November 10, 2025 • 12 mins
On this episode of The Ben and Skin Show, Ben Rogers, Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray dive headfirst into the chaos surrounding the Dallas Mavericks’ disastrous start. From Dirk Nowitzki’s candid Amazon Prime comments to Tim McMahon’s bombshell prediction that Nico Harrison’s firing is a matter of when, not if, this conversation pulls no punches.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Now it's around the sports KTD tweets as all the sports.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Here is Derk Novisky from his Amazon Prime broadcast on
Friday night, uh with you know he was asking you
about the match so far. This is again after a
Map's loss on Friday night in Memphis.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Yeah, I feel bad for my mass fans. This has
been a disastrous start. There's a whole point guard and playmaking, position,
shot creating, there's a whole shop making. You know, you
need ab healthy, Lively, you need healthy and both of
those guys have already been.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Out for a while.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Gaffin smiths some games. So it's been just a disaster start.
They're actually on pace to have a record bad start.
On offense. They can't shoot the cam make place. It's
all kind of going side to side, east and west handoffs.
It's just nobody can make shots. It's been it's been
tough to watch.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
I mean, I guess my opinion on this is what
did he say that's wrong?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Nothing? I don't. I've just pulled it because it's Dirk.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw. I saw a lot of
commentary like, look, Dirk has turned on the MAVs and
I'm like, what I First of all, he started it
with he felt bad, like you know, we Ben and I.
You know you've probably seen it on social media. We launched,
you know, a long form interview series called Haymaker Presents
Day and it's with Dirk. And in that interview, Dirk
is talking about having to get used to not saying
(01:29):
we and us anymore because he's a national broadcaster, which,
by the way, I don't know y'all's opinion on this,
but my opinion on it is I just don't think
you have to worry about that stuff anymore. I've watched
Charles Barkley talk about his Phoenix Suns for twenty years,
so it doesn't strike me that way. But I get it.
You get old radio and sports TV consultants telling you, no,
(01:50):
you have to be objective and all this stuff. I
just don't think that's where the world is at on this.
I think there's not going to be a single person
watching that that's going to try to disassociate Dirt from
the Map only team he ever played for. There's a
statue of him, et cetera. But I thought like everything
he said was accurate and fair.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and look, he's just being honest and One of
the most troubling aspects of all of this was they
had an entire offseason to plan this thing differently, and
they this is what they chose to roll out with,
like this was their only way they could put a
competitive roster together. This is their plan, and you know
it's you immediately go back to the Luca trade, which
(02:29):
I think that's what everyone's doing there. You know, you're
looking at this terrible start for the Mavericks, how dysfunctional
it looks, how they just can't do anything offensively. And
then you're looking at going and this was your blueprint,
and it's like, you go back to that trade, and
that trade looks worse by the minute. And so I
think all that is convoluted, and it's just created this
uproar and it's created a huge, just national conversation as
(02:53):
if you know, Nico Harrison's job is hanging in the
balance and hanging on by a thread. I think in
the Nico conversation of fire, Nico is different than it was,
you know in June or February or March or whatever
you want to say. Is the type of people who
are talking about it now in the way in which
(03:15):
it's framed and having worked in this business as long
as we have, you know you can you can understand
how things are working. And when someone like Mark Stein
is talking about it a certain way and someone like
Tim McMahon is talking about it a certain way, those
guys don't go out there and just tell you what
(03:36):
their heart wants. Yeah, in the case of Mark Stein,
he's the most reporter of reporters you'll ever see ever.
And so if Mark mark Stein wrote a big piece
about it yesterday, and if you go and read it,
you know he's laying out all these details. And what
that is is that's a product of talking to people
that are plugged in. And so if he's talking about
(03:59):
it that that's different than writing an article about all
the MAVs fans want you to fire Nico. That's a
different article than the machinations of turning up the heat,
what it means where he is in the arena, all
the things that Stein wrote about whether or not Nico
gets removed from his duties or not. This is an
(04:19):
indication that the discussions are happening at a high level.
Otherwise they wouldn't be discussed by those people in the
terms in which they're being discussed, right, And the reality is,
this plan looks terrible, the trade looks terrible, their plan
of rolling out this roster, and you know, you've got
guys that are not healthy, but they're also guys who
are rarely healthy, and so it's like, that's the plan
(04:41):
you're planning to these guys that are always hurt to
be okay, And I think it's got everyone to the
point where they're like, Okay, this plan's not going to work.
