Nov 19, 2025
3 min read
This is what caused the decision of NICO Harrison and Dallas Markacks 11 games into the season and what affected Caban.
The Dallas Mavericks, reeling from a four-game losing streak and the chaos that has plagued the franchise for the past nine months, are sitting on the tarmac at the Dunton, DC airport.
It was bad enough that the Mavs had been eliminated from a two-team duel in an early season rematch just hours earlier in Memphis.Now the buses that were supposed to take the tour group to the hotel were delayed due to bureaucratic reasons.
After about an hour, two group buses arrived first.Tired players entered the trip to four seasons in Georgetown, arriving after 3 A.M.ET.Good news awaited the next day, the stubborn Anthony Davis and his medical team - and general manager Nico Harrison - aimed for his return day from the hardships of the low tax break.
Those plans changed this afternoon, hours before the tipoff against the Washington Wizards, when Mavs governor Patrick Dumont stepped in at the last minute to delay Davis' return, according to team sources.
Dumont was acting on the advice of Mavs health and performance director Yohan Bilsborough, who flew the warning flag late, concerned that Davis was at risk of aggravating a calf strain or a related catastrophic injury.
This will be Dumont's first direct involvement with the Mavs' day-to-day basketball operations since signing in 2023.in decemberacquired a majority stake in the team.
The strongest believes he had in Harrisson This last season was Dumont's signature of the most controversial trade in the NBA history, a whole panic without searching second opinions.
Davis's was considered a daily newspaper.The same description also applied to Harrie's job security.
Three days later, Dumont fired Harrison.
It was the culmination of the most tumultuous era in Mavericks history, driven by competing egos, a controversial team sale, the trade of the most dynamic star in franchise history, and a quiet but intense power struggle between a former owner and his hired general manager.
As a result, Dumont and his new basketball cabinet, including former majority owner Mark Cuban, plan to look to the future with 18-year-old Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 pick who brought unprecedented lottery luck to Dallas, giving the new ownership group a second chance to build a sustainable contender around generational talent.
Some team sources said Mav, which is 4-11 and outside the playoff picture in the West, will also explore the Luca trade market as part of the trial before the season shut down.
For a fan base that still feels betrayed, there are too many questions lingering about that confidence, many of them involving the famous former majority owner.
Why is Cuban given more input than other season ticket holders in franchise decisions?And how much power will cuban continue to have the mavs try to get the franchise back?
Discussions with more than a dozen sources inside the organization reveal that two of the franchise's most powerful men, Cuban and Harrison, were vying for influence and the ear of the new, inexperienced owner Dumont: one man determined to prove his basketball acumen after finally being given freedom to run a team, the other desperate to get back in the game.
On the morning of November 11, the simmering struggle for power finally boiled over and everyone was burned
A team source said: "Mark has been trying to shoot the palace for months."
Many reporters and televishy cameras are waiting to wrap the 3-run series on the Airlines Court, the Pregame series of the Mavericks run.
It was the evening of Dec. 27, 2023, hours after the NBA officially approved the sale of a controlling interest in the franchise to the Adelson and Dumont families for $3.5 billion, more than a dozen times what Cuban had paid 23 years earlier.The Cuban, still drenched in sweat and wearing shorts and a team-issued sleeveless T-shirt, was more than happy to chat about what he said was a unique offer.There were details.
"Nothing has really changed except my bank account," Cuban told the media, huddled around him in a three-deep circle.
Cuban explained how the new owners, whose 11-figure fortune was built thanks to the Las Vegas Sands casino company, will focus on the franchise's business interests, including eventually building a new arena in what is hoped will be Dallas' version of a Venetian-style resort.
Cuban said he was relieved of the financial stress of the NBA contender being a mere "middle-class millionaire," and proudly announced that he would continue to control the Mavs' basketball operations as part of a company in which he owns 27 percent.
There was no specific authority language in the purchase agreement, and even though Lemont was the Mavs' governor, Cuba agreed to the Mavs' basketball plans.
