During a closed-door meeting on April 15th with a small collection of Dallas-based media members, Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison doubled down on his controversial decision to trade away guard Luka Dončić.
“Yeah, 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,” he said. “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.”
Several times during the session, Harrison highlighted the importance of defense when building a championship team.
“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,” he explained. “When you look at this trade, we targeted AD (Anthony Davis) with our philosophy of defense wins championships. We wanted a two-way player to lead our team, and that was Anthony Davis… We got what we wanted.”
“You can’t hold a press conference two-and-a-half months after and nobody can record it. WEAK.”@ColinCowherd blasts Nico Harrison as the fallout of the Luka Dončić trade continues to be felt across the NBA pic.twitter.com/WZXUMFnAYA
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) April 16, 2025
Nico Harrison added that the adversity that the Mavs have faced this season will put them on the path to an eventual championship.
“Personally, I’m optimistic. When you look at the team, a couple times we’ve had three games in a row [where] we had eight players, and only seven and a half could actually play,” he stated. “So, I’m super optimistic about that, and I believe in the trade I made, I believe that that’s going to bring us a championship-caliber team going forward.”
Harrison went on to say that he’s not yet done retooling this roster and expects it to be a busy summer for the Mavericks organization.
“I think if you look at the biggest thing, [it] is going to be the roster,” he explained. “I kind of gave you guys the blueprint that’s going to be our summer, is really going to be focused on we’re going to have to make up a little bit of Kyrie’s production. So that’s going to be kind of the goal going forward. Not one person is going to be able to make up Kyrie’s production. Then also, Kyrie is going to come back, so it’s going to be a group effort. Some of those guys we already have on the team. Then, that will be kind of our blueprint as we look for the draft and then free agency.”
Nico Harrison on the Luka Doncic trade:
“Some of those decisions are going to be unpopular maybe to [Dirk Nowitzki] and maybe to the fans, but my obligation is to the Dallas Mavericks.”
(via @tim_cato) pic.twitter.com/5DXuUu3MSG
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) April 15, 2025
Harrison added that he thought the Mavs would have been good enough to make the trade more palatable.
“I was really hoping that, with the championship-caliber team that we’re going to put on the floor, that a lot of the vitriol would have subsided, but that didn’t happen due to a lot of the injuries,” he said.
Even though Dallas Mavericks fans have been chanting “Fire Nico” incessantly since the trade was completed, Harrison knows that winning will resolve these issues.
“I do believe that once we win, the fans will come back,” he explained.
