The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Tim MacMahon Talks Luka Dončić, Nico Harrison, and his New Book "The Wonder Boy" | 4.23

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

On today’s episode, Tim MacMahon of ESPN joins Bomani Jones to discuss his new book The Wonder Boy. They start off the show discussing Dirk Nowitzki's relationship with Luka Dončić and why Nowitzki was against the trade happening (7:40). Tim continues to share how both Rick Carlisle and Mark Cuban lost the Dallas Mavericks locker room which led to other roster changes including acquiring Kristaps Porziņģis (16:03). They round out the show with Tim saying why the Kyrie Irving trade was initially controversial but ending up working out great for Dallas (30:48) and if there is anything Nico Harrison can do to recover his image after trading away Luka Dončić? (38:18) Link to Tim MacMahon's book The Wonder Boy: Luka Doncic and the Curse of Greatness - https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/tim-macmahon/the-wonder-boy/9781538740712/ . . . Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media: http://lnk.to/therighttime Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Support the Show: Discover faster, more reliable search with Perplexity today. Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at perplexity.com! https://pplx.ai/bomani-jones Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code BOMANI. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Go to zbiotics.com/BOMANI to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use BOMANI at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original presented by perplexity. My name is Bomani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. He only gives us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is that time of week where we have a guest join us. He works for ESPN covering the NBA, but he has got a book out now called The Wonder Boy. It is a look at the life in times. Aluka Dachich, Tim McMahon. How are you, sir?

Howdy, partner. I appreciate you having me. I'm here in Oklahoma City where I understand you have a lineage of legendary portion. No, my mom's there. Actually, the last time I was there was last May. Oh, you gave my mom an honorary degree. I didn't think I would live long enough to see like my mom on one page and Toby Keith on the other side. Yeah, I was there with you on. Yeah, you know, well, I was there until, you know, I got a little mad at him about five years ago and I haven't come back yet. But I can't. I'm the one. I'm the one. I was the one Texas fan in a whole OU household, and that doesn't, that didn't go over so well as so many places. But you have written this book about Luke. I want to talk about the book before we get into like what's going on with them as a team right now. But I found it to be interesting that you said that the book came about because somebody called Brian Winhurst about writing this book and Brian sent him over your way. That is the whole boy Hall of Fame move right there.

That's my guy, Wendy. He lets me, he lets me come on the hoop collector with him on a regular basis. So he gave me now i really think what happened though was wendy didn't want to hear me bitching and moan and whining about you you're on my turf now buddy so yeah he he he hooked it up you know he he's he's a facilitator he's a distributor you know he the man gets his buckets he's like lucca he can give you 34 but he's going to get double figure assist too now i was curious though that or i guess somewhat surprised that that wouldn't have been something that you had thought of sooner like i imagine with beat writers when somebody like lucca shows up the whoever the The first one is to write the book, like Marcus Thompson did one on Steph Curry and Kevin

Durand with the Warriors, for example. And I imagine in my head that you guys are there, like somebody's just got to be the first one to say, okay, I'm going to go ahead and do it. I was a little surprised that nobody had jumped up sooner. Well, I'll be honest with you. Writing a book is not something I necessarily was, it wasn't necessarily a goal of mine. It ended up being a business opportunity that presented itself. And, you know, then if you're going to do it, it's got to become a passion project at that point. But when they came to me, I knew Luca wasn't going to sit down and cooperate. It wasn't going to be some kind of traditional biography.

So I started thinking, okay, if I'm going to write a book about him, what could I do that, one, I would be interested in writing, that I think people would be interested in reading, and then I could execute without, you know, really his cooperation. Obviously, his voice is in there because I covered his whole career, but without his cooperation. And, you know, to me, it was the pressure on a franchise when you draft, to Prodigy through the prism of Luca and the Dallas Mavericks, you know, kind of build it

or they might eventually leave. Now, I never imagine this little plot twist at the very end after the first print run, by the way, of you built it successfully, despite all kinds of drama, dysfunction, personnel missteps and mistakes. You put a contender around this guy. You were set up for a nice long run, coming fresh off a finals. A nice long run as a contender. And you decided to dump him. There was a lot of time during it, because this book was like a summer project for the last few years. There were times I thought the book would end in a trade. I just never imagined it would be him getting backstabbed, blindsided.