But the guy who made the worst trade in the
history of humanity should probably not be the guy to
kind of guide the organization out of where they are.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
And I don't know where the lines fall. The one
thing I would say is that the Mavericks have not
made a big or Nico has not made a big
decision since that other than re signing Kyrie, right, because
I think extending Gafford and PJ. Washington Junior to the
contracts they extended them to, any GM in the world
(05:21):
would have done that. It's a complete no brainer. The
only big decision that's been made is all right, let's
extend Kyrie and Kyrie extended at a slightly lower value.
So I would argue even then, probably in each that move.
But the real interesting thing as you monitor all this
is has Nico been allowed to make another move? Another
(05:42):
big move? And you know it could just be coincidence,
It could be happenstance, but it could also be an
indication that ownership is looking at it going, all right,
how do we move forward in this where they know
the fan base is unhappy? Like that was never lost
on them. They realize that they're hearing it on every level.
They know that the next question is, all right, what
(06:02):
can we do differently? And how do we do it?
If they do want to make the change, which I
don't know that they do.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I have a hypothetical for your giant basketball brain, and
coming up in three minutes, I'm going to ask you
this question.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Ben and Skin Show ninety seven point one, the Eagle
nine inch Nails tickets all week long, be listening for
your chance to win. All right, we're talking about all
the national conversation about Nico Harrison. We have Tim McMahon
weighing in on it here in a second. But then
you had a basketball hypothetical.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Hypothetically, if the Mavericks decided, all right, this isn't going
to work, what we're trying to do and they decide
let's change this window around building around Cooper Flag. Would
there be a lot of interest in some of the pieces.
I'm not specifically asking you to trade anyone person. I'm
just saying, would there be a lot of interest out
there for some of the pieces that they have.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
So like, if a new GM comes in and wants
to yeah, I think Gafford and PJ. Washington Junior both
have a lot of trade value because of their age
and their very favorable contracts. If you wanted to trade now,
if you wouldn't trade any of your first round picks,
obviously you've got your first round pick this year, then
after that it's pretty questionable. I don't know. It's just
(07:09):
so hard because the kind of teams that would win
an Anthony Davis or Kyrie Irving are all dealing with
second apron issues. So that's why it's like, like these conversations,
they're very complicated because of the Collective Bargaining Agreement rules,
and it's very hard to make deals for high level play.
It would be like, you guys, remember when there was
all this talk, Hey, Lebron James might get traded and
(07:32):
there's like well, there's only one team in the league
that can trade for him, it's Lebron James. If you
have guy making over fifty million dollars a year, the
type of teams that would want him all have salary
cap issues. So it's it's all very very complicated and
tough to do this sort of stuff for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
So here's what happened on the Collectible I'm sorry, the
Hoop Collective podcast that Tim McMahon is on, And here's
what he said this morning that really I think has
gotten a lot of media attention.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
At this point. I believe it is a matter of when,
not if Nico Harrison will be fired, and there is
a very very strong likelihood that will be mid season.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Mid season now he talked about. To give that a
little added context, you know, maybe they turn it around
and go win a few games here while they're at
home over the next two or three weeks. They're at
home a ton. Yeah, but they're three and seven through
ten games, and they needed to keep their head above
water to even talk about Kyrie getting back and all that.
And meanwhile, Anthony Davis is hurt, and this is another
(08:35):
thing that I want to play for you guys, because
it's very interesting and skin You might have known some
of this stuff internally going on, but they were also
on the road when all this was going down. But
apparently Anthony Davis was wanting to play on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It's blown up in his face. It's blown up in
Patrick Dumont's face. After that Luca trade, Patrick Dumont, one
of his infamous quotes was in Nico, we trust. I'm
just telling you the trust is the greater. At this point,
Anthony Davis wanted to play Saturday in Washington, practice Thursday
(09:07):
doubtful than Sat Friday in Memphis. There was internal disagreement
about whether that was a good idea, and there was
a lot of opinions voiced in that. Ultimately they decided
to hold him out in Washington. We'll see if he
plays Monday against the Bucks. He's questionable again. One of
the opinions that was, I don't know if it was
(09:30):
a veto. I don't know how heavily this opinion weighed in.
