On the night of the 1998 NBA draft, the Dallas Mavericks used the sixth pick on a player who seemed poised to usher them into the future: Robert “Tractor” Traylor, a power forward out of Michigan. Listed at 6-foot-8 and 280 pounds, the lumbering Traylor was supposed to bring size and toughness to a Mavs roster in desperate need of both.
Except that wasn’t what happened. Three picks later, the prospect the Mavericks front office truly coveted was scooped up by the Bucks: Dirk Nowitzki, a 7-foot-tall, sweet-shooting 20-year-old from Würzburg, Germany. His selection was greeted with boos in General Motors Place in Vancouver, perhaps owing to his relative anonymity or to the bias held by some NBA fans that European players were soft and slow.
Later that night, the Mavericks and Bucks announced that they were swapping Traylor and Nowitzki, with Milwaukee throwing in no. 19 pick Pat Garrity to sweeten the deal. Nowitzki wasn’t received any more warmly in Texas.
“Good grief. There isn’t going to be one player in the country who could help this awful team,” read a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Europeans are such a risky bet, especially in the lottery. So many bust. So few bloom,” read an analysis of Nowitzki in the Houston Chronicle. The writer of that latter piece gave the Mavs’ draft a failing grade.
The negativity was understandable: The Mavericks had recently squandered what seemed to be the promising trio of Jason Kidd, Jamal Mashburn, and Jimmy Jackson, and at the time they hadn’t made the playoffs in nearly a decade. After they left Dallas, Kidd had immediately gone on to become an All-Star in Phoenix, and Mashburn had quickly emerged as a key contributor for a championship contender in Miami.
The Mavericks, meanwhile, were in the midst of a slide in which they’d won more than 28 games just once in a span of eight seasons. They were firmly ensconced among the dregs of the league, trapped near the bottom of the standings alongside the Clippers, Nuggets, Raptors, and Grizzlies. Although the Mavs were under new management—founding owner Don Carter had sold the team in 1996, and Don Nelson had joined as general manager in ’97—there was little evidence that the new-look front office knew what it was doing.
Taking Nowitzki, who was openly toying with the idea of staying in Europe for a few more years, appeared to be further proof that the Mavs weren’t committed to winning, or at least didn’t know how. Little did anyone know that Nowitzki’s arrival was the start of the reinvention of a franchise that had long been overshadowed by the Cowboys locally and by the Rockets and Spurs among NBA fans in Texas.
Nowitzki and Steve Nash, Nelson and Michael Finley, and Mark Cuban and Rick Carlisle stoked a basketball love affair in Dallas that lasted for more than 20 years. When the franchise landed Luka Doncic in a 2018 draft day trade with the Hawks, history seemed to repeat itself, and Dallas appeared destined to thrive for at least another decade. Doncic’s first season in Dallas was Nowitzki’s last, an almost too perfect passing of the baton from the Mavericks’ retiring hero to their ascendant one. The team finished last in the division that year, but no one seemed to mind because Doncic was named Rookie of the Year and confirmed that he was up to the challenge of inheriting face-of-the-franchise status from Nowitzki.
After Luka led the Mavs to the 2019 playoffs in his sophomore season, Dallas fans took for granted that they’d have an entertaining, contending team for years to come. And why wouldn’t they? Doncic certainly wasn’t going anywhere; he loved Dallas, and Dallas loved him back. What a gift in the topsy-turvy NBA, where many superstars start looking toward the horizon—and for big-name reinforcements—during the lean years.
“To be honest, Luka was created in a lab to engender the most love and support and emotion in a fan base ever—and they just dropped that in Dallas,” says Jake Kemp, a longtime Dallas sports media personality who cohosts a Dallas sports podcast and writes a Substack called The Dumb Zone. “He was a one of one.”
The love affair came to an excruciating end on February 2, when the Mavericks completed the most astonishing trade in NBA history. Dallas sent Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a 2029 first-round draft pick. Dealing Doncic to a hated Western Conference rival—a franchise that some Dallas sports fans despise more than any not named the Philadelphia Eagles or San Francisco 49ers—was a betrayal of an unspoken promise forged in the futility of the 1990s.
Neither Nico Harrison, the Mavericks’ fourth-year general manager, nor co-governors Miriam Adelson and son-in-law Patrick Dumont have been in Dallas for very long. And they certainly weren’t around when the Mavs were a doormat, so it’s likely that they failed to comprehend the consequences of shipping away one of the most beloved athletes in city history.
“This is, to me, a violation of a sacred social contract between a team, a city, and a fan base,” Kemp says. “There’s a reason this has never happened before. Even the worst GM in sports history knows that you don’t do this.”
By last Friday, ESPN was reporting that Harrison was facing death threats, and the team was moving him from his usual seat at home games as a security measure. Meanwhile, several groups of Mavericks fans were planning protests outside the American Airlines Center. Earlier last week, three men dressed as pallbearers to film a skit of them carrying a coffin to the steps of the arena. “We’re gonna miss you, Luka!” one said, slamming his hands on the coffin. “WHYYYYYYYY?”
