Nico Harrison let Mavericks' injury-saving secret slip right through his fingertips

Friday night's contest versus the Memphis Grizzlies was a stark contrast compared to previous games for the Dallas Mavericks, as the Mavericks played an extremely competitive game versus the Grizzlies after two blowout losses in a row following Kyrie Irving's torn ACL from Monday night's game against the Sacramento Kings.

While it's unlikely the Mavericks will be able to reconcile their season in any sort of capacity following Irving and the rest of the team's injuries as well as the Luka Doncic trade, it's great to see head coach Jason Kidd getting these Mavericks as bought in as humanly possible amidst all the adversity they are facing even though they lost to Memphis 122-111 on Friday.

Dallas is seeing some bright spots in the form of different role players getting a crack at being primary initiators, as Naji Marshall and Brandon Williams are proving themselves to be high-level role players that could be in Dallas' rotation next season, and Williams' ascension is particularly surprising considering his lack of opportunity this season.

However, the Mavericks could have avoided having to dig into the back half of their roster to find decent shot creators if they never traded Doncic, and Doncic being healthy for the Mavericks right now could've negated some of Dallas' potential workload-related injuries like what could've happened to Irving. Another factor that could have not just helped Irving's injury woes, but could've likely helped the rehabilitation process for Dallas' injured bigs as well, would be if ex-head athletic trainer Casey Smith was still around for the Mavericks.

Ex-trainer Casey Smith would have eased Dallas' brutal injury woes

Dallas let go of Smith this past summer as he accepted a position to be the head athletic trainer for the New York Knicks. Of course injuries can be accredited to mere happenstance and aren't always conducive to how much maintenance or work an athletic training staff puts in toward certain players, but Smith had built a reputation as one of the best athletic trainers in the NBA after joining the Mavericks in 2004.

Given Smith's reputation as well as the fact that he once served as the head athletic trainer for Team USA from 2005-2012, it doesn't make any sense why the Mavericks would let him go when he's one of the top candidates at his position throughout the entire sports industry. There has been speculation that Nico Harrison and company fired some of Doncic's most well-liked members of the organization in an effort to invoke change in some of Doncic's conditioning and off-court habits, and Doncic clearly didn't take kindly to this gesture.

"They get rid of everybody I like," Doncic told ESPN recently in regard to members of Dallas' organization that have been replaced in recent seasons under Harrison and the new regime. While this is already a snarky reason by Harrison to get rid of possibly the best athletic trainer in the NBA, possibly in an effort to prompt Doncic to change his habits, it's now hurting the Mavericks even with Doncic gone.

The Knicks currently have seen the least amount of players fall victim to missing time throughout the entire 2024-25 season thus far, as players have only missed 153 games due to injury or other factors, which ranks best in the league from a games played perspective. This is taking into account that Knicks center Mitchell Robinson has accounted for a ton of those games too, as he's only recently returned to the lineup for the Knicks.

While Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau notoriously demands heavy workloads from his starters and encourages toughness throughout his roster, the Knicks still have mitigated those demands en route to being one of the healthiest teams in the league this season. Meanwhile, the Mavericks rank dead last in the league in terms of games missed this season, as players on the Mavericks active roster this season had missed an egregious 296 games before Friday night's action versus Memphis.

Again, this isn't entirely related to Smith, but there's no doubt that Dallas should've kept Smith and that he could've lessened some of these injuries possibly. Even if Smith couldn't have lessened some of these injuries, he proved to be top notch in the athletic training department throughout his tenure with the Mavericks, and they would love to have his services right now given the insane amount of injuries that will require intensive rehab across their roster.

Harrison and the Mavericks not bringing back Smith was completely illogical, and it likely just made Doncic more angry at the Mavericks more than anything, and now Dallas could be suffering because of yet another ill-advised decision by Harrison.