MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6800940...workplace/

With the losing, the injuries and the negativity mounting, league sources said Dumont was hearing from the man whose choice to sell the team to him opened the door to this disaster in the first place. Cuban, who still owns 27 percent of the team, was known to be frustrated with Harrison for freezing him out after the sale and not consulting him on the choice to trade Luka Doncic. League sources say he made his case to Dumont over the last several months that Harrison was steering the franchise in the wrong direction.

Last summer, Kidd contemplated leaving the Mavericks to go coach the New York Knicks. There was mutual interest between the two sides, league sources said, but the Mavericks refused to let Kidd leave and rewarded him with an extension. That gave Kidd power in any disagreement with his front office. He had more years on his contract than any of them.

If only they hadn’t said goodbye to a generational talent who was one of the best of all time at that very thing. “It’s the losing,” said a league source who spoke with Dumont about why Harrison was fired. “Can’t get off to a start like this (after making a trade like that) and survive.”

Multiple team sources told The Athletic it was illustrative of part of a larger pattern of Harrison’s poor hiring practices and perceived lack of accountability. In May, Harrison was forced to fire athletic performance director Keith Belton, who did not have proper certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, as first reported by ESPN. Earlier in the season, Belton had gotten into a heated argument with one of his superiors over the handling of Dereck Lively II’s return to the court. The incident was serious enough that it required the involvement of the human resources department.

Besides hiring unqualified people for important roles, Harrison also didn’t have much tolerance for anyone who disagreed with his way of doing things, multiple team employees told The Athletic. Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ long-time director of health and performance, was let go weeks before the start of the 2023-24 season. Smith was widely respected throughout the NBA and had strong relationships up and down the Mavericks’ roster. But he wasn’t retained, team sources said, in part because he sometimes pushed back on Harrison’s rigid way of doing things.

Thanks for posting this, SH!

I worry that the emboldened portion will turn out to be the last of Harrison's major blunders, the effects of which might last almost as long as the Luka trade. I wish they had let Kidd go to NY and gotten picks for him, frankly.