"That's Cuban overselling himself because he always has a microphone in front of him," one team source told ESPN.
Minutes later, after revealing details of the deal, Cuban gathered the team's players, coaching staff and front office personnel in the locker room to deliver a similar message.
"There's nothing to change," Cleveland told the Bombers hours before the game. "I'm still doing basketball."
In the room, the news did not come the way Cuba intended.
Several groups found comments about Cuba
It was a general success across the organization that Hatrison was given the freedom to function during his tenure.
But for many in the room, the opinions prevailing at the meeting were perplexing.Why would people pay billions of dollars to buy a franchise and allow Cuba to operate it?
A few days later, Dumont visited Dallas for the first time.He held separate meetings with the franchise's business staff, basketball operations department and players.
He asked the question about the Cuban club directly from the basketball rights office's visit to the last two destinations.Dumont's response was at odds with his new business partner.
"Mark is a friend. I check with him from time to time," Dumont said, according to multiple people at the basketball operations meeting.“Make no mistake about it: I am the governor of the team and I make the decisions.
Dumont's instruction came as a relief to many, including Harrison and coach Jason Kidd, who were often frustrated by what they saw as Cuban's often counterproductive meddling in personnel decisions, sources in the organization said.
It also created a power vacuum that Harrison rushed to fill.
He did, with Aplown.
A trip to the Finals that season, aided by a pair at the trade deadline that paid immediate dividends, gave Dumont enough evidence to believe in Harrison's basketball brilliance.
Two weeks later, before Game 4 of the NBA FADALS, Dumont began his ownership transition.He held the only press conference that made news.He was joined by Harrison and Mavs CEO Saint Marshall.
"Typically when a team changes ownership, they bring their own talent with them," Harrison said."I'm so grateful to Patrick and the Adelson family for adopting me as their adopted son. In conversations between Patrick and I, we talk about leadership. We talk about investing in the community. We talk about culture. These are all things that I believe in. It reminds me of my old days at Nike."
"I think it's his business experience."
He turned his head to Dumont.Their eyes were closed as a big smile spread across their faces.
"Sounds great," Dumont said, looking from ear to ear.
Unlike his predecessors, Dumont has been spared the glare of the public spotlight.Cuban soaked up the fame that came with owning the NBA, transforming his image as a flamboyant businessman into a long-running role on ABC's Shark Tank that elevated his fame beyond the world of sports.In contrast, a Google search turned up just one photo of Dumont.When news of the Mavs sale broke
The corporate world is a comfort zone for Dumont, who earned an MBA from Columbia Business School before starting a career in investment banking more than a quarter-century ago.He climbed the corporate ladder after joining Las Vegas Sands in 2009, marrying Sivan Ochshorn, daughter of the corporation's owners, Mary and (since deceased) stepfather Sheldon Adelson, and becoming president and CEO in 2021.By becoming the Chief Operating Officer.
Harrison, who rose from field representative to US vice president in his two decades, prioritized developing a relationship with the franchise that was purchased.Harrison connected with his boss by speaking the language of the company, and emphasized the importance of creating a clear chain through Dumont, which he has done in the last two seasons.Harrison and Cuban both declined to comment on the matter.
"Nico basically said, 'Hey, I don't want anything to do with Mark anymore. It's too much,'" a team source said.
With a straight line directly to his boss, and this had not been in the cards before, Hirison took the speed of the ice.
Harrison once told Cuban that he earned the nickname "The Silent Assassin" at Nike because of his ability to quietly maneuver to get his way in business affairs.Suddenly, Cuban believed he was in Harrison's crosshairs.
Another person said: "As soon as he sold, Nico started to call Dumont. He drives him close. We went to court and debt, Nico can not do wrong. "
Cuban blamed harrison, not Domont, for his basketball exile, according to sources that are familiar with the dynamic.