I thought it might be because they failed miserably to build around him. And he looked around and was just like, sheesh, I got to get somewhere else. The way this went down is not a script development that I anticipated. Well, first I want to applaud you for writing it because I think there's the idea of writing a book for me is the most daunting proposition that there is. So like the discipline and everything it takes to do this. And I know it's hard enough to write for a magazine with how arduous the editing process is. So, you know, I offer the initial salute on that. And I want to walk people like through the story a little bit because I think something that's a little bit underrated about what the Mavericks have pulled off is that it's almost like what the Green Bay Packers have done with quarterbacks.

the ability to go from having 20 years of Dirk to then having Luca, which is kind of like going through the Brett Farrer era and then getting to Aaron Rogers, except I think what makes it more interesting is that Brett Farr was a super handful. And I remember a conversation you and I had a long time ago. I forget what it was about, but it was about some player what was going on. And you were just like, yeah, you know, it's been a little different for us in Dallas because we've had Dirk, who was just the consummate everything that you would want a superstar to be, like a prodigy, but not quite like Luca, where there was.

were questions about Dirk coming into the league that you didn't have so much with Luca. But what was it like to, I think to kind of give people background about the Luca era, covering or being around a team that was led by Dirk Novinsky, who I think now time is starting to show that we actually probably underrated a little bit. It may have been the best player in the NBA four stretch. Yeah. And so, you know, Dirk was on his last legs, obviously, when Luca came in.

And, you know, it was like Dirk very well. only pass it towards. Dirk recognized the guy's talent right away. And Dirk would tell us, like, listen, you can't compare us as talents. Like this, Luca came in as the most accomplished European prospect ever. I mean, the dude won EuroLeague MVP, your league Final 4 MVP as a freaking 18-year-old. You know, where Dirk was playing for the Worsburg X-rays in Germany's second division, you know, Dirk got over here and was like, oh my God, I don't belong. Should I go home? And Luca got over here, it's like, this league's easy. I'm lighting the world on fire.

And it was funny because Dirk was always very willing, I would even say eager to kind of be a mentor, but he didn't want to like push things down Lucas's throat. So the year they played together, it wasn't like Luca was soaking up his wisdom. Let's say, hey, Dirk, teach me the ropes. Luca was just lighting the league on fire. And Dirk's like, hey, man, like if you got any questions, I'm here. And then, you know, Dirk was kind of the butt of Lucas joke. So they had a bond, but the mentor relationship really didn't develop until the years after Dirk left.

And like the things the Mavericks would have loved for Luca to pick Dirk's brain about, you know, I mean, sure, kind of the face of the franchise, you know, the spokesman stuff, that would have been nice. But really, the diet, the conditioning, the discipline. Well, there's still issues, but there are issues for a guy who hadn't hit his prime yet. has been a five-time first-team all-MBA selection and has led one team to a conference finals and a completely different supporting cast to the finals. So there's flaws there, and it's a very different personality, very different players. But I can just tell you this, of the few people in Dallas who had doubts about whether you could build a championship team around Luca or who didn't believe in him as a face of the franchise, Dirk damn sure was not in

that group. He, and, and listen, Dirk's attended two games since his trade, two NBA games. One was Lucas debut at the Lakers in Los Angeles. The other was Lucas returned to Dallas. I think those actions speak pretty damn loudly about how Dirk feels about Luca Dantzich. Well, the thing I wondered about with the idea that Dirk could give him this wisdom was, I don't think that it was ever going to become a thing for Luca until for one reason or another he hit his head up against the wall, right? Like you could, Dirk could come say these are all the things I did. And of course you needed to do these things, right? Like, you know, you are not me.

I don't have to do this like we saw it. Michael Vick is a great example of football and all of this. And I wonder, in fairness to all parties involved, I don't think there was any way that you were ever going to explain to Luca. Why would you've been doing all this time isn't going to be good enough when clearly is pretty goddamn good? Well, and that's the thing. Like, Luca came in and he was a star right away.

Rookie of the year, one of the best teenage seasons. that we've ever seen in the history of the league, like, you know, put it up with, like, it was him and LeBron when you put the numbers up. And then the very next year, he couldn't buy a beer legally in America yet. And he was an MVP candidate. Like, it came easy. And so, yeah, like, if Dirk was sitting here saying, hey, you've got to change your ways, he'd have tuned him out, you know?

