The Dumb Zone FREE - DZ 2-4-25: Ethan Strauss explains why Nico Harrison probably isn't a GM and Brandon Aubrey back from the Pro Bowl PREVIEW

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Hear the entire episode of The Dumb Zone by subscribing at DumbZone.com or Patreon.com/TheDumbZoneBasketball author and overall genius, Ethan Strauss, joins us today to discuss whether Nico Harrison was fit to ever be a NBA GM. Brandon Aubrey is back from the Pro Bowl and tells Dan about Baker Mayfield. And we've got a couple "vehicle sized" asteroids headed towards Earth ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey now! What you are about to hear is a free preview of one of this week's premium episodes of The Dumb Zone. If you would like to hear this program in full, along with the full archive... Ah, shit. If you would like to hear this program in full, with the archive of all of our past episodes, you can subscribe at DumbZone.com. All right, joining us now... You know him from Substack. You know him from being on our show previously.

Oh my God. You know him as author of The Victory Machine, The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. Winners hang with winners. You know him as a guy who usually will hold his mic. Today he, oh okay, you picked it up. I just got a stand. I just got a stand. Winners. You know, he's the guy who usually will hold his mic today. He okay. You picked it up. I just got a stand.

I just got a stand. The great Ethan Strauss. Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure everything's set up. I'm a mess over Strauss. I'm trying to make you feel at home. You're the best, not me. With the song and me, you know, we're trying to make you feel comfortable here. I'm very comfortable except my mic is not working.

I was, you know what? Can you hear me by the? Can you hear me that just got better? Yeah? Okay, we actually just had the Cowboys kick her on from a Starbucks, and it was not great quality wise so you're the bar is low I'm a mess my wife has been nice enough to spruce up my office and though it has improved it in quality, I don't know exactly know where things are. But you guys should be the mess, not me with all you're going through. Thank you so much for having me on

and for playing my song. It's very thoughtful. I can't even believe you are so thoughtful considering the, God, man, I don't even know what to call it, the catastrophe, the basketball tragedy that you're all living through. Yeah, it goes beyond my wildest dreams of negative outcomes as a sports fan in a city.

There's nothing you could have ever predicted or constructed for me that I would have said was worse than this. This is as bad as it gets. And it's funny because you're a basketball lifer, you've been in and around the NBA a long time. It really seems to just come down to one guy not reading the room.

Which is, we're all looking for bigger explanations of that and I wanna talk about your piece. I have some theories that are not real estate related. But it really does just look like it comes down to there's a guy who's either an egomaniac, ignorant and asshole or some combination of all three. Yeah. I got a text from somebody who works for a team. I think it might've been yesterday and it was, I think a lot of people

just overthinking this and you, you alluded to the real estate ploy and it's almost when we see something shocking, we want it to be complicated and it's almost too, it's too dumb to process what happened. I think there are a few aspects to it and I, uh, you know, I'm giving you a little preview of what I'm writing right now, but I wrote an addendum to the thing I just wrote. I think one of them is this, because if I'm giving you a little preview of what I'm writing right now, because I wrote an addendum to the thing I just wrote. I think one of them is this, because if I'm saying maybe Nico Harrison was ill-prepared to be a general manager and not somebody with the background you'd want for that, he was a sneaker rep. I think to fans, maybe that doesn't mean a whole lot, and it's no different from being

an agent, but it is a particular kind of job kind of job. You're, you're managing talent. You're making Kobe Bryant feel really good. That's not an executive role. That's not Wayne big decisions. That's not dealing with the pain as Brad Stevens was talking about in an interview of, I love Marcus smart, but he's got to go. We need to present this more, you know, it's not that kind of job. And you're not in the NBA in that way. And even if you could say it's like being an agent,

the agent is in an adversarial circumstance. He's negotiating constantly. And so I don't think it was the right kind of job, but here's the thing. Somebody might ask, well, why didn't we know about it? The Mavericks went to the finals. They went to the conference finals. Why didn't we know about it? And I think you guys, you guys probably know, you guys probably know the reason. Some of you know, and it's that Mark Cuban was running the Dallas Mavericks. He was their GM. So ultimately what happened is that we didn't really know what Nico Harrison would be as a general manager until the real general manager,

who wasn't admitting he was the general manager, but was effectively the city's other Jerry Jones, shockingly left the building. And now we're seeing this is Nico Harrison management. It's making a trade that the entire league laughs at and shakes their heads in amazement at. entire league laughs at and shakes their heads in amazement at. Boy, that's a good point. Cuban, because we always said that when Donnie Nelson was here, you know, and Cuban is just like Jerry Jones, except he didn't have to have the title. But you know, even Jerry Jones has his guy, Will McClay, who kind of does all the legwork, does a lot of stuff that GMs do. But then in the end, Jerry is called

the GM. Whereas that's kind of what Donnie was. Donnie did a lot of the stuff. He initiates some trade talks, but in the end, it was Cuban. Cuban would throw in the, remember back in the day, it would be, he'll throw in an extra million to get this trade done or whatever. It was, bottom line, he made all the decisions in the end. He's the one that made the Steve Nass decision. He's the decision maker that said we would not trade Dirk for Shaq when that was kind of a rumored type thing. Or bring back Tyson. Or bring back Tyson Chandler. Yeah, it wasn't, and he was at the press conference saying it's my call even though he was not the GM. So I didn't even think about that, that actually Cuban is the one who did hire Nico and probably those initial Nico things were a lot Cuban.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Nico and Cuban, I believe, were designed to work in symbiosis. And you see a lot of this in the NBA where you'll have the recruiter and you'll have the decider, you see it at player agencies where you'll have. Somebody who is really in the back room and making all the contracts work. And when you've got the charismatic guy that's supposed to be wooing the players and they work together.

Cuban was obsessed with recruiting, as you guys know, and he liked somebody that could get him talent. Remember he was effectively in another unofficial tandem running the Mavericks with former power agent, Dan Fagan, rest in peace to Dan Fagan. But that was another situation where it was, Oh, Dan Fagan is going to get me the talent and I'm going to be the decider on these things. And so I believe the idea with Nico Harrison wasn't that he was going to get me the talent and I'm going to be the decider on these things. And so I believe the idea with Nico Harrison wasn't that he was going to make decisions about the basketball team.

It said he was going to use his Nike connections to get guys come into the Mavericks and even though Nico has done something I believe wholly disastrous, you could actually see that he's good with connections and good with Nike guys because Anthony Davis is foregoing his $6 million trade bonus. I think that's, that's an element of Nico's getting his guy to the Mavericks. Now that can work. That can work. Mark Cuban, Nico Harrison together, because even if the Cuban tenure with him as shadow

GM was, let's say, Rocky at points. You bring up the Tyson Chandler situation. That's a good example. You know, it's very up and down. You win the championship. Hooray, Mark Cuban. He blows up the team because he overreads the incoming CBA. Oh man, Mark, what are you doing?

But there's something to be said for 20 years, making basketball decisions and having an understanding of the league. Nico Harrison came in from the outside. He knew things about the NBA. He knew things about the Nike guys. He knew things about talent. But it's not the same as going to over 20 be this. It was never designed to be Nico Harrison running the Dallas Mavericks as an executive, making executive decisions. But when Mark sold the team and high-tailed it out of here, nobody was rude enough to bring this up as a problem. And Mark certainly wasn't.

He wasn't going to go, Hey, the guy I hired to be GM, it's not really a GM GM, but good luck with it. No, he didn't say that. He got out of here. Nico Harrison, Peter Principled, Luca Doncic out. That's what happened as I see it.