April 21, 2025 • 10 mins
The Mavs GM finally speaks on EVERYTHING that went wrong.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Let's talk about Niko Harrison, because the media met with
him as they do after the season ends, and today
was exit day for the Mavericks and their media discussion
and the first thing that was asked of him was
should you be fired?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Here's the question and answer from Nico. Why shouldn't you
be fired?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Well, one, I think I've done a really good job
here and I don't think I can be judged by
the injuries this year. You have to judge from totality
from beginning to end, and so I think I have
a really good working relationship with Patrick. I thank you
add in Rick. The leadership that we have is really elite.
(00:49):
And you'll see next year when our team comes back,
we're going to be competing for a championship.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And we're going to draft Cooper Flag hopefully.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So all right, that's the first one, and I've got
an answer for that that if he were at Liberty
to speak, I think the answer and if he were
to be fired, and there's why I don't think he'll
be fired because unless the stipulation of his contract, let's say,
the Mavericks ownership said you made a dumb trade, we're
(01:18):
out of here, And unless they made him sign some
kind of a non disclosure agreement where he can't talk
about it. The first things I would say when I
got out, when I answered the questions why were you fired?
I did exactly what ownership wanted me to do. There
is zero chance that Nico Harrison went rogue. Zero chance.
(01:39):
If the owner of the Mavericks would have gotten a
phone call at one o'clock in the morning and said, Hey,
why did you just trade Luca and he didn't know
about it, he would have picked up the phone and say,
don't bother coming in for the rest of the week.
You're done, and we're going to find a way to
not pay you either because it's the dumbest thing you've
ever done in your life that was orchestrated by ownership,
and because ownership is trying to be as friendly as
(02:01):
possible to the Dallas media are the Dallas fans, so
that they still buy stuff from them until they can
either get the casino done in Dallas in however many
years that is, this is an ownership thing. This would
be like, This would be like the Spurs trading Tim
Duncan or Monogenobly or now Wimby. This would be like
(02:24):
the Lakers trading Kobe Bryant back in the day in
the middle of the night for players that aren't as
good as Kobe Bryant and older than Kobe Bryant. This
doesn't happen unless ownership says, get it done. And the
reason it was done secretly and stealth in the middle
of the night is so other teams wouldn't figure it
out and so that the rest of the league wouldn't
(02:44):
leak it. And now Luca is wondering where he's going,
and the fans are like, why are we trading Luca?
If you're a Mavericks fan. This is not on Nico Harrison.
But here's something else he said today that is really
is showing some desperation right now from him, because well, that's, uh,
that's the situation he's in.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
When you were kicking the idea of this trade around
and you had various scenarios planned in your head to
the anger and outrage from the fan base, has that
exceeded what you were kind of planning for.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, good question. I did know that Luca was important
to the to the fan base, I didn't quite know
it to the to what level. But really, the way
we looked at it is you know, if you're putting
on the if you're putting a team on the floor
that's Kyrie, Clay PJ, Anthony Davis, UH and Lively. We
(03:39):
filled that's a championship caliber team and we would have
been winning at a high level and that would have
quieted some of the outrage. Uh And so unfortunately we
weren't able to do that. So it just continued to
you know, go on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Okay, look around your arena.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
If they're not wearing a Dirk Novinsky jersey, maybe two
percent still have one, or a Kyrie jersey, another two
percent they're all wearing Luca jerseys. Just based just go
to your spreadsheet. How many Luca jerseys that we sold
this year. That should tell you the popularity of Luka Daunca.
