There were two minutes and 35 seconds remaining in the first quarter of the Dallas Mavericks’ game against the Sacramento Kings on Monday when general manager Nico Harrison’s master plan went up in flames.
Superstar point guard Kyrie Irving, the only consistent source of perimeter creation on the roster following the stunning Luka Doncic blockbuster trade, drove into the teeth of the defense only to collapse to the floor immediately. Replay showed Irving’s knee buckled. A day later it was revealed he tore his ACL and is done for the season; there’s the possibility he misses a chunk of next season, too.
It’s always a disaster for a team to lose its star player. For the Mavericks, though, it feels worse than that, the final step of a descent into the basketball version of Dante’s Inferno that began when Doncic was shockingly and unceremoniously shipped out of town. Irving was the last bastion of hope for Dallas. When he crumpled to the ground, those hopes dissipated—both for fans and for Harrison. In many ways, Irving was the crux of the entire post-Doncic plan the Mavericks put forth to the public, the only reason any of Harrison’s ideas about team-building might work. He was only comfortable trading one of the generational scorers on the roster because he had another. Now, the Mavs have none.
With the star guard sidelined for the foreseeable future, the franchise is adrift and will have to make changes this offseason to salvage what remains of Harrison’s championship strategy. And, as has been the case throughout history, understanding the past will help us glean what the future may hold.
How did the Mavericks get here?
This question feels like it should have a short, obvious answer. They traded Luka Doncic. What more needs to be said? But Harrison’s reasoning as to why he thought that was the right move is critical to understanding where the Mavs are headed.
Sifting through the various comments about work ethic and the leaks suggesting Doncic’s lack of interest in conditioning rubbed the front office the wrong way, it becomes clear Harrison was worried that what happened to Irving would happen to Doncic. That the Mavs would be tied at the hip to a superstar who doesn’t take care of his body well enough to avoid injury; that the coming years would be filled with injuries ranging from nagging to serious. The demands of Doncic’s current contract and the supermax he was eligible for this summer would be so onerous it would be impossible to get around the fact his availability was always suspect. It seemed Harrison weighed this possible future against the chance everything goes right for one championship run, a run like the 2024 NBA Finals appearance but one that ends in a ring. He clearly found the answer wanting.
Thus, his solution: trading Doncic for Anthony Davis, transforming Dallas from a team overly reliant on a talent with questionable availability (in Harrison’s view) and a huge salary to a more balanced formula around two elite, complementary talents in Irving and Davis. In essence, Harrison swapped a low chance of winning a title in the long run for a high chance of winning a title in the next two to three years, which came with the additional benefit of increased financial flexibility. Harrison’s belief this was the path forward felt punctuated by his other move at the deadline: trading Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin. Grimes is 24 years old, a restricted free agent this offseason, and has only one playoff run under his belt as a rotation player. Martin is in the first year of a $35 million deal, making less annually than what Grimes is expected to demand on the open market, with loads of playoff experience after a few deep runs with the Miami Heat.
That swap has worked out about as well as the Doncic trade in the immediate. Grimes has averaged 17.7 points per game with the Philadelphia 76ers and put up 44 points earlier this month. Martin, on the other hand, hasn’t played a second for the Mavs as he deals with an injury. And the transaction hard-capped the organization at the first apron, making it difficult to sign any warm body to take the floor, leading to sights like Wednesday night’s almost completely empty bench.
Regardless of impact, the two moves show a clear pattern from Harrison. The priority is to maximize competitiveness in the immediate, while maintaining roster flexibility. We are not here to judge whether his logic is correct or if it truly means the Mavs have a higher percent chance of winning a title without Doncic. This is how Harrison seems to be conducting business.
Which brings us to the more pressing issue at hand for Dallas as of now …
Where do the Mavs go from here?
The worst has happened. Disaster has struck in the worst ways. One key cog of Harrison’s plan is sidelined for the foreseeable future. The other got hurt in his very first game and may not play again this season. Dallas entered Thursday in 10th place in the West. The vibes couldn’t be worse.
How on earth is the franchise supposed to recover from this?
The short answer is that the Mavs do not. Not this season, anyway. Even if Davis was fully healthy, they’d find it a tall task to climb out of the Western Conference play-in tournament and an even taller one to end up with home court advantage for at least one round of the playoffs, which history says is a prerequisite for true title contenders. As it stands, with Davis’s adductor injury, there’s no reason to risk his health further and put him back on the floor. The next two months for Harrison & Co. are about licking wounds and plotting for the offseason.
Which is where we could see Harrison continue to follow his same trend. Currently the Mavericks are projected to be a few million dollars below the first apron and more than $10 million below the second apron heading into free agency. That means they won’t be big players in free agency given the lack of true cap room, but have the ability to bring in reinforcements via trade in whatever construction they desire. As long as the Mavs stay below the second apron they can aggregate salary and bring in more money than they send out. Dallas also has its own 2025 and ’26 draft picks to dangle in efforts to improve the roster, and this year’s selection is shaping up to be a lottery pick.
Winning a championship this season obviously would have been the best-case scenario for Harrison, but objectively, it would have been very difficult for Dallas to do so even with perfect health. Assuming that was part of the Doncic trade calculus, it feels like this is what Harrison was really looking for—to head into the 2025 offseason armed with the ability to go after anybody using a wide variety of assets at his disposal with no real financial handcuffs. Flexibility.
What will he do with it? That’s the big question. The Mavericks could go after a third star to pair with Irving and Davis, using the contracts of Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington and/or Daniel Gafford to get something done (Kevin Durant is reportedly set to be available). They could use their picks and smaller deals, like Martin’s or Naji Marshall’s, to acquire backcourt depth to survive until Irving fully recovers from his ACL injury. Dallas could very well use its first-round pick this year and sit on the rest of the available assets, waiting to see how the landscape shifts over the summer and into the fall; in the NBA, a star can become available at any given time.
There is no recovering from the Doncic trade. Not really. The pain of a young superstar being ripped away will reverberate throughout the fan base for years. Irving going down with Davis sidelined just added various injuries to the insult of it all. But when asking what the Mavericks do now, there are multiple answers. They have options.
Whether Harrison will choose wisely remains to be seen.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as After Kyrie Irving’s Injury, What Are Next Steps for the Mavericks?.