And, like, Carlisle couldn't tell him anything. Nobody could really tell them anything because it's hard to say, you've got to change your ways when he was a top three, top five player in the league as a 20-year-old. And again, success came awfully easily to him. Now, could he be better? Could there be, you know, are there things he can improve? Sure. But it's hard for me to sit here and tell you, Luke's way hasn't worked because it has, you know, is it like the roadmap that you'd recommend? Not necessarily, but damn. time first team all NBA selection and the guy's not hit his prime yet. Yeah. Well, I think it's also interesting in this as the story goes, the Rick Carlisle element is interesting because we noticed about

Rick Carlisle. People forget this. The pistons fired Rick Carlisle 22 years ago for being an asshole. Like it really came down to that. They were really, really good. They had gone really far. And it's one thing to get fired for being an asshole. So another thing to get fire for being an asshole and they replace it with Larry Brown. Like what they were really saying is it's not simply that you like cross over the threshold for what we're talking. about here. You are otherworldly, but he's a great coach that won the championship with Mavericks, but Jason Kidd was the only player that he had really allowed to run his offense. We saw when Rajad Rondo was in Dallas. Those two guys, whoever idea was for them

two to play together, you didn't pay close enough attention to what it is. And then Carlisle winds up in this situation again, except us with the young prodigy, and he figured out pretty quickly what the power dynamics were in that one. Well, he figured it out pretty quickly and he figured it out too late. Yes. Right? Because, you know, I detailed, there was a disaster of a team meeting in Toronto, fresh off a loss in Atlanta in Lucas' fourth game of his career.

Literally, you're a week into Lucas' career. They blow a 26-point lead on T&T against the Hawks. And Carlisle just flipped out the next day in the team meeting. You know, and it's like your typical, like, Hotel Ballroom, you know, Ritz Carlton Ballroom film session. and Carlisle's just getting progressively more and more and more pissed off. That's when he calls out Dennis Smith Jr. You know, the lottery pick the previous year,

guy who basketball fit with Luca wasn't good, but like Dennis is a good kid. He like welcomed Luca. Like he's playing Fortnite. I didn't even like Fortnite. But the kid wants to play Fortnite. Cool. I welcome him to Dallas.

I'm trying to make him feel comfortable, whatever. And that's when Rick called Dennis Smith, you're jealous of Luca. He's like, well, we're cool. What are you talking about? And then he just starts cussing and fussing. And it got to a point where it got so heated and Rick was so out of control that DeAndre Jordan of all people, another guy a week into his Dallas tenure, the guy who left the Mavericks at the Free Agency altar a few years earlier stands up.

So, coach, you can't talk to us like that. And Carlisle damn near lost his job off of all this. He definitely lost control of the team. And he really lost respect from Luca. So he cracked the foundation of the relationship with Luca one week into Luca's rookie year. And look, Luca, if he's out on you, like he doesn't do a good job of masking his emotions. Let's just say that. And then Carlisle later on realized, okay, hey, if this is a power struggle, this guy, this is one I could lose.

And so his strategy for, you know, the next almost four years was kissing Lucas' butt regardless of circumstances. So he was completely incapable of trying to hold Luca accountable because of a mistake he made a week into his career. And so, you know, that dynamic was difficult. Having said that, Rick also deserves credit for accelerating Luca's assent to superstardom. When Luca got in the league, people didn't think he was a point guard. You know, there was an executive from a team that had a high lottery pick I was talking to right after the draft. And his comp was, he no Turquilu. You know, they thought he was like a play.

Seriously, could you imagine? I mean, a good player. Right. Sheesh. I mean, Luca was putting up, you know, Turkleu's best numbers as a rookie. But, you know, people thought, hey, he's a playmaking forward. He's not going to be quick enough to be a primary ball hand. And Rick realized pretty quickly, like, nah, we need to give this dude the keys.

And we need to basically, they change the offense. Okay, Luca, here's the rock. We're spacing this thing around you. It's high pick and roll and, you know, you're running the show. And Rick deserves credit for recognizing the talent for sure, but also for putting an offensive system in place that maximize Lucas talent right away. So as much as they butted heads, Luca did benefit from playing for Rick. I think there are two things you said in that that were interesting.

One, Dennis Smith Jr. is a great example of how you have to be careful making assumptions about one's personality based on the way he plays basketball. because, you know, and it came through very much in the infamous Cuban quote about how a rarecan players just want to get their mixtapes right and everything else. He might as well have said, I'm talking about him. And it was probably wildly unfair given the things that he was trying to do to help things work. But the other part that you got on is something I talk about on this show a lot. It's really easy to lose an NBA team.