The outrage has only continued since. On Saturday, Davis—the centerpiece of the return package—suffered a noncontact injury and is now expected to miss a month. On Monday, boos echoed across the stadium in a home game against the Kings, and two fans brought large poster board signs reading “FIRE NICO.” One of them was caught mouthing, “Fire Nico” on the arena’s large video screens; after the game, the Mavericks released a statement saying that the fans had been ejected for violations of the NBA’s code of conduct. That response only seemed to accentuate how defensive the Mavericks organization is about the trade, which has been panned by fans, media, and fellow league executives alike.
Even Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has never gotten it this wrong, or this bad.
When I went to college in nearby Fort Worth in 1996, Dallas had one favorite team—the Super Bowl champion Cowboys—and a handful of offseason distractions. For those who’ve grown up in a world where the Cowboys haven’t even sniffed a return to the NFC championship game for more than a generation, it’s hard to overstate how big they were. The Cowboys took up all of the local oxygen, with Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and Deion Sanders being treated regionally like kings. Those Cowboys also launched the careers of writers like Skip Bayless of the Dallas Times Herald and Ed Werder of The Dallas Morning News and covered for the perpetual shortcomings of the other hometown franchises.
Even among that group of others, the Mavericks were an afterthought. They had less fan interest than the recently arrived Stars of the NHL, who had moved to the city earlier in the decade and set out building a championship roster around Mike Modano. Partly because of the Mavs’ sustained incompetence, the DFW area eagerly welcomed hockey, a sport that seemed like an odd cultural fit in a region where the winters are relatively balmy.
“They were so bad,” Kemp says of the ’90s Mavericks. “The Stars came to town and got good when [the Mavs] were at their lowest point. So when that happened, nobody bought in even when they got Dirk. [Fans] would go to games and boo Dirk.”
By the turn of the century, those boos had become a memory. The Mavericks had finally started giving fans reason to believe that better days were ahead. After opening 9-23 in 1999-2000, the team played its best basketball in a decade for the rest of the season, with Nowitzki showing flashes of his immense potential. He averaged 17.5 points and 6.5 rebounds, finishing second in Most Improved Player voting and teaming up with Finley—a forward who earned his first All-Star selection—to push the Mavericks within four games of a playoff spot.
But the biggest change came four days into 2000, when Cuban, a former courtside ticket holder, reached an agreement to purchase the franchise for $285 million. Like so many other local fans, Cuban had grown tired of the losing. It just so happened that he had the money to do something about it.
“The only thing they ever won in the ’90s was the award for the worst professional sports franchise,” Cuban told ESPN in 2010. “That just wasn’t me, and I wasn’t writing that big of a check just to stand around. It was a big investment, and I was going to do all I can to get the most out of it.”
While Cuban made national headlines for his profligate disputes with the NBA—The Dallas Morning News estimates that he paid more than $4 million in fines from 2000 to 2023—his real impact was felt in the team’s newfound commitment to winning.
Cuban made sure that the Mavs had the best of everything, from a 757 jet for team flights to five-star hotel stays on road trips. He also substantially increased the Mavericks’ coaching and support staff. These improvements and many others would become the norm across the NBA, but they were considered novel 25 years ago, a workplace approach that many at the time attributed to his background as a tech executive.
“We were used to seeing owners be 80, white, and boring—then here goes this guy,” Kemp says. “He wears jeans, he’s fighting with the league, he’s a maverick, he’s a fan—that definitely helped to make them feel cool.”
When the Mavericks moved from dinky little Reunion Arena to the $420 million American Airlines Center at the edge of downtown Dallas in 2001, it signaled that they’d made it big time. I felt that one night in May 2002, when I got an 11th-hour call to cover a playoff game midway through the third quarter. After catching up on the previous three quarters of action, I took a moment to let the scene wash over me: The arena was packed with more than 20,000 delirious fans, grateful that their Mavs were putting up a fight against top-seeded Sacramento. This would have been impossible to imagine even five years earlier, but now Nowitzki and Nash were All-Stars, the Mavericks had won 50 or more games in back-to-back seasons, and the team played an entertaining brand of hoops—affectionately known as “Nellyball”—that stood in stark contrast to the bogged-down brand of basketball that prevailed around much of the league.
Throughout town, the landscape had totally flipped: The Cowboys and MLB’s Rangers were both in last place, and the Stars had missed the playoffs. The Mavericks had Dallas all to themselves.
“The Mavs have been pretty much no. 1 since then,” Kemp says, “and the distance has only grown.”
They cemented their hold on the city over the next decade, making their first NBA Finals appearance in 2006 and then winning a Finals rematch with the Miami Heat in 2011. Nowitzki outplayed the heavily favored “Heatles” in the first season that LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh were teammates, orchestrating a 4-2 series upset and securing the Finals MVP. It stamped him as a champion and hero around town forever.