As the power of Harrison Harrison rose, Cuban personally said that the company wanted a single agreement that would make it better for all basketball organizations, the sources said.However, this did not speak of Cubin having control over the dangers of basketball.
In Cuban's mind, one source said, he will essentially retain control because he is the smartest, most experienced person in the room.
“This is the clearest case of having my cake and eating it too,” said a source involved in the process."How long have you known Mark Cuban? That seems out of character to me?"
As for Cuban, Harrison was not qualified to be the team's primary decision-maker for basketball operations, according to sources familiar with his thinking, despite hiring him as the team's GM in June 2021 after the controversial firing of longtime Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson.
However, Cuban insisted privately that he never intended to give Harrison autonomy and hired him in the hopes that his relationships with players and agents would help the Mavs reverse their longtime streak of being runners-up in free agency.
Cuban hired former Utah Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey as a senior adviser in the summer of 2023 — a move suggested by Doncic's agent Bill Duffy and business manager Lara Beth Seager — to mask Harrison's perceived shortcomings as an executive with no NBA experience.
Harron accused the Christians of what he believed to be the main workers of the islands in the agency, who came to Jalen Brunson and the trade of the Brunson.
Harrison's Office of Basketball Operations reports that Cuban will have to do better without the extension.Dumont believes he has confirmed the concept after the Mavs' 2023-24 season to acquire Daniel Gofford and P.J.
Dallas was 28-23 and in eighth place in the West -- two games out of fifth -- when Harrison's rookies joined the team.The Mavs had the league's best record (16-4) and best defense over the final 20 games of the regular season before slipping out of the West as the No. 5 seed.
That's all the bar Harrison needs to convince the work of the accident as a labor decision maker.
"Nico washed the trade," said a Mavs official."He took credit for everything that was done. When Patrick asked questions - he asked how we got Kyrie, that etc. - [Harrison] said he was the man.
According to sources, Dumont occasionally asked Harrison to "hold Mark in his hands" regarding personnel discussions and decisions.Garrison would agree to do this before blowing him off.At this point, contact between Cuban and Dumont was minimal given the team's success.Cuban and Harrison rarely spoke to each other.
"Nico built a chicken coop and put up a fence and said, 'I've got this!'" said a source familiar with the power of Harrison's five curls and despair. "Obviously, that's the wrong plan."
Harrison is always sitting, his direct line to throw the source of power.All sources believe that Harnch believes that Harrison will give what he wants, if not everyone wants to know, especially as a new man of the new NBA.
"One guy in the middle of a basketball game who cut his throat to DUMONT WHILE LISTENING TO A KID," one group said.
That's when Harrison got in Dumont's way to sign the Doncic trade, a deal that was considered a trade request, to receive what is widely used at a poor value in return.
Harrison made his case from a business perspective.Doncic would be eligible to sign a five-year, $345 million supermax contract extension this summer.That deal would be a terrible investment, Harrison told Dumont, pointing to Doncic's conditioning requirements, bad off-court habits and recurring calf strains, predicting his body would break down.
Doncic's camp and Harrison have had many disagreements over the recovery process from the calf strain that hampered the superstar at the time, which the GM described to Dumont as evidence that Doncic was not fully committed to MAVs.
Harrison also blamed the Mavs' five-game shutout by the Boston Celtics in the Finals on Doncic's defensive struggles.He sat Dumont with his vision of building the league's best defense around Davis, who Harrison has been close to since Davis was a teenager playing on the AAU circuit.
"Defense wins championships," Harrison said repeatedly in the few attempts to publicly explain the reason for the trade.
Harrison also believed that trade talks should exist, reducing the risk of leaks to the media, which led Duffy, Doncic's agent, to use his leverage to kill the deal.Harrison told Dumont that playing it in Cuba would likely lead to a leak.
No one knows.No one else knows.Dumont bought it, and that's all that matters.
"'In Nico we believe' - even at the end of the day," the source said, referring to a vague line from Dumada's interview with his flight.
