With Dallas 2-7, is general manager Nico Harrison in trouble?

Nico Harrison traded the franchise’s star playersomeone beloved by fans, and what he achieved aged Dallas, shortened whatever championship window they had, and placed that hope in the bodies of a couple of players with long injury histories. This season, his team is off to a 2-7 start, which has them last in the West — they’ve gone from a Finals team in 2024 to one that doesn’t threaten anyone in the conference. Even though they got the No. 1 pick, Cooper Flagg, he’s being played out of position, and it shows.

All of which begs the question: Is Harrison’s job in jeopardy in Dallas? It’s a valid question, reports ESPN’s Tim MacMahon on his Howdy Partners podcast.

“A legitimate question right now is, is Nico Harrison’s job in serious jeopardy? That’s an absolutely legitimate question. It’s the question that obviously Mavericks fans have been hoping would be answered in the affirmative since early February, I don’t have a definitive answer for you right now which you know that’s all I can tell you, but it’s an absolutely legitimate question. When you talk to people about the Mavericks around the league, it’s the first question people ask.”

Luka Doncic, averaging 40 points per game this season, being an offense unto himself and leading the Lakers to a 7-2 record with a top-10 offense in the league, is salt in the wound for Mavericks fans who see their team have the worst offense in the league through nine games.

However, the Doncic trade never happens unless team owner/governor Patrick Dumont signs it (it might not have been difficult to convince him not to give Doncic what would have been the largest contract extension in league history). Harrison can also point to Kyrie Irving’s ACL injury that will keep him out until midseason at some point — in addition to short-term injuries to Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II — as mitigating factors. However, as MacMahon notes in the podcast, Irving’s injury was known and the team had all summer to find a solution (D’Angelo Russell is not a solution), and they traded for Davis knowing his injury history.

All of this begs the question of whether Dumont has what it takes to fire Harrison, in a move that would be seen as a tacit admission that the Doncic trade has failed, a trade he approved of? Does he give Harrison more rope, hope the Mavericks start to turn things around, or does he follow the path we saw from the GMs in Memphis and Denver last season, where once the decision was made to move on as coach (and GM in Denver), it happened quickly without concern for timing?

Cooper Flagg will prove to be a star in this league, but he’s a rookie with a steep learning curve who is asked to play out of position as a point forward and initiate the offense (look at any point guard who enters the league and, just like the quarterback in the NFL, you see that it takes time to adjust and comes with bumps and bruises along the way). The 1.8% fortune that landed Dallas that pick only gives management a grace period.

Is the grace period coming to Dallas?