Nico Harrison now owns the worst title in NBA history and it'll ruin the Mavericks

Nico Harrison was hired as the Dallas Mavericks' General Manager during the 2021 offseason. Before the Mavs, Harrison was a longtime employee at Nike, climbing the ladder over 19 years to become VP of North American Basketball Operations.

Despite never working in an NBA front office, the Mavs were optimistic that Harrison's Nike network would help the Mavs attract star talent.

Harrison became a household name last season after trading Luka Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis. The trade has been heavily criticized, with many NBA pundits claiming the trade was the worst move in the history of professional sports. The trade was so lopsided that, upon seeing the news, ESPN reporter Shams Charania thought his phone was hacked.

Harrison is dangerously close to becoming the worst GM in sports history

Aside from engineering the worst trade in league history, Harrison has an extensive resume for this title. He infamously refused to match the salary offered to future MVP finalist Jalen Brunson by the New York Knicks. While Brunson has exceeded expectations as a Knick, his performance in the 2022 playoffs showed that Brunson was worth retaining. Keeping a talented player on a below-market contract would've allowed the Mavs to flip Brunson for a star (perhaps even Anthony Davis) in the future if they wanted to, or build around him and Doncic for years to come.

To make matters worse, it was known before the trade deadline that the Knicks would pursue Brunson. Even if the Mavs were concerned with Brunson's long-term fit or salary expectations, Harrison could have preemptively traded Brunson before his contract expired to return some value. Instead, Harrison let a future star walk despite Brunson later admitting he wanted to stay in Dallas.

Harrison's list of gaffes also include: trading a budding Quinten Grimes for peanuts; offering JaVale McGee a three-year contract, then cutting McGee after playing only 42 games; hiring a strength and conditioning coach who did not possess the NBA-required qualifications; and hiring a training staff that misdiagnosed a stress fracture as an ankle sprain. These mistakes all occurred in the span of three years.

Harrison has fierce competition for the title, facing the likes of former Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien and Brooklyn Nets GM Billy King. While Stepien was not the GM, he filled the role in practice. Stepien infamously traded five consecutive first-round picks for middling talent. He also hired and fired four coaches over a fifteen-month span. His actions led the NBA to create the "Stepien Rule" that forbids teams from trading consecutive first-round picks.

King was the architect of the Nets' acquisition of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce from the Boston Celtics, which was widely regarded as the worst trade in NBA history before the Doncic trade. The trade created an aging roster with a limited ceiling and far-fetched title chances (sound familiar?), and he gave up the draft picks that became MVP finalist Jayson Tatum and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown.

For Harrison to be the worst GM in NBA history, we have to assess the long-term effects of the Harrison regime. With one move, Harrison took a team that had made the NBA Finals the year prior to one of the most hopeless teams in the league if his vision with Davis and Kyrie Irving doesn't work out. The Mavs find themselves with two aging, injury-prone stars and essentially no draft picks to support the roster.

He single-handedly shortened the Mavs' championship contention from 10+ years to three. Not only did he push in all of the Mavs' chips, but he created a worse roster than he had prior to the trades. It is a rare instance of a GM sacrificing both the team's longevity and peak for no apparent reason. While Stepien and King also massacred their respective franchises, they didn't ruin a title-contending team to do so.

It is clear that the Mavs will retain Harrison to remain competitive short term because of his strong connections with Irving and Davis. Despite this, Harrison has become a pariah in the basketball world and will almost certainly never work in the NBA again.

While fans often are overzealous in calling for firings of coaches and GMs, Mavs fans are justified in their demands to "Fire Nico."