You can lose an NBA team just as quickly as you said right there. Yeah. And again, Rick was a championship coach at the time. But, you know, he said, and this is a meeting where you got Dirk and J.J. Borea, you know, guys who played for Rick for a long time and they're just, their jaws drop. You know, you got Harrison Barnes guy. You know, he's a vet. Like, he's like, what the hell?

And yeah, there's just, there's so much going on with the Mavericks at all. And it continues to this day with a completely different cast of characters, which is amazing. But, you know, you mentioned that quote from Mark Cuban. And when he talked about, I'm going to ship my son to Slovenia. They learned how to play basketball. It was so stupid. And it was Cuban just like, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of pressing play and record or press and record and let Cuban flap his gums. Let's just be honest.

But this is a classic case of Cuban's just talking. He's not making sense. He's just flapping his gums. Number one, Luca left Slovenia for his adolescence to, you know, really learn how to play basketball, like to go to Real Madrid. So San Jose shipping to Slovenia, that didn't make sense. But it definitely pissed off a lot of play. players in that locker room. And Harrison Barnes stood up and, you know, said, gave a quote to Mark Spears, you know, my colleague at ESPN with Anscape and basically said how disrespectful that he thought

it was. And they definitely felt like it was directed at Dennis Smith Jr. who was like, okay, listen, the basketball fits not working out. Okay, you shouldn't have picked him in the lottery the previous year. It was clear. His days in Dallas were numbered at the time. But damn, you don't have to treat him like crap on the way. The kid's not done anything wrong. He's trying. He's a good dude. You know, he's like I said, he's welcoming Luca with open arms. I'm going to show you around the city. I'm like, and so they felt like they were really doing Dennis dirty. Um, and they, you know, Harrison and Wesley Matthews and these other guys, they felt disrespected by that. Like, you know, and Cuban, Rick lost the locker room with the, uh, you know, with that team meeting in Toronto.

and had to kind of hand the locker room relations over to Jamal Mosley, which then Rick felt like Mosley was gunning for his job later. That became a whole, you know, part of the Game of Thrones thing that played out there. But then Cuban lost that locker room. And, you know, Bob Volgaris, kind of a infamous figure in Maverick's lore. But Bob Volgaris says, you know, in hindsight, Cuban losing the locker room allowed him to talk Cuban into basically dumping a bunch of veterans, including Harrison Barnes and retrofitting the roster around Luca. Now, the other thing, though, is in this whole mix, Donnie Nelson and Cuban made this deal to go get Chris Staps for Zingas, you know, like as Luca was still unpacking his bags, basically, from Europe.

And that was a trade everybody in Dallas was fired up about with, like, Volgaris wasn't on board with it necessarily. but the vast majority, the overwhelming opinion in Dallas was, man. Dirk's on his way out and he's handed the baton to two guys who have, you know, two euros who are going to be legendary players. And it ain't the way it played out with Porzing because that was the first of many, many pretty significant personnel missteps the Mavericks made. And yet they still succeeded to put a finals team together around this guy. Yeah, like there's a lot of chaos with the team.

And then when you start talking about Bob, for people who don't know, Bob Bogaris is a very rich professional gambler. Like the idea that the house, you know, they did not build the house because it's built for us to win. Bob figured out a whole bunch of different ways to win and became a quantitative analyst as much as anything else with the Mavericks. And if you follow- Yeah, the Shadow GM is what he became.

Yes, yes. And if you have followed Bob on Twitter over the years, he's not a sentimental guy, right? Like, this is, this is what it is. And he will tell you whatever it is, that he happens to think. And so you put a cold-hearted quant guy, a gambler in place, he'll do whatever, right? And so that was an interesting observation. It's like, Cuban has made these guys mad and they don't like him anymore. And so now Bob can move in here

and get these guys out. Now, what is interesting is then some of the reporting, and we'll get to more of this later, after Luca was traded, was that everybody had a measure of skepticism early about Luca and his conditioning. And it is a bit of a running theme before you get to the time of the trade, that this is a thing that did get on people's nerves. Like, what I found interesting in reading the book was that you can see the things that ultimately proved to be problems later, but I don't think you or anybody is reading it, and it don't think that you were looking at them at that time as this is going to be the problem, or at the very least, this is going to be the problem soon.