But one of the opinions that was involved here was
Patrick Dumont's. Patrick Dumont went from blind faith and Nico
to now laying in on whether a star can come
back from injury. That's a pretty significant.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
See that's a problem, that's that's a huge problem. I
don't know if you guys remember this. I actually thought
Ad was going to play Saturday, like at the end
of the week. I was kind of intimating, I think
we'll see him this weekend. I would be shocked if
we didn't see him tonight. I really think that he's
going to play tonight. And I think, you know, even
(10:09):
going forward on the broadcast, we're planning on him playing tonight.
But you know, we've made changes in the broadcast before.
But you know, with the way that the schedule is
laid out, if they're to Tim's point, if they are
having these discussions and it's a matter of if, then
when you know, when you're front loaded with all these
home games at the beginning of the season, there's urgency
(10:33):
to get the building is dead. I don't know, if
you guys watched the Memphis game, the team played like
they were dead. They played with no energy. You're not
even ten games into the season at that point. Friday night,
and Max Christie's at the table after the game talking
about We're looking at each other and in the locker
room like what's happening to us. Why are we like this?
(10:53):
You know, it starts rotting from the inside out when
you're mired in negativity, and so when you're mired in
negative activity, your fans aren't engaged. Did you guys see
the sellout streak ended last week?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Now it was a fake sellout streak, but to Cuban's credit,
he did everything he could to keep it going. You
know what I'm saying. It was very important to him. Well,
it ended very unceremoniously, and so when all those things
start piling on top of each other, you start making
really big decisions. And if a guy is in a
position where he feels like it's inevitable that he's going
to be let go, it gets even weirder inside the organization.
(11:27):
You know what I'm saying, right, I just.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know, Anthony Davis, I know, is probably going to
feel like he needs to play to save Nico and
make that trade look better and help his buddy out.
I think you're right, And the whole world's talking about
him being Anthony day to day Davis and street clothes.
He's always fighting that he came back earlier last year
than he probably should have, and probably promptly got reinjured.
But Kyrie's a part of that too, right, Yeah, I
mean guys out there with calf injuries that then turn
(11:49):
into achilles injuries. It's been pretty common of late, and
so I like the idea of being careful with him,
but they may feel like there's no time to be careful.
He worked out like five minutes before tip on Saturday night,
like we were watching him work out on the on
the feed.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
So maybe we'll get into this a little bit later.
But coming up next, Christina, what is in the Cookie Jar?
We're going to take a look back into one of
the biggest music conspiracies of all time.
Now it's around the sports KTD tweets as all the sports.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ye.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Here is Derk Novisky from his Amazon Prime broadcast on
Friday night, uh with you know he was asking you
about the match so far. This is again after a
Map's loss on Friday night in Memphis.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Yeah, I feel bad for my mass fans. This has
been a disastrous start. There's a whole point guard and playmaking, position,
shot creating, there's a whole shop making. You know, you
need ab healthy, Lively, you need healthy and both of
those guys have already been.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Out for a while.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Gaffin smiths some games. So it's been just a disaster start.
They're actually on pace to have a record bad start.
On offense. They can't shoot the cam make place. It's
all kind of going side to side, east and west handoffs.
It's just nobody can make shots. It's been it's been
tough to watch.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
I mean, I guess my opinion on this is what
did he say that's wrong?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Nothing? I don't. I've just pulled it because it's Dirk.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw. I saw a lot of
commentary like, look, Dirk has turned on the MAVs and
I'm like, what I First of all, he started it
with he felt bad, like you know, we Ben and I.
You know you've probably seen it on social media. We launched,
you know, a long form interview series called Haymaker Presents
Day and it's with Dirk. And in that interview, Dirk
is talking about having to get used to not saying
(01:29):
we and us anymore because he's a national broadcaster, which,
by the way, I don't know y'all's opinion on this,
but my opinion on it is I just don't think
you have to worry about that stuff anymore. I've watched
Charles Barkley talk about his Phoenix Suns for twenty years,
so it doesn't strike me that way. But I get it.
You get old radio and sports TV consultants telling you, no,
(01:50):
you have to be objective and all this stuff. I
just don't think that's where the world is at on this.
