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Nico Harrison Reportedly Fired Mavericks Employee Over Authority Challenge

Originally posted on Athlon Sports
By Ishaan Bhattacharya | Last updated Apr 21, 2025 10:03 AM ET

The Dallas Mavericks have begun what's going to be a long 2025 offseason in the wake of their franchise-altering decision to trade Luka Doncic in February. The trade and the injury crisis that followed led to the Mavs failing to even qualify for the playoffs one season after making the NBA Finals.

A lot of the blame for the problems in Dallas has fallen on the head of GM Nico Harrison. As calls to fire him continue mounting from fans, details on the inner workings of the Mavericks were shared by ESPN's Tim MacMahon.

MacMahon made a pretty massive revelation about the controversial firing of former Mavericks director of health and performance Casey Smith in 2023. Smith joined the team in 2004 as part of the athletic staff and grew into an executive position, and was a confidant of both Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic.

A team source told MacMahon that Harrison was threatened by the influence Smith had on the franchise.

"He was 100 percent threatened by him," a team source told ESPN, referring to Harrison's concern that Smith's voice carried too much weight with the franchise. "He's going to show that I'm in charge and nobody else can question that."

Smith's firing led to the dismissals of athletic performance director Jeremy Holsopple and manual therapist Casey Spangler over a year later, after the team's Finals run in June 2024. All these names were important to Doncic personally, and their firings played a part in his departure.

"Smith, Holsopple, and Spangler were all longtime Mavs employees who had helped Doncic, a Slovenian who spent his adolescence in Spain, make the major cultural transition after coming to Dallas as a teenager. They had become confidantes for the superstar, but sources said Harrison saw them as 'enablers' of Doncic, despite them being immensely respected by their peers throughout the league."

It seems the problems in the Dallas front office have led to the franchise going from long-term contenders with Doncic to on the outside of the competitive landscape of the NBA.

The future is looking dark in Dallas, with every report coming about Harrison's tenure with the Mavericks so far bringing negative revelation after negative revelation.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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