Well, and it was certainly a source of frustration and definitely has been a kind of a running theme throughout his career. But his weight fluctuations, they're overshadowed by the fact that this guy's put up as good a numbers as anybody in the history of the game has through age 26. I mean, you know, like, hey, his weight fluctuated last year when he was averaging a league leading 34 points, 10 rebounds, 9 assists, when he led the postseason points, rebounds, assists, rebounds, assists and steals, never been done before, and took a team to the NBA finals. His petulance has been a running theme, you know, the ranting at the refs and sometimes letting that affect his focus.

Like, the guy has, his flaws are as apparent as his talent. But his talent, damn sure, overshadows the flaws. There's people in Dallas who think, like, I'm a Luca hater or like a Luca critic. You know, I've gotten like, how could you write a book about Luca? You've hated on him his whole career. I've covered him honestly his whole career. And, you know, I can honestly say I was his shock. I knew how frustrated the Mavericks were with his conditioning.

And I was still completely flabbergasted by the trade just because you don't give up that kind of generational talent unless he's put in the gun to your head. And he wasn't. He wasn't. Despite the fraying over the relationship with Nico Harrison and that definitely happened for a variety of reasons. Luka wanted to spend his whole career in Dallas. He wanted to have a statue out there next to Dirk's. Like the one thing about Luca is that he does have in common with Dirk, a strong sense of loyalty. And even when I was reporting that there was fear in the organization that Luca was going to ask for a trade if they didn't get the ship turned around,

you know, the year they had to tank to keep that top 10 protected pick, it wasn't out of disloyalty. It was just because, like, dude, if it's a complete failure of a franchise around you, like, how could you not consider looking elsewhere? But, you know, I included a chapter just on the Slovenian national team. And I thought that was important because that illustrates his loyalty. It's a case-by-case thing playing for your national team for almost every superstar in the league. He's an exception. And he didn't have to play for Slovenia. He had kind of his international free agency. He had a Spanish passport, had never played an official tournament for Slovenia. he could easily hopped on the bandwagon of an established powerhouse in Spain, never even discussed

it with like his best friends, the Hernan Gomez brothers. So, yeah, there's a whole lot going on here. But the idea that Nico's thrown out there, well, we don't know if he was going to sign that Supermax. Yeah, you do. You knew he was going to. You didn't want to give it to him. All right.

Now, coming up next, we're going to talk more about this and what's happened with the trade and everything that has panned out, which is. the most enrapturing personnel situation literally in the history of the NBA. We'll talk about why in just a second. This episode is presented by Perplexity. Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that searches the internet in real time to deliver fast, clear, high-quality answers. Unlike legacy search engines that respond with the list of links, perplexity skips straight to the answers you need explained in everyday language that's easy to understand with sources and citations.

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that expire in 14 days limited time offer. All right, we are back with Tim McMahon. Check out his book, The Wonder Boy, on Luke Goddust. He's just got through reading it this morning. It's a good read. It gives you a good background of what's going on with Luca.

Plus, there is a new chapter that is added in the digital editions for the trade that Tim had no idea was coming because the book would have gone a little bit differently, I think, in the path. And that is actually one thing I'm curious about in writing it. If you start this after the trade, Do you think the tone that the book starts and ends with is a little bit different because you're inclined to kind of go back and see different signs that you didn't think we're going to turn out the way that they did?

You know, it's funny because this book I wrote over the course of a few summers. And I definitely began writing it with the thought that it could end with a luca trade. I just thought, you know, like I just said, it was going to be because he was going to have to ask for a trade because the Mavericks were going to completely fail around. I started writing it right after they bungled the Brunson situation. Right. Which, you know, coming off a conference finals, you lose the second best player for nothing. You know, that's, there's a whole chapter on just how badly they screwed up that situation. So I don't know how much would be different as far as how I wrote the book because it does kind of capture all the pressure, all the drama, all this function.

It's just a crazy plot twist at the end. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you. I would be dishonest for me to be writing it and say, okay, we should have seen this coming, you know, that sort of a thing. And then, you know, that last chapter that you mentioned, just to get it out there, the people who buy the actual hard copies, check my Twitter account. There's a pinned, the pin thing is a link where you can get that copy sent to you, the chapter sent to you via PDF with proof of purchase. I've been a little frustrated at the lack of promotion of that by the publishing company, just to be honest with. It's a pretty important chapter the way things played out. Scotch, right?