On Nov. 10, the day before Harrison was fired, during halftime of the Mavericks' game against the Milwaukee Bucks, Dumont was greeted by an 18-year-old man wearing a gold Doncic Lakers jersey who sat next to him for several minutes.Nicholas Dickason told The Athletic that at the request of his father, Nicholas Dickason approached Dumont and apologized for bumping into him during the season-opening loss to the San Antonio Spurs, the only game Dumont attended during the regular season.Dickason said that during their cordial conversation, Dumont expressed remorse over the Doncic trade.
After the game, the team blew a 13-point lead in the fourth quarter and chanted "Fire Nico!"During Mavericks free throws chants, Cuban made a beeline from his usual seat near the home bench to meet Dumont in his seat near midcourt on the other side of the American Airlines Center floor.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the court, Harrison climbed the stairs made of his chair and the tunnel, the bitter electricity of the age moved in real time.
Harrison, who received death threats after the Doncic trade, never returned to his usual seat among the four Maus frontline officials reserved in the lower bowl in front of the team's bench.He stood in that middle tunnel, packed with security, during the rest of the last season's games.He put those steps forward every game this season to reach his new seat a few rows behind home plate without crossing.Get out of the fans on the road.
A few months after the trade that ultimately ended his Mavericks tenure, Harrison and the team added the No.1 in the 2025 draft. After that, multiple team sources said, Harrison quickly burned the Cuban push.
Harrison managed to further anger fans after the team drafted consensus No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg in late June.
"Wealth shines through," Harrison said, noting the fan base is ready or not ready to receive it.Four months before the city, which threatened the franchise's ability to work, Harrison insisted that it happened, insisting on the media, hoping to ease some of the self-inflicted injuries.
The shoes are, torture, not closed.
A few days later, at Flag's introductory press conference, Harrison said he hoped fans were "starting to see my vision," angering fans despite a time when his good fortune in winning Flag and the excitement of a future with him should have been celebrated.
Four months later, with the Mavs ranked 14th in the West amid predictable struggles and fan angst weighing on the players, Dumont had seen enough.
The dynamic between Dumont and Cuban was never contentious, sources on both sides said.They had known each other for years, creating a friendship that served as the foundation of the franchise's sales negotiations.Those same sources bolstered Cuban Dumont's credibility, and Harrison's roster-building criticisms over the summer proved painfully accurate.
Cuban warned Dumunt that he was facing a terrible offense with the absence of Dulas Price and his shooting.Harrison belies these concerns.The Mavs finished second in the league in scoring.
"I know the impact these difficulties have had over the last few months has had a profound effect," Dumont wrote in a letter to fans released this afternoon, vaguely referring to the Doncic trade in his only public comments of the season.
Cuba has strongly recommended replacing Harrison with Lindsay, the second-ranked member of the leading Finth Piston office in the East, sources said.Lindsay is likely to be considered during a comprehensive search process that will include both external and internal candidates, but so far Dum has not been selected by a committee approach.
The committee, which may still be in place by this season's trade term, finding with Dumont this afternoon of Harrison's firing to discuss potential strategic scenarios.
Assistant GMs Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi, recently promoted to interim associate GM, were in the room.So was Kidd, who has as much influence as anyone in the organization after signing a contract extension in the preseason.Cuban was also there, a sign of his return to the franchise's inner circle.
Cuban is thrilled at the prospect of being part of a small group that Dumont relies on to educate him about the business of the NBA and guide him through tumultuous times.
"He's walking out there right now," a team source said."The Cuban in his STKBERS."
But Cuban did not return the status of the phone with a call in Max.Or that he will ever be.As a source, give it, the cuban is sold correctly.
"He's an adviser, not a decision maker," one source said."But he's at the table."
Still, no one knows how long he will stay there—or how far his influence will reach.
According to a source briefed by Dumont, those decisions will be made by whoever replaces the person he just fired.
