New Report Reveals Mark Cuban Had a Hand in Mavericks Firing Nico Harrison

It’s safe to say a lot of people in Dallas wanted Nico Harrison out as Mavericks general manager—including the franchise’s former majority owner Mark Cuban.

Harrison was fired on Tuesday nine months after he orchestrated the seismic trade of sending Luka Dončić to the Lakers. Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont has since taken ownership for the ill-aged Dončić deal and penned a frank letter to the Mavs fanbase looking ahead to a hopeful and brighter future in the post-Harrison era.

Dumont allegedly didn’t make the decision to fire Harrison all on his own, though. A new report from Joe Vardon, Christian Clark and Sam Amick of The Athletic pulled back the curtain on Harrison’s final months as Mavericks GM. Amid the Mavericks’ woeful 3-8 start to the 2025 season, Dumont reportedly lent an ear to Cuban to hear his grievances about the organization.

Here’s the excerpt from The Athletic:

With the losing, the injuries and the negativity mounting, league sources said Dumont was hearing from the man whose choice to sell the team to him opened the door to this disaster in the first place.

Cuban, who still owns 27 percent of the team, was known to be frustrated with Harrison for freezing him out after the sale and not consulting him on the choice to trade Dončic. League sources say he made his case to Dumont over the last several months that Harrison was steering the franchise in the wrong direction.

Cuban has yet to publicly react to the Harrison news, but finding out that one of Luka Dončić’s most ardent devotees had soured on Harrison in the last year makes plenty of sense. Cuban was also reportedly in a closed-door meeting with Dumont and team president Rick Welts the day before Harrison was fired, according to NBA insider Marc Stein.

Cuban, like many others, wasn’t looped in on the Dončić trade back in February and apparently received a call just before it was happening. Cuban, who sold his majority stake in the Mavericks in 2023, notably pushed Dallas to move up in the 2018 draft and trade for the Slovenian star back when he served as the team’s governor.

It’ll certainly be intriguing to hear Cuban’s first-hand thoughts on Harrison’s firing in the coming weeks.

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