It’s been a pretty eventful week for the Dallas Mavericks, that started with an explosive report inside the power struggle of the front office, and peaked with the firing of longtime general manager Donnie Nelson on Wednesday after 24 years with the franchise. For a team that isn’t known for making a ton of personnel changes over the years, it came as a huge shock that the franchise parted ways with Nelson, who is a well-respected basketball mind around the league and was responsible for building Dallas into a championship team in 2011.
Although it was reported by the Mavericks that both sides agreed to part ways, The Athletic’s Tim Cato and Sam Amick report that he was fired, rather unceremoniously too. The report details how Nelson was concerned about the amount of influence Haralobos Voulgaris, the team’s director of quantitative research and development and former professional gambler, had in regards to personnel moves. When Nelson brought those concerns to team owner Mark Cuban, his fears were never assuaged and Voulgaris continued to gain more say and power. It resulted in Nelson’s firing, something that the Mavericks were short and abrupt about.
If we’re comparing how teams have handled the departure of long-standing front office executives in the past few weeks, look at how the Boston Celtics handled Danny Ainge leaving. There was a press conference held where Ainge spoke, and the press release went into deep detail of his tenure with the team with quotes from ownership.
The Mavericks, on the other hand, published a four-paragraph statement with a standard quote from Cuban and a condensed version of what he’s done over his two-plus decades with the franchise. Certainly not a warm and fuzzy goodbye, and while Ainge retiring from his role and the Mavericks firing Nelson are not the same thing, you would think there would be more emotion and respect from Cuban and the Mavericks in handling this departure.
But at the end of the day, this is a business as we’re so often reminded, and it can’t be ignored that Dallas hasn’t won a playoff series since hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy a decade ago. So perhaps a front-office change could get this team over the hump.
However, the kind of dysfunction that’s been reported in Dallas over the past few days isn’t ideal for a team entering a pivotal offseason with the goal of building a championship contender around franchise centerpiece Luka Doncic. Speaking of Doncic, let’s check in on what he said Thursday about Nelson’s ousting.
“It was kind of tough to me,” said Doncic, who is in Slovenia with the national team. “I really like Donnie. I’ve known him since I was a kid and he was the one that drafted me. It was tough for me seeing that, but I’m not the one making decisions there.”
That’s an understandable reaction from Doncic, who was scouted by Nelson at 15 years old, so nothing too concerning there, right?
Well, that’s certainly not great. The Mavericks reportedly made the decision to part ways with Nelson on Sunday, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, so it is rather odd that no one within the Mavericks brain trust informed the most important player on the team of the decision. Especially when he’s had a “good, long-standing” relationship with Nelson.
It’s not time to sound any alarms in Dallas, because Doncic is reportedly still planning on signing his rookie max extension this summer that is worth north of $200 million over the next five years. And while this whole debacle will probably not have an impact on him signing on the dotted line, it certainly should be a wake-up call for a franchise that’s just been hovering around mediocre for the past decade. This isn’t post-2011 Dirk Nowitzki who was satisfied with winning one championship and riding out the rest of his career in Dallas with no real chance of reaching the mountaintop again. Doncic and the Mavericks haven’t won anything yet, and there’s no guarantee that he’ll stay in Dallas forever.
This is a good problem to have, because the Mavericks could be in a far worse situation without a generational talent on its roster, but they now have to make sure they don’t fumble the bag in this situation. So far, the details emerging from the Mavericks front office paint the picture of a dysfunctional group that has not shown the ability to bring in championship-level talent in a decade. It will be the job of the next general manager to ensure that reputation changes quickly. Because if the past two postseason appearances by Doncic have shown use anything, it’s that he’s ready to compete for championships — yes plural — right now. Now it’s up the the Mavericks to keep him happy and surround him with the adequate talent to accomplish that goal.
