that neither plays awesome defense.
Harrison then reduced the window even further when he helped orchestrate a six-team trade just a couple weeks after the NBA Finals. The relevant details for Dallas:
- July 6, 2024: Traded Josh Green and a 2031 second-round pick for Klay Thompson and a 2025 second-round pick
The press release sounded great, I'm sure. "Mavericks acquire four-time champion Klay Thompson," and it was where Thompson wanted to be, which is important, because he had spent the prior two years being a whiny bitch about his situation in Golden State. There was just one problem – Klay Thompson was completely washed, and the Mavs had given up a valuable role player who was 11 years younger to get him. Thompson was supposed to come in and help boost Dallas' offense while not hurting its defense. He absolutely did not do that, and as a result that small championship window closed even further. And that's when Harrison got desperate.
Having Thompson meant two of their three-highest paid players were in their 30's, and when they traded Dončić (in his age-25 season at the time) and then Quentin Grimes (24) for Anthony Davis (31) and Caleb Martin (29), now all three were, which effectively reduced their window down to almost nothing. When Davis and Irving predictably got hurt days/months later, it shut permanently.
Lucking into Cooper Flagg should have changed the team's fortunes, but Harrison was still high on his own supply as Michael Pina put it, and handed an injured Kyrie Irving an extension no other team in the NBA was going to give him, and then used it as an excuse to not sign a starting-caliber point guard in free agency, and that led us to now.
There were a million things the Mavs could have done differently over the past few years (starting with just paying Brunson to stay), but now that they're here, they may be even worse off having Flagg than they would have been not having him. Because now, they have to try to creatively dig themselves out of a hole where they have three rapidly aging players on contracts no one will want while also having almost no first-round picks. As a result, there is very little chance that the Mavericks can be great during Cooper Flagg's rookie contract, and may end up losing a potential generational superstar for nothing if Flagg sours on the Mavericks organization (he doesn't seem thrilled currently).
This is the worst-case scenario for the Mavericks, and it all could have been avoided. Yes, the Celtics beat the Mavericks in five games in the 2024 NBA Finals, but that Mavs team could have been successful again. The team clearly was set up to play Oklahoma City well, and OKC thought so too. The whole reason they went out and got Isaiah Hartenstein was specifically to battle the Gafford-Derrick Lively Jr. hydra. It's really a shame we'll never get to watch that playoff series, but in the end, I'm OK with it as an NBA fan. Dallas kind of sucks as a city, and we already have to pay attention to the two good basketball cities in Texas in Houston and San Antonio, so it's nice to no longer have to care about the third. Luka Dončić gets his Hollywood chapter like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Shaquille O'Neal, and several others before him, and as much as I hate the Los Angeles Lakers, that is a more compelling narrative for the league as a whole. In the meantime, I'll be rooting for Flagg to walk as a free agent. If that comes to pass, the Dončić trade may end up causing a decade of misery or more for the Mavericks organization, and that's exactly what they deserve for allowing Harrison to torpedo their team.