The One Graphic That Buries Nico Harrison’s Disastrous Luka Doncic Trade

The fallout from the trade that sent franchise icon Luka Dončić from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers has been catastrophic, costing General Manager Nico Harrison his job just nine months after the deal. While countless articles and broadcasts have dissected the poor return—mostly a high-risk, injury-prone Anthony Davis and a single future draft pick—a single graphic created by a Mavericks media personality perfectly encapsulates the sheer scope of Harrison’s failure.

This graphic, initially shared by Kevin Gray Jr., a writer for DLLS Mavs, serves as a powerful, side-by-side snapshot of the Dallas Mavericks’ status one year ago versus their status today, demonstrating how quickly the team plunged from contender to basement dweller. It is the perfect visual epitaph for the trade that will haunt the franchise for years.

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The Graphic: December 2024 vs. December 2025

The visual, which is based on the Western Conference standings and team trajectory, contrasts the Mavericks and the Lakers at the same point in time, 365 days apart:

Team Status	December 2024	December 2025
Dallas Mavericks	2nd in the Western Conference standings, thriving with MVP-candidate Luka Dončić.	Near the bottom of the Western Conference standings (3-8 record), fighting for draft lottery odds.
Los Angeles Lakers	A fringe playoff contender struggling to find an identity and dealing with trade rumors.	A legitimate title contender (9-4 record) with Luka Dončić in serious MVP contention.
Narrative	Mavericks are an NBA Finals-contending team with a young superstar centerpiece.	Mavericks are a fractured, directionless team. The narrative is entirely focused on “Fire Nico” chants.

The visual punchline of the graphic is simple: Harrison traded the Mavericks’ standing for the Lakers’ standing. He turned a top-tier contender into a bottom-feeder while simultaneously vaulting a hated rival into the championship conversation.

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The Logic of Disaster: Defense Over Dynamite

The graphic is a simple but devastating illustration of Harrison’s catastrophic philosophical failure. The entire premise for trading a generational offensive talent like Dončić—an All-NBA player who had just led the team to the NBA Finals—was the front office’s obsession with a “defense-first” identity.

1. The Misguided Faith in Anthony Davis

Harrison was a long-time Nike executive with a pre-existing relationship with Anthony Davis. He defended the trade by stating, “Defense wins championships,” and believing that the oft-injured Davis, a former Defensive Player of the Year candidate, was the key to unlocking a new defensive culture in Dallas.

• The Reality: The graphic shows how that bet blew up spectacularly. Davis has been plagued by the same injury issues that followed him in Los Angeles, playing only 14 regular-season games since the trade. This lack of availability gutted the “win-now” plan and torpedoed the Mavericks’ season, leaving them without their superstar and their trade return. The trade made the Mavericks less competitive in the short term, not more.

• The Irony: Dončić, meanwhile, slimmed down and dramatically improved his conditioning in the offseason following the trade (a move seen as a deliberate rebuke to Harrison’s reported concerns about his work ethic). Now with the Lakers, Dončić is playing at an MVP level, averaging 33.7 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 9.2 assists, making the Mavericks’ stated concerns about his commitment look flimsy and petty in hindsight.

2. The Failure to Grasp Value

The side-by-side comparison of the standings also highlights Harrison’s shocking evaluation of talent. Further reports revealed that Harrison once placed defensive standout Jrue Holiday in the same trade target tier as two-time MVP Nikola Jokić—a move described by team sources as a “major concern.”

• Jalen Brunson Precedent: This pattern of devaluing playmaking and talent for defensive role players had a clear precedent: letting All-Star guard Jalen Brunson walk in free agency. Harrison failed to extend Brunson, who went on to become an All-Star and Eastern Conference Finals presence for the New York Knicks.

• The Final Insult: The decision to swap a 25-year-old, top-five player in the world for an aging, injury-prone big man and minimal draft capital is now almost universally considered one of the worst trades in the history of American professional sports. The graphic doesn’t need to show the trade package; the resulting stand-ings speak for themselves.

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The Aftermath: A Franchise in Free Fall

The graphic is a time capsule that shows how the Dončić trade led directly to Harrison’s November 2025 firing.

• The Firing: Harrison was let go just 11 games into the 2025-26 season after the team stumbled to a 3-8 start. New Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont stated the decision was “critical to moving our franchise forward,” directly acknowledging the damage done by the trade and the resulting fan outrage.

• The Draft Lottery Irony: The only silver lining for Dallas was an unbelievable stroke of luck in the 2025 Draft Lottery, where they jumped from a 1.8% chance to land the first overall pick, which they used to select prospect Cooper Flagg. While this offers a long-term foundation, the graphic reminds fans that the team only had access to this pick because they had plummeted in the standings due to the Dončić trade.

• Dončić’s Success: The final and most painful element of the graphic is the Lakers’ immediate success. With Dončić playing his best basketball in a new market, the trade becomes a daily, public humiliation for the Mavericks, proving that the blame did not lie with the superstar, but with the front office that engineered his exit.