The Dumb Zone FREE - Mavs horrible PR job with Kirk Henderson and Ben Swanger, who was at the private Nico Harrison press conference | DZ 4-15-25 PREVIEW

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Hear the entire episode by subscribing to The Dumb Zone at DumbZone.com or Patreon.com/TheDumbZoneKirk Henderson and Ben Swanger join us to talk about the latest Mavs PR blunder which was Nico Harrison and Rick Welts holding a private press conference to a select number of Dallas media. Ben was there and takes us inside the room where "defense wins championships" was uttered 7 times ★ 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. Let's try now. We'll try it again. We of course have Kirk Henderson here from Mav's Moneyball and now joining us the managing editor of DCEO Magazine, Ben Swanger, who got that coveted invite. I don't know how I got it, but yes I did.

I was in that room with about 15 media members. We sat in there for about an hour. I think I have 57 minutes or so on my recording. So yeah, I was in that room. You're recording, huh? So there was recording. Yeah, so last night the invite came out about 6.45. It was, it came, it was really short.

It said no audio recording will be done. And then this morning, when we got into the room, MavsPR stood up and said there would be no live tweeting. There'll be no live streaming of this. And she made no mention of audio recording. So one of the folks in the room asked, can we record this? And she said, if you must, you can, but you cannot release the raw audio

But we will send a transcription of it later Which I still do not have the transcription of almost what is it almost three o'clock? So that's five hours later. Well, I can give you a preview Ben It's gonna say we were always at war with Eurasia and it's just gonna be Just a series of the same line over and over again. Well, the interesting thing about the transcript to me is that I've always thought the written word can really skew things.

It absolutely can. If you print it off a lot of the things we've ever said, it looks really, really bad. But if you can hear the tone or see the, you know, it's different. For them to not allow any of that, just seems like another backwards move by the man. It's a really backwards move, and Rick Welts is long in the tooth, and he was there today, correct?

He was, yes. It was Nico sitting at the head of the table, and to his left was Rick. So Rick's done this forever. And this is all speculating, but Rick may have thought, boy, Nico doesn't present this all that well from an audio video standpoint. Like, the Cleveland thing was a disaster.

We talked to him like a week after he got hired once before PJ Washington and Gafford and Lively. And Dan and I got, it was when we didn't know if Haralabob was still working for the team and all that. We had him on, and Dan and I got, it was when we didn't know if Haralibab was still working for the team and all that, we had him on, and Dan and I looked at each other after we were like, someone's gotta get to that guy and teach him how to deal with the media. Like he was way too honest,

he came off as kind of flippant, he gave us great answers, but it didn't seem like he was ready to present his case. And if any of these quotes I'm seeing from today are accurate, he still hasn't had that training. So that may be the reason for the text only. Today he was very stiff. His eyes were wondering around the room when questions were being asked. In his opening monologue, he said, hopefully, I can answer you guys, you guys's questions to the best of my ability today.

And he was just he was all around never seemed comfortable to me. He thanked us all for being there with which seemed kind of forced, forced, like someone told him, hey, make sure to thank these guys for being here. But I came away from this discussion just thinking he just doesn't seem very comfortable in front of a group of people answering questions, which, you know, I got the email and I was like, why not just call a customary press conference? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Yeah, so what was the, I mean, you were in there for an hour. Yeah. I'll paint the picture. I'll paint the picture for you guys. So, uh, on one side of the room, there was a breakfast spread of croissants, of coffee. I don't, I don't think

a single person touched, touched the food. Uh, you know, the main course main course was right there in front of us. It was Nico. I think Rick Welts answered probably four or five questions and Nico answered the other 30 to 40. There was a couple sparring matches between Tim McMahon and Nico in that discussion room, which is probably in that discussion room, which is probably not what the transcription is going to come across as. But there was a couple times where Tim was the second closest to Nico. So picture ahead of the table, Nico's on the left directly to his, on his right arm was Newy Scruggs and then there was Tim McMahon right there second closest to him and Tim McMahon was pushing on a couple things but one of them was the training staff that Nico has let go out of the building and McMahon was trying to get some honesty out of him and he you

know McMahon said I just want logic from you. And Nico was just not going to give it to him. And same thing with the trade. He said, I just want some logic around this trade. And Nico said, I have it down seven times in my recording, defense wins championships. Seven times he said those three words just as a dead pan answer, nothing more, nothing less. Wow. Yeah.

