Harrison said attracting free agents to Dallas is ‘the least of my concerns.’ Here’s why he’s wrong

Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison’s end-of-year press conference just keeps on giving.

Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison was asked, toward the end of his exit interview press conference on Monday, whether he had any concerns about his ability to attract free agents to the team in the extremely high-profile wake of calamity he’s been swimming through since trading Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis.

Will players this offseason think twice about coming to Dallas after Harrison’s cold-blooded late-night trade that seemingly came from out of nowhere? Would they hesitate to join the Mavericks after anonymous team sources trashed Dončić on the way out, and after team Governor Patrick Dumont implied that the five-time All-NBA first-team honoree wanted to vacation his way through his time with the team?

Here was Harrison’s answer on Monday. Despite being visibly uncomfortable for most of the press conference, he was pretty direct in his response to this question.

“Not at all,” Harrison said shortly before scurrying to the nearest exit only to find himself without a key card to open the locked door in the back of the room. “When I first got this job, I was told that the Dallas Mavericks struggled to get free agents, and one of the things I said is that, ‘We’re going to get free agents.’ It’s not just about me — we have hall-of-famer Jason Kidd. We have a bunch of amazing players. You know, Kyrie Irving — people want to play with him. So I think we have a lot that’s in our favor, so I don’t worry about getting free agents. That’s the least of my concerns.”

He also said at various points throughout the presser that he feels the core of a championship-contending roster is already in place in Dallas and that big moves in free agency wouldn’t be required. Rounding out the team behind Irving, who will be on the shelf until at least January 2026 with a recently rebuilt ACL, and Davis would require just a pinch of help from the upcoming NBA Draft and a dash or two from the free agency shaker.

“We’re coming back with what we feel is a championship caliber team,” Harrison said in his answer to the final question of the end-of-year press conference. “And we’ll use the draft, we’ll use free agency to add to that.”

Let’s set aside whether Harrison is living in fantasy land with the candy cane walls closing in on him, with that generous assessment of the room on fire all around him. A couple of recent player polls conducted by The Athletic would seem to suggest that Dallas is not going to be the wildly popular free-agent destination that Harrison thinks he’s cultivated.

The first, released Tuesday, was an anonymous poll of 113 NBA players, asking each of them two questions: which organization is the best, and which is the worst? The Mavericks landed on the “worst” list, gathering 4.4% of the overall vote. That means that five players of the 113 polled thought that Dallas is currently the worst franchise to play for in the NBA. Only the Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings and Philadelphia 76ers got more votes for “worst” franchise in the league than your Mavericks.

And we thought, coming into the 2024-25 season, that the Mavericks, with Dončić as the main attraction for incoming free agents, had turned a corner. They signed their first true marquee free agent in Klay Thompson in June 2024, and even if the experiment wasn’t an astounding success on the court in his first of three years, it was a sign that good, big-name players wanted to come to Dallas to play with Luka, whose playmaking abilities give his role players more open shots than anyone in the league.

But if five or so players calling the Mavericks the worst organization in the NBA seems like a flimsy premise, Wednesday provided more fuel to the dumpster fire. In a separate piece from The Athletic where 150 NBA players were asked their opinion of the Luka-for-AD trade, the criticism of the Mavericks’ front office was as loud as it was consistent.

One player reportedly called the deal “one of the worst basketball decisions I’ve ever seen.” Another called it “bad for (Mavs) business. Bad work. Good for the Lakers though.” Some of the most common responses included the words “crazy” and “shocking.”

But these are all opinions we’ve heard since the wee small hours of Feb. 2. They basically match the universal response to the trade. They could have come from any fan Here’s one of the more damning responses vis a vis Harrison’s complete lack of concern surrounding bringing free agents to Dallas after dealing Dončić in the dead of the night.

“I think that s— was idiotic, but I don’t think it was a bad trade. I just think that the way they did it and everything about it was idiotic. I think them shopping the franchise [face] of their organization — for a lot of players who already feel that this is a business [like], ‘the motherf—ers don’t care about you.’ I think it sets an example, like, ‘All right, why should I give a f— about this team if this is how they’re going [to treat me]? I came in here and I was All-NBA, like, five times in six seasons, an MVP candidate, and don’t even get told about none of this.’ I’m like, ‘This organization doesn’t give a f— about me. Why would I give a f— about any organization?’”

How could any free agent targeted by the Mavericks trust anything team management tells them after the way the front office treated Dončić, a singular, generational talent? Harrison is exactly the kind of motherfucker who doesn’t care about the people that work for him or with him.

The Athletic found some players who took more of a “wait-and-see” tack to the trade and even some others who somehow thought the deal would eventually yield good results for both sides. Lots of NBA players like to get really high, too, though.

Then there was this set of responses, which, readers are led to believe came from some of Dončić’s new Laker teammates.

One of them said, “I think it’s phenomenal decision. So smart. Wise. I’m a Nico Harrison fan.” Another said, “Thank you. I love it.”

Mavs Moneyball respects this troll-job if for no other reason than it proves that Harrison has become a punchline across the NBA. Now ask yourself this. All other things being equal, would you choose to work for someone who is a walking joke in your industry? Or someone adept enough to avoid becoming the butt of every workplace joke?