And that is even include those that are in the
(04:18):
that don't ever go to games, that are buying it
at whatever sporting good store they can get to. That
was a bad answer. It was again the answer should
have been we felt like this was the best trade
for our franchise moving forward. And the last part was okay,
when we get Lively in Washington and all our guys
together We're gonna be fine and we're going to be
(04:39):
a championship team again. Nothing like this ever happens unless
management says it's okay, and I mean ownership if own,
there's no way ownership is signing off on this deal
without actually going to Nico Harrison. And I said this
the last week and two weeks ago and all the
way back to February when it happened. There was a
(05:03):
meeting between Nico Harrison and this Adilson family that now
runs the Avericks, and this was we don't want to
pay somebody three hundred and forty five million dollars who
has a history of injury and may be hurt. We
don't want just playoff players. We don't want him to
play forty games a year and then be there for
the playoffs. We need somebody that we can sell night
(05:24):
in and night out. Let's move on from this guy
if we can. And the only way that you can
do that and not get everybody else involved where you
could have gotten a better deal for Luca is to
go to your buddy Rob Polinka and say this is
on the hush hush. If this Lenk's it's never going
to happen. Do you want to be Do you want
(05:45):
to be the guy that gets Luca and let's talk
about let's start talking about a deal and maybe before
the All Star break we can make it happen. Yes,
Nico Harrison is the scapegoat. Nico Harrison said some things
that don't make sense, but he's covering israel An because
his boss told him to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So a couple of things.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
First Off, I applaud the guy whoever it was, for
asking the question, but I would, at least if I'm
Nico Harrison in that situation, to answer the first question,
I would go back at that guy and say, well,
first off, I don't I don't worry about whether you
think I should be fired or not. It's up to management,
if so and so whoever, if the if.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The ownership thinks I should go, I should.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Go, should go. But I don't answer to you.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
But the one thing he has not said, because I
don't think he can say it, is that this trade
was as much me as it was ownership.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I was given a charge move off of Luca.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Now I got as good as I could get without
the world knowing about it before it happened.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Yeah, And the second part is where he should have answered.
The right way is instead of saying, well, I knew
that Luca was important, but not as much, he should
have said something along the lines of I knew that
people and the fan base weren't going to be happy
with this move because of how much they loved Luca,
but we were doing this because this is what we thought.
(07:10):
And I'll reiterate for Nico what he's been saying. We
thought that we wanted to focus more on defense wins championships,
and that's.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The that's a cop out.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Defense wins championship, but you better be able to score
to win, to win games.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
It may be a cop out, but at least that's
the better answer of well, I didn't realize it was
going to be to the magnitude that it was. Again,
because you go back of ninety five of the jerseys
in there were Luca jerseys, the other five percent or Dirk.
And when Dirk freaking Novinsky, the guy who has a
statue outside is on board and is like, hey, that's
(07:46):
the guy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Maybe you should pay attention. Well read the room.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
But again, the ownership group is not The ownership group
is being greedy and the Adelsons want a casino, And
I don't know what they're with thinking when they bought
the team in the first place from Mark Cuban, Because
it's against the law to have a casino in Texas
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It's an archaic rule that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Should be gone away a long time ago. But apparently,
and I don't know why. I don't know why Dan
Patrick has a bigger say in this than Greg Abbott
does or any other member of the House up there
in Austin. But everybody assumes that when Dan Patrick retires
that the next Lieutenant governor is going to be gambling
(08:30):
friendly he may or may not be, or she may
or not be, and that we'll have casinos at racetracks,
will re energize the horse racing industry in Texas, and
we'll have casino gambling. And when that happens, hopefully sometime
before twenty thirty, but maybe not, then we'll start the
seed development of casinos like we have in Oklahoma and
in Arkansas and in Louisiana and everywhere else. There's a
(08:52):
Texas license plate in the parking lot. Because we all
know that even though you're against it, some of you are,
you all go to the other state to do whatever
you you do, and you go to Vegas three times
a year to participate in their economy as well. Plus
there's lobbyists here that are preventing it. But until they
can get mega dollars, they want you to come to
the game and not only spend two hundred bucks for
(09:13):
a ticket. They want you to drop another thousand gambling
on the game while you're watching the game. That's what
they want, and then they'll pay somebody three hundred and
fifty million dollars or even four hundred and fifty million
dollars because they know the exit to that arena is
going to go through the casino and your libel to
stop by and try to recoup the losses that you
had during the game.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
This isn't rocket science.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
They want a casino and as soon as they can
put one at every seat in the new arena, then
they'll start paying players if they can get by and
they can get into the second round of the playoffs
and be profitable until that happens, that's a win. And
Maverick Phant, I'm sorry, but Nico Harrison's not your problem.
The ownership group is what's decided this, and there's nothing
wrong with that. I have no issue whatsoever with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Them doing that.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I wish they would come out and say it, because
I think Nico Harrison's taking too much of the blame.