Yes. Well, especially because the timing is going to make people want to get the book. And then they're like, yeah, we need even necessarily get around to... Hold on. Hold on. It ended with Luca Happy. What happened? Right, right. Like every example I'm thinking of that's analogous of this involves like a climactic death in history. But it's just kind of like, okay, this is where the book ends? Like, it stops right here in this place? It's the whole play right until Abraham Lincoln got shot. That is the one historical. example where somebody gets killed that we are allowed to analogize with freedom, right?

Like my initial thought was, and then the car went into Dealey Plaza, right? But I think that was still hits people in a weird place. It's only been 60, 60 something years or such. That was still a little tender. But there is a JFK reference in that final chapter. It ends with the protest before AD's debut, you know, the first home game after the trade. And there's this prepubescing kid. They're passing the bullhorn around. People are yelling and screaming and and this kick. I've been a Mavericks fan my whole life. This is worse than goddamn JFK. You just got here, man.

Now, I want to ask this, so we get to the trade, and skipping a few steps along the way, the Mavericks make the finals. They make the trade for Kyrie Irving, right? Because I think something worth talking about with Luca is that Mark Cuban, in my eyes, has always sounded like a better owner than he was in actual application.

Like, there have been a lot of bad moves made the inability to sign these free agents. I think part of why we underrate Dirt is I think we underrate what he had to do largely by himself, really in those years from like 05 to 09 or such, when you look around the rest of the roster and God bless Michael Finley, but no, that's not supposed to be your second best player. From 05 for really the rest of his career, even when they won the title, Dirk was the only all-star on that roster.

Jay Kidd was like 38 years old at time. Yeah, and Dirk, hey, don't be giving your money back to these people. That don't mean they, I would give this money back so you could get me a champion. Dirk, a cautionary tale in that regard. But they did kind of figure this out in 24. And I think this is kind of why the trade to me is so interesting is that Nico made the move to get Kyrie Irving in 2023 that I would not. I would have advised against, but they bet on the talent. And bless Kyrie's heart.

The dude that was in Brooklyn is not the dude that has been there in Dallas. He has done everything that has been asked of him. it is gone from there. And I think Nico put together an interesting team that made the finals and the kind of team that to me is like, oh, you have some insight on how to build a team because that's not the team that everybody would have built to figure out how to get there. But after the trade and the whole defense wins championships, if that was the imprint that he would have had, I would have thought that we would have heard a lot more about his team building philosophy before this. And that was one part I thought was interesting in the book was that

I didn't come away from that feeling like, oh, we know what kind of team Nico wants to have. and now suddenly he has this strident idea and it doesn't involve having Luke. Well, and while Mark Cuban had control of the franchise, like you can have the GM title. You're the GM when he wants to let you be the GM. I mean, Cuban's still running the show. And so it wasn't until midway through last season when Cuban gave up the majority share, you know, he said he was going to keep basketball operations control.

That wasn't reality, you know, I mean, it just wasn't the case. that's when Nico was able to not only take control of basketball ops, but frankly, box Cuban out. Nico did a very intentional job of boxing out and keeping Cuban completely out of the mix. But look, like you said, the Kyrie trade, controversial at the time, didn't pay immediate dividends. They have to tank that year to keep the top 10 protected pick. But Kyrie's been phenomenal in Dallas. And Kyrie and Luca formed a great chemistry. They have a bond.

You know, Kyrie really did a great job of kind of learning how to play off of Luca. Luca adapted to, you know, play faster and realize, hey, a simpler thing as a look-ahead pass, you know, get the ball of his hands, play faster. That empowers Kyrie, empowers his teammates. And that was like one of the great stories of last season was just how much that duo clicked and how much they enjoyed each other. It's kind of an iconic image where they beat Houston in overtime late in the season. and they kind of collapse into each other's arms, you know.

And it was a great duo. And then, you know, Nico made moves around like the rest of the starting line up in rotation that worked. The pick of Derek lively, trading down to get him at 12 overall. Dude, that's a perfect pick and roll partner for Luca. Now, you know, Nico wants to talk about how his trades didn't work right away or weren't popular right away. He leaves out, like, they tried to get. give up two first for Kyle Kuzma. Okay? And then when that fell through because somehow Kuzma had a mythical no trade clause

that the Wizards let him use, then he pivoted to one of those firsts is going to Daniel Gafford, for Daniel Gafford. One of those first is going for PJ Washington. But suddenly you've got this big athletic front court, all these lob targets, all these guys who can really run. You know, Derek Jones Jr. as a minimum was a huge addition last year. And so you've surrounded Luca with this long athletic supporting cast that fit around him. And the whole defense wins championship thing, it's like, dude, the Mavericks had the number one defense in the league for the last 20 games last year. That continued into the playoffs.