I think there's not going to be a single person
watching that that's going to try to disassociate Dirt from
the Map only team he ever played for. There's a
statue of him, et cetera. But I thought like everything
he said was accurate and fair.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and look, he's just being honest and One of
the most troubling aspects of all of this was they
had an entire offseason to plan this thing differently, and
they this is what they chose to roll out with,
like this was their only way they could put a
competitive roster together. This is their plan, and you know
it's you immediately go back to the Luca trade, which
(02:29):
I think that's what everyone's doing there. You know, you're
looking at this terrible start for the Mavericks, how dysfunctional
it looks, how they just can't do anything offensively. And
then you're looking at going and this was your blueprint,
and it's like, you go back to that trade, and
that trade looks worse by the minute. And so I
think all that is convoluted, and it's just created this
uproar and it's created a huge, just national conversation as
(02:53):
if you know, Nico Harrison's job is hanging in the
balance and hanging on by a thread. I think in
the Nico conversation of fire, Nico is different than it was,
you know in June or February or March or whatever
you want to say. Is the type of people who
are talking about it now in the way in which
(03:15):
it's framed and having worked in this business as long
as we have, you know you can you can understand
how things are working. And when someone like Mark Stein
is talking about it a certain way and someone like
Tim McMahon is talking about it a certain way, those
guys don't go out there and just tell you what
(03:36):
their heart wants. Yeah, in the case of Mark Stein,
he's the most reporter of reporters you'll ever see ever.
And so if Mark mark Stein wrote a big piece
about it yesterday, and if you go and read it,
you know he's laying out all these details. And what
that is is that's a product of talking to people
that are plugged in. And so if he's talking about
(03:59):
it that that's different than writing an article about all
the MAVs fans want you to fire Nico. That's a
different article than the machinations of turning up the heat,
what it means where he is in the arena, all
the things that Stein wrote about whether or not Nico
gets removed from his duties or not. This is an
(04:19):
indication that the discussions are happening at a high level.
Otherwise they wouldn't be discussed by those people in the
terms in which they're being discussed, right, And the reality is,
this plan looks terrible, the trade looks terrible, their plan
of rolling out this roster, and you know, you've got
guys that are not healthy, but they're also guys who
are rarely healthy, and so it's like, that's the plan
(04:41):
you're planning to these guys that are always hurt to
be okay, And I think it's got everyone to the
point where they're like, Okay, this plan's not going to work.
But the guy who made the worst trade in the
history of humanity should probably not be the guy to
kind of guide the organization out of where they are.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
And I don't know where the lines fall. The one
thing I would say is that the Mavericks have not
made a big or Nico has not made a big
decision since that other than re signing Kyrie, right, because
I think extending Gafford and PJ. Washington Junior to the
contracts they extended them to, any GM in the world
(05:21):
would have done that. It's a complete no brainer. The
only big decision that's been made is all right, let's
extend Kyrie and Kyrie extended at a slightly lower value.
So I would argue even then, probably in each that move.
But the real interesting thing as you monitor all this
is has Nico been allowed to make another move? Another
(05:42):
big move? And you know it could just be coincidence,
It could be happenstance, but it could also be an
indication that ownership is looking at it going, all right,
how do we move forward in this where they know
the fan base is unhappy? Like that was never lost
on them. They realize that they're hearing it on every level.
They know that the next question is, all right, what
(06:02):
can we do differently? And how do we do it?
If they do want to make the change, which I
don't know that they do.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I have a hypothetical for your giant basketball brain, and
coming up in three minutes, I'm going to ask you
this question.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Ben and Skin Show ninety seven point one, the Eagle
nine inch Nails tickets all week long, be listening for
your chance to win. All right, we're talking about all
the national conversation about Nico Harrison. We have Tim McMahon
weighing in on it here in a second. But then
you had a basketball hypothetical.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Hypothetically, if the Mavericks decided, all right, this isn't going
to work, what we're trying to do and they decide
let's change this window around building around Cooper Flag. Would
there be a lot of interest in some of the pieces.
I'm not specifically asking you to trade anyone person. I'm
just saying, would there be a lot of interest out
there for some of the pieces that they have.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
So like, if a new GM comes in and wants
to yeah, I think Gafford and PJ. Washington Junior both
have a lot of trade value because of their age
and their very favorable contracts. If you wanted to trade now,
if you wouldn't trade any of your first round picks,
obviously you've got your first round pick this year, then
after that it's pretty questionable. I don't know. It's just
(07:09):
so hard because the kind of teams that would win
an Anthony Davis or Kyrie Irving are all dealing with
second apron issues. So that's why it's like, like these conversations,
they're very complicated because of the Collective Bargaining Agreement rules,
and it's very hard to make deals for high level play.