But then again, they need the support of the Dallas
community to be irrelevant along with the Rangers and the
Stars and the Cowboys and everybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Again, if you have gambling problems, called one eight hundred gambler.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And you will have plenty of people that probably need
that hotline number. When the Mavericks get their casino in
their new building in twenty fifty seven or whatever, it is,
all right, well, you got more coming up.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's the Andy Everette Show. On the ticket
Let's talk about Niko Harrison, because the media met with
him as they do after the season ends, and today
was exit day for the Mavericks and their media discussion
and the first thing that was asked of him was
should you be fired?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Here's the question and answer from Nico. Why shouldn't you
be fired?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Well, one, I think I've done a really good job
here and I don't think I can be judged by
the injuries this year. You have to judge from totality
from beginning to end, and so I think I have
a really good working relationship with Patrick. I thank you
add in Rick. The leadership that we have is really elite.
(00:49):
And you'll see next year when our team comes back,
we're going to be competing for a championship.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And we're going to draft Cooper Flag hopefully.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So all right, that's the first one, and I've got
an answer for that that if he were at Liberty
to speak, I think the answer and if he were
to be fired, and there's why I don't think he'll
be fired because unless the stipulation of his contract, let's say,
the Mavericks ownership said you made a dumb trade, we're
(01:18):
out of here, And unless they made him sign some
kind of a non disclosure agreement where he can't talk
about it. The first things I would say when I
got out, when I answered the questions why were you fired?
I did exactly what ownership wanted me to do. There
is zero chance that Nico Harrison went rogue. Zero chance.
(01:39):
If the owner of the Mavericks would have gotten a
phone call at one o'clock in the morning and said, Hey,
why did you just trade Luca and he didn't know
about it, he would have picked up the phone and say,
don't bother coming in for the rest of the week.
You're done, and we're going to find a way to
not pay you either because it's the dumbest thing you've
ever done in your life that was orchestrated by ownership,
and because ownership is trying to be as friendly as
(02:01):
possible to the Dallas media are the Dallas fans, so
that they still buy stuff from them until they can
either get the casino done in Dallas in however many
years that is, this is an ownership thing. This would
be like, This would be like the Spurs trading Tim
Duncan or Monogenobly or now Wimby. This would be like
(02:24):
the Lakers trading Kobe Bryant back in the day in
the middle of the night for players that aren't as
good as Kobe Bryant and older than Kobe Bryant. This
doesn't happen unless ownership says, get it done. And the
reason it was done secretly and stealth in the middle
of the night is so other teams wouldn't figure it
out and so that the rest of the league wouldn't
(02:44):
leak it. And now Luca is wondering where he's going,
and the fans are like, why are we trading Luca?
If you're a Mavericks fan. This is not on Nico Harrison.
But here's something else he said today that is really
is showing some desperation right now from him, because well, that's, uh,
that's the situation he's in.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
When you were kicking the idea of this trade around
and you had various scenarios planned in your head to
the anger and outrage from the fan base, has that
exceeded what you were kind of planning for.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, good question. I did know that Luca was important
to the to the fan base, I didn't quite know
it to the to what level. But really, the way
we looked at it is you know, if you're putting
on the if you're putting a team on the floor
that's Kyrie, Clay PJ, Anthony Davis, UH and Lively. We
(03:39):
filled that's a championship caliber team and we would have
been winning at a high level and that would have
quieted some of the outrage. Uh And so unfortunately we
weren't able to do that. So it just continued to
you know, go on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Okay, look around your arena.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
If they're not wearing a Dirk Novinsky jersey, maybe two
percent still have one, or a Kyrie jersey, another two
percent they're all wearing Luca jerseys. Just based just go
to your spreadsheet. How many Luca jerseys that we sold
this year. That should tell you the popularity of Luka Daunca.