They didn't lose to the Celtics because their defense fell apart. And I know you can put up a low light reel of Luca getting blown by. They lost because they didn't hit shots. And if defense wins championships, and that's just, that's it. That's the only thing you can do. That's the way we're building this team. Why did you get Clay Thompson this summer? Like, come on, man.

I know Clay's been a hell of a defender throughout the course of his career, but not coming off in Achilles and an ACL in his mid-30s. So, like, you're at, what I'm trying to tell you is Nico's plan has been very fluid. And I think he talked during this exit interview press conference about how process-oriented is. The Luca trade was not process-oriented. The Luca trade was emotional. It was emotional. It was irrational. And it was illogical. And I can tell you for sure, it was illogical because I pressed Nico on very flawed logic in the deal. And all he can say is defense wins championships. Or like, oh, you don't like the trade. We put together a championship caliber roster. You saw it for two and a half quarters. Two and a half quarters. Brother, I saw a finals run last year. Which one makes me believe more? Come on, man. Well, my question about the emotion behind the trade, and it seems obvious that I would not have made that trade if for no other reason than these people might kill you.

Like this is like the idea that the fans don't matter. The example I made as I tried to come up with it, I appreciate you willing to make the hard decision. But I grew up in Atlanta Hawks fan. And when they traded Dominique at 34 years old and a tort Achilles, I never came back. And so I had to stop and say, okay, like the Dallas fans, been a little over the top. But I can't pretend as though I don't understand like the basis of the feeling. What seems surprising to me is there aren't that many people who are around this team on a regular basis that could sense that the frustration was such that a move like this would happen.

Like even with hindsight, was there any point that people could look back and say, yo, I think Nico's going to do like might do something wild with this. You know, after Christmas and that was Lucas fourth calf strain in 28 months, same calf, left calf. and Nico definitely blamed poor conditioning for that. Lucas people said, hey, he's come back too soon from injuries, including the left heel, he's whatever. So there was this divide between Nico and Lucas Camp for sure. And the level of frustration that Nico had at that time was high.

By the way, J.Kids was too. And, you know, I think J.Kitt's kind of trying to distance himself from this. Yes, he is. The kid's frustration level was, I can just tell you, Luke, was also quite high. But, you know, I was told at the time, hey, You know, if we got to trade him. And obviously, it's off the record, but they trade him now, so I'll say it. If we got to trade him, we'll trade his ass.

And I'm like, no, you won't. You know, seriously, I rolled my eyes. I'm like, okay, you're huff and you're puffing and you ain't blowing that house down. Give me a break. Because it's a ludicrous thing to consider, you know, and how many times when have you been talking to somebody and they huff, they puff, they're just talking shit. They ain't going to do anything. And I thought this was one of those cases.

And then six weeks later, my phone. things. What? They did it. What? They actually did it? Again, I was told, you know, venting, we'll trade this guy if we have to. But here's the thing. You didn't have to. You didn't have to. You went to the finals months ago, you know? I mean, okay, the weight fluctuates, you know, there's some defiance. I get it. It's frustrating. Typically, historic production gives a guy a little bit of leeway. And I will just say, you know, and I kind of included this in the last chapter, there are a lot of people who are very strong defenders of Luca who have either been in that organization or remain in that organization. And I'm not going to tell you Lucas low maintenance.

I'm just going to tell you on the superstar spectrum in the NBA, he's not toward the top. He's not. I mean, you can go down the list of superstars. There are several who are more high maintenance than Luca. You know, somebody in the in the book says, ask Miami if they'd have rather dealt with Luke or Jimmy Butler for the last few months, you know, leading up to the trade deadline. That's just one example. You don't give up that kind of talent if he's excited about spending his entire career with your franchise. Now, see, he has an interesting counterpoint because Jimmy's people will tell you he was very excited about staying there. They just didn't want to give him the money to do it. Well, and again, one, I would say that kind of talent.

Luke is a bigger talent than Jimmy Butler. He just is. And two, the obvious thing is Jimmy Butler is a decade older. Yes. I mean, they could have had a decade plus run into the future with Luca. And this is where the logic really falls apart. Nico Harrison's own words, his own words, he created a three to four year time frame. And like, forget what's happened. Obviously, this, the first year got blown up when Kyrie went down with the knee injury. Next year's in jeopardy. that three to four year time frame, you gave up to successfully build a contender around Luca, your first round draft capital on 27, 28, 29, and 30. So just as the credit card bill is coming due, your time frame ends, and then like, how is that? And I asked Nico straight up in this like weird, no cameras allowed roundtable thing. How is that in the best interest of the Dallas Mavericks?

