The Dallas Mavericks entered November carrying more drama than momentum, and on Tuesday, Nov. 11, the tension finally snapped. Nico Harrison, the general manager who made the most polarizing move in franchise history nine months ago, is officially out.
The decision wasn’t entirely surprising, not after Dallas’ 3–8 stumble to open the 2025–26 season. Still, the moment felt heavy, because it reopened wounds tied directly to Luka Dončić’s shocking exit. And no one captured that weight more directly than Mavericks icon Dirk Nowitzki.
Dirk Nowitzki Shared His Thoughts Over Nico Harrison’s Firing
Nowitzki, now an analyst for Amazon Prime and still the emotional anchor of Dallas basketball, was asked why the organization felt it was finally time to move on from Harrison.
The Hall of Famer didn’t dance around the subject. Instead, he spoke with the bluntness of someone who knows the Dallas fan base better than anyone alive.
Dirk said the firing was overdue, describing the last several months as a stretch clouded by distractions that the franchise never recovered from. He believed the decision should have been made during the summer, long before the Cooper Flagg era officially began.
“Well, I think there’s just too many distractions, too much going on to keep going this way. This move should have probably happened this summer honestly. I didn’t want this negative energy and this black cloud over the Cooper Flagg era, but here we are now.
“I just knew … I figured this fan base is a passionate and loyal fan base. I was lucky enough to experience it for 21 years. And I knew they weren’t (going to) just get over it, as people say, or forget about it. They’re extremely passionate.”
He pointed directly to the Luka trade as the beginning of the fracture. Even now, months later, Dirk said fans never understood the rationale.
“And this trade just made no sense. It made no sense to (the fans). And, really, there was no explanation for it, either,” Nowitzki said.
He emphasized that Dallas had just reached the Finals the season before and built a roster specifically tailored to maximize Dončić — switchable wings, multiple lob threats, and then the addition of Klay Thompson to fix the Finals shooting woes. And then, suddenly, everything changed.
Dirk reminded viewers that the Mavericks were surging during the holidays, ripping off a 14-3 stretch before Dončić went down with the injury in what ended up being his final game in a Dallas uniform. That abrupt ending still feels impossible for fans to process, and he acknowledged that openly.
“It was very sad. It was very sad how that ended and it felt like … the fans feel like they got robbed of actually seeing the end, seeing this through, seeing Luka develop into a hopefully a champion one day and it feels like they never got to see the end to this. So this was very heartbreaking.”
His tone made it clear that while time has passed, the emotional aftershock hasn’t.
Harrison’s Firing Was Months in the Making
From a basketball standpoint, Harrison’s tenure unraveled the moment he pivoted away from a Luka-centric identity and attempted to rebuild Dallas around Anthony Davis’ defensive dominance. For a brief stretch — particularly Davis’s electric debut and Kyrie Irving’s incredible post-All-Star run, the gamble looked bold but promising.
But injuries piled up. Irving’s knee derailed Dallas’ postseason hopes last spring, and the reset button couldn’t be unpressed. Not even the stroke of lottery luck that delivered Duke superstar Cooper Flagg could patch the larger structural cracks.
By early November, the Mavericks looked directionless. A 3–8 start placed them near the bottom of the Western Conference and intensified the pressure on ownership to make a move. Fans had been chanting “Fire Nico” since the Dončić trade, and on Nov. 11, they finally got what they’d been asking for.
Harrison’s firing ends a four-plus year run that began with optimism and player-forward thinking but ultimately became overshadowed by one franchise-altering mistake.
His exit doesn’t guarantee immediate stability — especially with a teenage phenom now at the center of everything, but it does represent a reset, one Dallas desperately needed.
