Defending the indefensible: not just for the political press!

I alluded to this earlier, but as a connoisseur of sports management ineptitude I can’t resist discussing this all-time classic:

"It's a fanbase that feels cheated. He expected and I think he feels like was stabbed in the back because of the way it was done…You can feel it in this arena, the love they've got for this guy." Doris Burke on Luka Dončić as Mavericks fans chant "FIRE NICO."

[image or embed]— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 5:46 PM

Obviously, on its face the Doncic trade was absurd. The complaints about his fitness AFICT are overblown (the proof of the pudding is in the eating), but even assuming arguendo that they were justified it’s moot because they traded him for a player who is not only substantially worse but 7 years older and much more injury prone. They traded away the peak years of a superstar out of a fear that he would end up…like the guy they traded him for. Amazing stuff.

But even that can’t convery how insane this was. There have certainly been worse trades in terms of pure talent exchanged. One reason I’m fascinated by the subject is that my favorite team made one of them, trading a roughly Doncic caliber talent who did have a championship under his belt in a 10-player-trade they would have lost badly if they took the superstar out of it. (And not even because they accidentally gave away some gem, it’s just that the collection of journeymen and busted prospects they threw in was a lot better than the one they got back.) The Gilmour trade, however, is an extreme example of a typical bad trade. First, acrimonious contract negotiations had fell apart and he was about to walk off the team, greatly reducing the team’s leverage. That doesn’t justify getting 5 cents on the dollar rather than 60, but you’re going to get hosed when everyone knows you have to make a deal. And second, the team was a bitter disappointment, having not won a playoff series after winning a Stanley Cup with a team with several Hall of Famers in their prime. The latter is an explanation, not a defense — it’s a dumb reason for making a trade that basically never works — but at least it is an explanation.

The Doncic trade, though, is just a pure self-own. Doncic wanted to stay, he was beloved by the fan base, and the team was in the finals literally last year. Harrison just slammed a franchise’s championship window shut and made it a national laughing stock for no reason whatsoever. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like it, hence the fan reaction even ESPN can’t ignore.

Well, no good reason. Get a load of this puff piece trying to make Harrison out to be some kind of rigorous logician:

Even as the public has learned some of why the Mavs made this Dončić trade — from Harrison’s frustrations with Dončić’s conditioning and off-court habits, his yearning for a better defender and his tight relationship with incoming star Anthony Davis — the decision remains nonetheless viewed by much of the public as irrational and impulsive.

But those who know Harrison best paint a far different portrait of his process.

“Nico is really thoughtful,” said Rachel Baker, who worked with Harrison at Nike and is now the general manager of Duke men’s basketball. “I wouldn’t say he has an impulsive bone in his body.”

This is self-refuting even in isolation — the cited reasons are, as noted, extremely stupid. (“You need DEFENSE to win the the NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION” good luck with that.) But when you read on the actual explanation seems to be that Harrison is a grim health puritan who asks random people sua sponte detailed questions about their diet, and traded Doncic because he occasionally likes to have a beer after the game. That’s it — that’s why he decided to execute a murder-suicide pact between the team and its fans and his career.

Anyway, Nico will have this beat sweetener to look back on when he starts his new career as a Venetian whale fluffer or Shark Tank intern or Trump cabinet member after the season, assuming he’s not tarred and feathered on his way out of town first.