It would be like, you guys, remember when there was
all this talk, Hey, Lebron James might get traded and
(07:32):
there's like well, there's only one team in the league
that can trade for him, it's Lebron James. If you
have guy making over fifty million dollars a year, the
type of teams that would want him all have salary
cap issues. So it's it's all very very complicated and
tough to do this sort of stuff for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
So here's what happened on the Collectible I'm sorry, the
Hoop Collective podcast that Tim McMahon is on, And here's
what he said this morning that really I think has
gotten a lot of media attention.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
At this point. I believe it is a matter of when,
not if Nico Harrison will be fired, and there is
a very very strong likelihood that will be mid season.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Mid season now he talked about. To give that a
little added context, you know, maybe they turn it around
and go win a few games here while they're at
home over the next two or three weeks. They're at
home a ton. Yeah, but they're three and seven through
ten games, and they needed to keep their head above
water to even talk about Kyrie getting back and all that.
And meanwhile, Anthony Davis is hurt, and this is another
(08:35):
thing that I want to play for you guys, because
it's very interesting and skin You might have known some
of this stuff internally going on, but they were also
on the road when all this was going down. But
apparently Anthony Davis was wanting to play on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It's blown up in his face. It's blown up in
Patrick Dumont's face. After that Luca trade, Patrick Dumont, one
of his infamous quotes was in Nico, we trust. I'm
just telling you the trust is the greater. At this point,
Anthony Davis wanted to play Saturday in Washington, practice Thursday
(09:07):
doubtful than Sat Friday in Memphis. There was internal disagreement
about whether that was a good idea, and there was
a lot of opinions voiced in that. Ultimately they decided
to hold him out in Washington. We'll see if he
plays Monday against the Bucks. He's questionable again. One of
the opinions that was, I don't know if it was
(09:30):
a veto. I don't know how heavily this opinion weighed in.
But one of the opinions that was involved here was
Patrick Dumont's. Patrick Dumont went from blind faith and Nico
to now laying in on whether a star can come
back from injury. That's a pretty significant.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
See that's a problem, that's that's a huge problem. I
don't know if you guys remember this. I actually thought
Ad was going to play Saturday, like at the end
of the week. I was kind of intimating, I think
we'll see him this weekend. I would be shocked if
we didn't see him tonight. I really think that he's
going to play tonight. And I think, you know, even
(10:09):
going forward on the broadcast, we're planning on him playing tonight.
But you know, we've made changes in the broadcast before.
But you know, with the way that the schedule is
laid out, if they're to Tim's point, if they are
having these discussions and it's a matter of if, then
when you know, when you're front loaded with all these
home games at the beginning of the season, there's urgency
(10:33):
to get the building is dead. I don't know, if
you guys watched the Memphis game, the team played like
they were dead. They played with no energy. You're not
even ten games into the season at that point. Friday night,
and Max Christie's at the table after the game talking
about We're looking at each other and in the locker
room like what's happening to us. Why are we like this?
(10:53):
You know, it starts rotting from the inside out when
you're mired in negativity, and so when you're mired in
negative activity, your fans aren't engaged. Did you guys see
the sellout streak ended last week?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Now it was a fake sellout streak, but to Cuban's credit,
he did everything he could to keep it going. You
know what I'm saying. It was very important to him. Well,
it ended very unceremoniously, and so when all those things
start piling on top of each other, you start making
really big decisions. And if a guy is in a
position where he feels like it's inevitable that he's going
to be let go, it gets even weirder inside the organization.
(11:27):
You know what I'm saying, right, I just.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You know, Anthony Davis, I know, is probably going to
feel like he needs to play to save Nico and
make that trade look better and help his buddy out.
I think you're right, And the whole world's talking about
him being Anthony day to day Davis and street clothes.
He's always fighting that he came back earlier last year
than he probably should have, and probably promptly got reinjured.
But Kyrie's a part of that too, right, Yeah, I
mean guys out there with calf injuries that then turn
(11:49):
into achilles injuries. It's been pretty common of late, and
so I like the idea of being careful with him,
but they may feel like there's no time to be careful.
He worked out like five minutes before tip on Saturday night,
like we were watching him work out on the on
the feed.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
So maybe we'll get into this a little bit later.
But coming up next, Christina, what is in the Cookie Jar?
We're going to take a look back into one of
the biggest music conspiracies of all time.
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