WASHINGTON — Seven weeks and one day after the NBA’s Feb. 10 trade deadline, the Mavericks will reunite with Kristaps Porzingis — and face the most distinct opportunity to reflect on their successes since.
The Mavericks are 16-6 since they dealt Porzingis — and his max contract and history of durability concerns — to the Wizards minutes before the deadline.
Porzingis has since recovered from a right knee bone bruise to average 21.8 points in 13 games with Washington and likely will share a warm reunion with his former teammates and coaches Friday in Capital One Arena. But Dallas, which has managed smaller lineups to post the NBA’s best clutch record (10-2) since the trade, hasn’t missed Porzingis’ production as frequently as many expected.
That means Nico Harrison has finally taken a deep breath.
In a recent conversation with The Dallas Morning News, the Mavericks’ first-year general manager reflected on his first major move as an NBA executive, how new addition Spencer Dinwiddie’s contributions have compared to trade-day expectations and how he’ll approach further shaping of the roster around Luka Doncic.
Harrison’s answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
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— Very few were expecting you to part with Porzingis in February, so now that you’ve had time to digest it all, what did you go into the trade deadline expecting, and how has that played out in comparison?
— Harrison: Going into the trade deadline, the goal is ‘Can you improve your roster, increase your flexibility, set yourself up for the future?’ Kind of those three different things. That was our goal. But you don’t really know if you can actually accomplish it because I always say it takes two to tango. Yeah, sure we want to do it. Someone else has to want to do it as well.
— I remember you told me your brain felt like mush after the deadline passed and the deal went through. What do you remember about navigating that for the first time?
— Harrison: I think the week was intense, just in general, I think the week was intense. I think we were in kind of a precarious situation in terms of how we were playing. We were playing good, so it’s not like we’re in a situation [where] we want to take a step back. And also me being new, you don’t want to make a trade just for the sake of making a trade, showing people ‘Yeah, I’m truly a GM.’ It was a lot.
— A lot of fans at the time were really surprised and reactions were across the board. How did you react to seeing the reaction to your first big-time move?
— Harrison: I actually felt it more than I read about it or heard about it because I don’t read tweets and all that. But I could feel it. Literally I could feel it from the fans.
— How so?
— Harrison: You know how you can just feel it? It was a feeling of like, ‘This guy just screwed up. What the hell are they doing?’ It was a feeling. It was on top of me.
— How have you felt the reactions change over the last two months since?
— Harrison: The way it’s played out to help our team — that’s the goal. It’s proved to be, again, we got two players instead of one, and we created more flexibility and the players actually fit with what we were trying to accomplish. So it’s played out the way we hoped it would.
— Did you factor in Spencer’s history of hitting clutch shots or has that been a happy coincidence for how he’s contributed so far?
— Harrison: It was less about him hitting clutch shots and more about him being the player that he is. He’s a ball handler. He’s another scorer, a really good passer. For his position, he’s long. I think it’s that combination versus ‘Oh he hits clutch shots.’ But I think when you talk about really good players, that’s kind of all wrapped in.
— Spencer has talked about how he didn’t like the way he was portrayed in Washington as a bad teammate and tough to work with. How much attention did you pay to that in the lead up to the trade and how have you seen him try to reverse that narrative in Dallas?
— Harrison: I knew all that stuff. I’ve heard it all before, but at the end of the day, we’re talking about basketball and how you improve your roster. I’m a firm believer that the locker room is uber-important in terms of the overall success of your team. But also, I think a change of environment also changes the perception of people. What was allowed in one place and what was acceptable in one place or what was even perceived in one place is not necessarily the case [elsewhere]. And then if you have a strong locker room, strong leadership, then I think you can overcome it.
— Spencer seems like a happy camper here so far.
— Harrison: And if you have a happy player — all those things go into it.
— You said at the time of the trade that you couldn’t tell how the trade would impact the team’s potential for the playoffs. Now that the postseason is almost here, how do you view the possibility for a run now?
— Harrison: The trade, so far, it’s doing what we hoped it would do.
— But what about the playoffs specifically — can you gauge potential yet?
— Harrison: I think it’s still too early. We have what — [five] games left? If we take care of business, we’re going to get home court. We’ve played well at home. You still don’t really know who you’re going to play.
— So you’ll know when you know?
— Harrison: Exactly. But I think we’re better positioned today than we were seven weeks ago.
— Now that you’ve seen Luka play well for about two months as the lone superstar, do you view the roster as needing a new Luka co-star down the road? Or do you see potential for him to be that rare superstar, almost like Dirk was, where you can put really solid players who play their roles really well around him, and a superstar team-up isn’t necessarily a must to contend for long playoff runs?
— Harrison: I’d like the record to show that you just called Jason Kidd a role player.
— Well, Jason referred to himself as a burger when he got asked a similar question on trade night, so I hope he understands.
— Harrison: Here’s what I’ll say: We’re going to finish this season with the team that we have, and I honestly think we’ve got to give this team its fair shake to see, like, what they can do. Maybe on paper you don’t have a super-team with three stars. Clearly we don’t. But collectively, what does that do? I think you’ve got to give this team a fair opportunity to show what they can be and then we can sit back and say, ‘OK, this is where we came up short. Now how do we react to it?’
