Dallas Mavs GM Nico’s Promise: Luka Doncic ‘Will Win Titles’

Dallas Mavericks’ GM Nico Harrison believes that Luka Doncic will win multiple titles throughout his career, and he hopes to build a roster good enough to make that happen in Dallas.

This season, we’ve talked about how the Dallas Mavericks’ front office probably needs to raise its urgency level when it comes to making roster upgrades around generational talent Luka Doncic.

Mavs’ general manager Nico Harrison, who is still just six months into his new NBA executive job, might be turning up the urgency dial and getting closer to shaking things up with Dallas’ roster.

"When you got a guy like Luka, he’s going to win championships,” Harrison told The Undefeated’s Marc Spears. “So, hopefully, he wins them in Dallas and I’m a part of it."

The key word there is ‘hopefully.’ It signals that Harrison knows that Doncic staying in Dallas for the entirety of his career isn’t a given in today’s NBA climate, despite Doncic seeing firsthand all the flowers Dirk Nowitzki has received over the last couple of years. … And that could be a good thing for the Mavs’ team-building plans going forward.

Not only does Harrison want to help build a championship team with Doncic, but he also wants to do it for head coach Jason Kidd, who was hired with Harrison as somewhat of a package deal last summer.

"We’re friends," said Harrison of his relationship with Kidd. 

"We can challenge each other. He has a different job than I have. He’s the coach and I’m trying to make his job easier. … Get him better players, get him players that fit what he likes and what he needs.”

Kidd, despite dealing with many roster injuries and NBA health and safety protocols absences, has already put his fingerprints on this Mavs team. At the start of the year, Kidd said he wanted the Mavs to become a better defensive team, and so far, Dallas owns the tenth-best defensive rating in the NBA.

Adding more athletic, good defensive players is likely what Kidd wants for this current Mavs roster, and it’s also how to best cater to Doncic’s needs.

Nico Harrison surely knows all of this, and he’s had time to do his roster-building homework in the first half of this season. We’ll see what solutions he ultimately comes up with as we get closer to the February 10 trade deadline.


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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.