So any hope for the, the conversation we were having a minute ago, Kirk of like maybe the organization is starting to reposition this and, and realize the, the headwinds and the currents out there. Doesn't, doesn't feel like we're making progress on the relating to the fan aspects of it. There there's a phrase you mentioned, Ethan Sherwood Strauss earlier. He of ESPN, he likes to use the phrase double down, don't apologize. And that is where we are.

And that is where we may live until things get bleak enough for a drastic change. Was there any, I'm sorry, Ben, go ahead. No, you go ahead and take it. Well, I was going to say, was there any like, admitting that the aftermath has not been great and we haven't handled everything. Correct. Yeah. Like if there was something you could do different, would you type thing? That question was asked and the answer was no. It was, do you regret this trade?

It was no. Uh, there was questioning of, uh, you know, what they asked someone asked him. About Luca as a person and what he meant to the city of Dallas. And it, it stuck out to me that Nico said. It was after the trade that he fully realized just how much Luca meant to the city. Sweet. Sweet.

He was pretty far away from the situation. So how could he be fully versed on that? So that sounds kind of like a yes. I realize something didn't go the way I thought it was. Kurt, what were you going to say? Strikes you as what? Strikes me as a after, you know, when Seth Curry went to Nike for his presentation, it striked me as, as Nico probably uttering the phrase, well, I guess his name is not Seth Curry.

It's Steph Curry. Just the little details matter with, with him. And one of the, the, the quotes that struck me the most Mike Curtis, the Dallas morning news has a question. Um, you know, the, does Harrison have any concerns about the ability to attract top talent in the future? Yada, yada. And he says something along the lines of part of the fire Nico chants, although

you would rather the fans cheer for the team and me not be the story. It's a great fan base and you need that fan base to win. I think it's an attraction, yada, yada, yada. Oh, one of the problems that, that I sort of get from all this, just me as a, as a fan is I really can't help but shake the feeling that he needs to be the hero. In this story, he keeps saying, I'm, I'm not a hero. I it's not me. It's keeps saying, I'm not a hero. It's not me, it's not me, but it's his vision,

it's his choice, his plan, his execution, but he wants the credit, but not the criticism. And I can't handle that personally. Yeah, you know what? It's interesting, if we were to wind back the comments, if you go back to when they acquired Kyrie, a move that was panned widely at the time by probably everyone here, with good reason too, by the way.

We were evaluating the Kyrie we knew, not the one that he became. But at that point, Nico said something to the question of is this not a huge risk? He said, it's a huge risk not to make this move. And I was like, okay, that's a little bit apocalyptic, like you feel that you're pulling the strings of the university, but okay, whatever.

But then when he made this trade and he was asked about it and he said, yeah, you know, they would have saluted me for doing nothing. They would have saluted me if I just stood pat. It's clear that there's some level of hero complex here. My friend would call this just like business school disease. Maybe Ben knows about this from covering that world, that there is a desire among people with ego,

a lot of time it's men, where you get to a certain point and you're like, I'm the fucking guy. Like this can only work if I shake things up. The idea that things can just work if you're a steward of them is not sexy. And it definitely seemed to me like Nico has bought into, I mean, just look at what he just said. No, I think the fans are super passionate.

They're yelling, fire me. I don't know that that means they're on board. Who wouldn't want to play for that fan base? They're fired up, man. That's a Jack Donahue quote. Like that's something out of, the pilot of 30 Rock, he goes in and says, sometimes you got to take something

that works perfectly well and make it your own. The Dumbs of.