TNT analyst and NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley gave the embattled Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison an unsolicited advice after issuing another damning statement on the Luka Dončić trade.
“Listen man, I consider you a friend of mine — Nico Harrison, I consider you a friend of mine,” Barkley said on “Inside the NBA” on TNT. “I wish you nothing but the best. I thought you did a good job last year with the Mavs, and obviously whatever happened this year didn’t work out.
“Man, don’t do no more press conferences. I don’t even know what you’re doing. I really don’t. I got sympathy and love for you, but I have zero idea what you’re trying to do. This war is over, brother. You takin’ the L (loss).
“I hope you keep your job. I hope that team gets healthy, but man, don’t do any more interviews. Please don’t.”
Barkley was referring to the viral statement of Harrison admitting that he underestimated the outrage from the Mavericks fans for trading their former franchise superstar.
“I did know that Luka was important to the fan base,” Harrison told reporters on Monday, April 21, during his end-of-the-season press conference. “I didn’t quite know to what level.”
Nico Harrison Stands by Trade Decision
Despite the vitriol and backlash toward him, Harrison continued to stand his ground on the decision he made.
“The way we look at it was if you’re putting a team on the floor that’s Kyrie (Irving), Klay (Thompson), P.J. (Washington), Anthony Davis and (Dereck) Lively (II), we feel that’s a championship-caliber team and would have been winning at a high level, and that would have quieted some of the outrage,” Harrison explained.
The 32-year-old Davis, the headliner of the return package, is a 10-time NBA All-Star and a five-time NBA All-Defensive center. But he is six years older than Dončić. Yet Harrison firmly belief that Davis is more capable than Dončić in anchoring a championship-caliber team.
“When you trade a guy of Luka’s caliber, you are not taking it lightly,” Harrison said. “But we really feel that defense is our calling card and what we hang our hat on. When we had an opportunity to get one of the best two-way players in the league, we jumped at that opportunity.”
The Mavericks new 1-2 punch — Davis and Irving — have won an NBA championship each. But they did it with LeBron James, now a teammate of Dončić at Los Angeles Lakers.
ESPN Analyst Slams Nico Harrison’s Statement as Tone-Deaf
Stephen A. Smith, the outspoken host and analyst of the “First Take” on ESPN, criticized Harrison for being tone-deaf in trying to defend the Dončić trade.
“[Harrison] looked bad saying what he said yesterday,” Smith began. “You underestimated, you didn’t know how much, to what degree fans loved Luka Doncic? You underestimated that? Where the hell do you live? Are you in Waco, Texas, or someplace instead of Dallas? What are you talking about? How could you utter those words out of your mouth?
“That means that you are in some cocoon somewhere, you don’t go outside, you don’t go to the games, which clearly is not true because he’s always there. I’m saying, how in God’s name could you possibly say that?… You can’t say what he said, talk about being tone-deaf. Talk about being clueless and completely removed from reality to say you didn’t know how much the fans loved Luka Dončić.”
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