Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki made his first public comments on Dallas’ firing of general manager Nico Harrison on the NBA on Prime pregame show Friday.
Nowitzki said the firing was ultimately the result of “too many distractions” around the Mavs for the team to maintain the status quo.
“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,” Nowitzki said.
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Nowitzki added that he felt the fan base would not be able to move on until something changed.
“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 just going to get over it, as people say, or forget about it. They’re extremely passionate and this trade just made no sense. It made no sense to them, and really there was no explanation for it,” he said.
He lamented how to Luka Doncic era ended in Dallas, with the team built to compete with the star Slovenian as the centerpiece. Nowitzki also noted that the team was hitting its stride before a raft of injuries derailed the 2024-25 season ahead of the shocking February trade.
“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 hopefully a champion one day. It feels like they never got to see the end to this, so this was very, very heartbreaking,” Nowtizki said.
Still, with the front office change, Nowitzki sees an opportunity for the franchise to find new life.
“It’s time to move on now, focus on this team, on this franchise. This definitely set the franchise back, but now it’s about building it back up. Obviously this team is struggling a bit. It needs the support, all they can get, so hopefully we can have a good year here from now on and cheer the team up,” Nowitzki said.
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