And that is even include those that are in the
(04:18):
that don't ever go to games, that are buying it
at whatever sporting good store they can get to. That
was a bad answer. It was again the answer should
have been we felt like this was the best trade
for our franchise moving forward. And the last part was okay,
when we get Lively in Washington and all our guys
together We're gonna be fine and we're going to be
(04:39):
a championship team again. Nothing like this ever happens unless
management says it's okay, and I mean ownership if own,
there's no way ownership is signing off on this deal
without actually going to Nico Harrison. And I said this
the last week and two weeks ago and all the
way back to February when it happened. There was a
(05:03):
meeting between Nico Harrison and this Adilson family that now
runs the Avericks, and this was we don't want to
pay somebody three hundred and forty five million dollars who
has a history of injury and may be hurt. We
don't want just playoff players. We don't want him to
play forty games a year and then be there for
the playoffs. We need somebody that we can sell night
(05:24):
in and night out. Let's move on from this guy
if we can. And the only way that you can
do that and not get everybody else involved where you
could have gotten a better deal for Luca is to
go to your buddy Rob Polinka and say this is
on the hush hush. If this Lenk's it's never going
to happen. Do you want to be Do you want
(05:45):
to be the guy that gets Luca and let's talk
about let's start talking about a deal and maybe before
the All Star break we can make it happen. Yes,
Nico Harrison is the scapegoat. Nico Harrison said some things
that don't make sense, but he's covering israel An because
his boss told him to do it.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So a couple of things.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
First Off, I applaud the guy whoever it was, for
asking the question, but I would, at least if I'm
Nico Harrison in that situation, to answer the first question,
I would go back at that guy and say, well,
first off, I don't I don't worry about whether you
think I should be fired or not. It's up to management,
if so and so whoever, if the if.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The ownership thinks I should go, I should.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Go, should go. But I don't answer to you.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
But the one thing he has not said, because I
don't think he can say it, is that this trade
was as much me as it was ownership.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
I was given a charge move off of Luca.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Now I got as good as I could get without
the world knowing about it before it happened.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Yeah, And the second part is where he should have answered.
The right way is instead of saying, well, I knew
that Luca was important, but not as much, he should
have said something along the lines of I knew that
people and the fan base weren't going to be happy
with this move because of how much they loved Luca,
but we were doing this because this is what we thought.
(07:10):
And I'll reiterate for Nico what he's been saying. We
thought that we wanted to focus more on defense wins championships,
and that's.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The that's a cop out.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Defense wins championship, but you better be able to score
to win, to win games.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
It may be a cop out, but at least that's
the better answer of well, I didn't realize it was
going to be to the magnitude that it was. Again,
because you go back of ninety five of the jerseys
in there were Luca jerseys, the other five percent or Dirk.
And when Dirk freaking Novinsky, the guy who has a
statue outside is on board and is like, hey, that's
(07:46):
the guy.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Maybe you should pay attention. Well read the room.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
But again, the ownership group is not The ownership group
is being greedy and the Adelsons want a casino, And
I don't know what they're with thinking when they bought
the team in the first place from Mark Cuban, Because
it's against the law to have a casino in Texas
right now.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It's an archaic rule that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Should be gone away a long time ago. But apparently,
and I don't know why. I don't know why Dan
Patrick has a bigger say in this than Greg Abbott
does or any other member of the House up there
in Austin. But everybody assumes that when Dan Patrick retires
that the next Lieutenant governor is going to be gambling
(08:30):
friendly he may or may not be, or she may
or not be, and that we'll have casinos at racetracks,
will re energize the horse racing industry in Texas, and
we'll have casino gambling. And when that happens, hopefully sometime
before twenty thirty, but maybe not, then we'll start the
seed development of casinos like we have in Oklahoma and
in Arkansas and in Louisiana and everywhere else. There's a
(08:52):
Texas license plate in the parking lot. Because we all
know that even though you're against it, some of you are,
you all go to the other state to do whatever
you you do, and you go to Vegas three times
a year to participate in their economy as well. Plus
there's lobbyists here that are preventing it. But until they
can get mega dollars, they want you to come to
the game and not only spend two hundred bucks for
(09:13):
a ticket. They want you to drop another thousand gambling
on the game while you're watching the game. That's what
they want, and then they'll pay somebody three hundred and
fifty million dollars or even four hundred and fifty million
dollars because they know the exit to that arena is
going to go through the casino and your libel to
stop by and try to recoup the losses that you
had during the game.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
This isn't rocket science.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
They want a casino and as soon as they can
put one at every seat in the new arena, then
they'll start paying players if they can get by and
they can get into the second round of the playoffs
and be profitable until that happens, that's a win. And
Maverick Phant, I'm sorry, but Nico Harrison's not your problem.
The ownership group is what's decided this, and there's nothing
wrong with that. I have no issue whatsoever with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Them doing that.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I wish they would come out and say it, because
I think Nico Harrison's taking too much of the blame.
But then again, they need the support of the Dallas
community to be irrelevant along with the Rangers and the
Stars and the Cowboys and everybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Again, if you have gambling problems, called one eight hundred gambler.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And you will have plenty of people that probably need
that hotline number. When the Mavericks get their casino in
their new building in twenty fifty seven or whatever, it is,
all right, well, you got more coming up.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's the Andy Everette Show. On the ticket
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