Why the Mavericks can’t afford to rebuild right now after Nico Harrison’s short-sighted decisions

Since the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, general manager Nico Harrison has made it abundantly clear that he views the future as the next 3-4 years. He’s said on multiple occasions that trading for Anthony Davis makes them championship contenders during that window, despite Dončić providing a longer window for sustained success due to him being six years younger and less injury prone.

But Harrison isn’t thinking that far down the line. He said as much the day after making what’s already been considered one of the worst trades in NBA history. 

“The future to me is three, four years from now,” Harrison said on Feb. 2, hours after the deal became public. “The future 10 years from now, I don’t know — I think they’ll probably bury me and [Jason Kidd] by then, or we bury ourselves.”

If that’s Harrison’s logic, then the Mavericks cannot afford to be anything less than a playoff-contending team during that span, because the alternative is incredibly dark.

Between the years 2027 and 2030 the Mavericks don’t control any of their first-round picks. 

All of these moves were made with the intention of building around Dončić, and if he was still on the team none of this would matter because in theory the Mavericks would be considered title contenders during this span where they owe a bunch of outgoing picks. But just 14 months after acquiring Washington and Gafford with hopes of chasing a title, the Mavericks have already abandoned that roster construction. 

Now, those smart moves are like ticking time bombs for Dallas, because even if they wanted to bottom out between now and the end of the decade, that high draft pick would be going to another team. What’s worse, if the Mavericks do bottom out and have high draft picks during that span, three of their four picks would be going to teams that figure to be championship contenders for the long haul, and two of those teams are in their division. So essentially the Mavericks have painted themselves into an inescapable corner.

It’s a bleak outcome for the Mavericks, and increasingly frustrating with every new piece of insider information that comes out about the dysfunction of the team. The latest from ESPN’s Tim MacMahon illustrates how Harrison had grown tired of Dončić long before the trade, going back to the summer of 2023. Which begs the question, why trade away valuable future draft assets if you were already considering trading him? That’s a question Mavs governor Patrick Dumont will have to ponder when he thinks about Harrison’s future employment with the team. 

With all that outgoing draft capital, there’s literally no other option but to put a competitive team on the floor, because losing a bunch of games over the next four years only makes Dallas’ opponents better. That is, unless Dumont fires Harrison and trades the likes of Davis, Washington, Lively and every other valuable player on the team to try and stockpile picks. But Dumont has publicly given his support to Harrison, who still has three years left on his contract and has said he intends on remaining with the Mavericks through that deal.

Unless that changes, this is what the Mavericks are stuck with for now. The issue, though, is fielding a competitive team is easier said than done. Already that 3-4 year window Harrison has talked about has been derailed due to the unfortunate ACL injury to Kyrie Irving, which is expected to keep him out for a good chunk of next season. It’s been reported that Irving is aiming to come back by January, but that would be a medical marvel if so. And even if he does, that’s assuming that Dallas will manage to stay competitive in the gauntlet that is the Western Conference without him.

So let’s assume that next season is a wash, because even if Irving does return, the chances of the Mavericks making it out of the West with this roster are incredibly slim. That means the next time Dallas will start a season fully healthy will be the 2026-27 season. By that time Davis will be 34 years old, and Irving will be 35. Very rarely have we seen a championship-contending team led by two players in their mid-30s.

What’s next for Mavericks? Nico Harrison thinks winning can fix everything, but how are they going to do that?

This is just the reality for the Mavericks in the post-Dončić era. Typically when a team loses a superstar they either walk away with a treasure trove of picks, or if the player leaves in free agency they can tank for a year or two to try and find the next star. Harrison didn’t get the biggest offer possible for Dončić so option A isn’t possible, and tanking won’t get them anywhere because they owe a bunch of picks to everyone else. Unless they trade Davis and call it a wash, which is incredibly unlikely because that would mean Harrison would have to admit he was wrong in this trade.

So the only option is to win. Is that possible? Harrison certainly seems to think so with this roster. But with Irving out for at least half of next season that means Dallas will need to get to work finding a temporary replacement for him. My colleague Sam Quinn laid out some trade options for Dallas to fill that Irving vacancy. Guys like CJ McCollum, Jordan Poole, Anfernee Simons and Collin Sexton to name a few. Or perhaps the Mavs will be satisfied giving play-in star Brandon Williams a shot at the starting spot.

This may not be what Mavericks fans want, but every move Harrison has executed over the last several years has made it so there is no other viable option at this point. But if Dallas isn’t a championship-contender as Harrison seems to think they are, or at the very least consistently in the playoffs over the next five years, and instead find themselves in the lottery, it’ll take twice as long for them to get back to the Finals that Dončić led them to a season ago.