He just kept repeating defense wins championships. So is there any recovery possible for Nico? Because at this point, I don't just believe that he has cost himself this job. I don't know what other job he's supposed to get. He obviously can't go back to Nike. I believe Lucas still has shoes there. That's not going to happen. He can't get a job with another NBA team right now.

I've never seen a backlash against an executive like this ever before. Like the closest I could give you was Donald Sterling 24. Like is that level of vitriol that he receives. So where does he go from here? Because I do think the roster they had if Kyrie was healthy would be an interesting one to watch. I thought they were going to be fine in the short run. But then, of course, you also then reported this week for ESPN that the medical staff is the issue there and that the medical staff that Nikko has brought in may be part of the reason why they were down to eight players earlier at this point. So what do you do from now if you are Nico Harrison?

Yeah, the medical staff is certainly an issue. I would say it's on a list. I don't know. I don't know. And look, man, Nico's obviously, he was running Nike's North American basketball ops for a long time. That's a well-paying position. So it was being a general manager of an NBA team. You know, maybe just rides off into the sunset. I don't know. But there's, like, I was talking to somebody who's in an ownership group of another Western Conference team recently. And they basically said, I hate to say it, but this is going to be his legacy. This trades his legacy. Like, he's never going to work in the NBA again.

And like, there are people around the league who are just like, you have to fire them. Like, you, that's the only way to begin the healing process with the Maddox fan base. But Patrick Dumont is not there. He's not there yet. Now, the Enneco we trust era has ended. You know, he wants him to bring in an experience exec. And, you know, like, I think he's realized like, okay, we've got to have some checks and balances that weren't in place.

I think this has been a very educational experience for Patrick Dumont, his first full year as an NBA governor. Also, the realization of, hey, in this world, management's not the stars. The stars are the guys on the floor. That's what this whole league revolves around. The superstars are the guys who drive business in this league, not the bosses. Well, my thinking is, Dumont can't move on from this because he's just too in on this, right? Like this is, this is, this is, they were in on this together and they have to answer. I can't believe Nico said this out loud in front of people.

And Tim Cato's reporting indicates a similar thing about Dumont, that somehow they didn't know that the fans would be this mad. And I will just say this part and it's hard to ignore. I think that this is a league of 30 teams. I don't care if you're from America or not. You have a white superstar that people paid a seat. Right? Like not just some like scrappiness or whatever it is. You have the rarest commodity in the NBA and you traded it and didn't think that the locals were going to have a problem with it. I'm not qualified to do the kind of sociological deep dive into this, but there's definitely elements there for sure. And honestly, like as frankly illogical of a basketball decision as this was, I think what's going to ultimately cost Nico his job is this.

This was a terrible, terrible business decision. I think they might lose a billion dollars worth of revenue over the course of what would have been a $345 million contract. Nico convinced Patrick Dumont that that Supermax deal would be a terrible investment. And look, he thinks Lucas' body's going to break down. We'll see if he's right or wrong. I don't care if he suffers a major injury. Luca would have had insane trade value on that contract, just like Damien Lillow did. But where was Dame's?

Dame wanted to go to MI somewhere. He wanted to go to M-I-A-M-I and ended up in M-I-L-Walky. Yeah, so that's interesting because why? Why could they do that? Because he was locked up long term. So if you wanted to trade the guy, the Supermax was your best weapon. But anyways, the bottom line, Patrick Dumont doesn't understand basketball. He didn't, okay, you like basketball, sure.

He doesn't get basketball. He gets business. He gets when you're bleeding on the bottom line. And this was a disastrous business decision. Well, look, we're going to see how this goes. Wish I had more time. But Tim McMahon is a busy man, and these playoffs are not going to cover themselves. Check out his book, The Wonder Boy.

It's a look at Luca Dodgers through his NBA career all the way back to Slovenia. I just finished it up this morning. It's a good read. I recommend you guys check it out. And I thank you so much for giving us the time. But Monty, man, I really appreciate you having me. Thanks for all the kind words. It has been an absolute pleasure and Adios Amigo.

All right, man. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this three times a week. Sean, you's handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember, follow the right time, subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater and we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days.

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