At the championship parade, Nowitzki led an assembled crowd of about 200,000 in downtown Dallas through a slurred rendition of “We Are the Champions.” He was also the last player to speak at the celebration. He talked about his decision to re-sign with the team the previous summer, recalling how he and Cuban pledged to see things through to the end.
“[Cuban] said, ‘We’re in the same boat. We’re in this together,’” Nowitzki said. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs. This is the top of the iceberg and it feels amazing.” Nowitzki teared up, overwhelmed by the moment as Cuban stood nearby.
How could anyone screw that up? Why would they?
On Monday, Nowitzki was among the sellout crowd of 18,997 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles to watch Doncic’s debut for the Lakers. He sat in the stands alongside Doncic’s father, Sasa.
Nowitzki preemptively apologized for a gesture that could have been seen as disloyal, tweeting to his followers before tip-off, “I will always be a Mav for life, but had to come support my guy 77 @luka7doncic in the first game of his new chapter!”
It was Doncic’s first game since straining his left calf on Christmas Day. The Lakers couldn’t wait to welcome him, as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune. Gold T-shirts with no. 77—Doncic’s uniform number—were draped over every seat in the arena. The sound system played some of Doncic’s favorite Serbian tunes. LeBron even agreed to let Doncic take his customary spot as the last Lakers starter announced before the game. “He let me have my moment,” Doncic told reporters afterward, “so I really appreciate it.”
Doncic obliged by putting on a show for his new fans, scoring 14 points in 24 minutes as part of the Lakers’ 132-113 win over the Jazz. He hit Jaxson Hayes for an alley-oop less than a minute into the game. He found James on a half-court outlet pass that led to an easy layup. He offered a tantalizing preview of what Lakers fans should expect for the next decade, easing the franchise into a LeBron-less future and giving them a superstar who will perennially keep them relevant.
In Dallas, things look a lot more grim. Though the Mavericks have won four of their past five games, their roster has been thinned by injuries to Davis, Daniel Gafford (knee), Dereck Lively II (foot), Dwight Powell (hip), and P.J. Washington (ankle). Their absences have saddled 32-year-old Kyrie Irving and 35-year-old Klay Thompson with the kind of workload that could leave them gassed down the stretch, even if the frontcourt reinforcements are available for the playoffs. And beyond this spring, betting the future on a roster this old and this perpetually injured seems like a loser’s gamble.
Of course, that’s just one problem facing the Mavs’ beleaguered front office.
Until last week, Harrison had a reputation as one of the NBA’s shrewdest executives. His previous trades for Irving, Washington, and Gafford helped the Mavericks advance to the Finals last spring for the first time in 13 years. “Over the last couple of years, his moves have panned out,” Kemp says. “For the most part, it seemed like the guy was cooking.”
Now Harrison’s reputation is in tatters. He has maintained a low profile since his awkward press conference on Sunday, when he implied that Doncic no longer fit the team’s culture and admitted that he shopped him only to the Lakers. Asked how the trade would benefit the Mavs’ future, Harrison attempted a joke: “The future to me is three to four years from now. The future—10 years from now, they’ll probably bury me and [head coach] J-[Kidd] by then. Or we’ll bury ourselves.” He then walked out of the room, leaving Kidd to face the group of reporters alone.
Dumont, who had no prior NBA experience and mostly ran Adelson’s gambling empire in Las Vegas before coming to Dallas in December 2023, has become another target of the fans’ ire. He made his own public missteps last week, doubling down on the implication that Doncic doesn’t have what it takes to become a champion. “If you look at the greats in the league, the people you and I grew up with—[Michael] Jordan, [Larry] Bird, Kobe [Bryant], Shaq [O’Neal]—they worked really hard, every day, with a singular focus to win,” Dumont said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. “And if you don’t have that, it doesn’t work. And if you don’t have that, you shouldn’t be part of the Dallas Mavericks.”
Such a casual dismissal of Nowitzki’s universally approved heir has been devastating for diehards, especially coming from a couple of outsiders with few real ties to Dallas.
This stings the most for the fans who showed up at run-down Reunion when the only Mavs uniform hanging from the rafters was no. 15, in honor of Brad Davis. It stings the most for the ones who watched Nowitzki blossom from a source of skepticism into a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It stings for the ones who stomached the letdown of the Mavs coughing up a 2-0 series lead in the 2006 Finals, and who packed the streets when Nowitzki and Co. avenged that loss five years later. It would be difficult for Harrison and Dumont to care as much about this franchise as they do, because all of those years accrued into a kind of emotional equity.
“They stole our joy,” Kemp says, glumly.
Fandom, at its core, is about bonds: between a city and its residents, between fans and their neighbors, between friends and family members spanning generations. Trading Doncic was a betrayal of those bonds, as audacious a move as anything in the NBA since Milwaukee sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers in 1975, and as shocking a departure as LeBron leaving Cleveland in 2010. Luka was supposed to belong to Dallas forever. Until suddenly, impossibly, he didn’t.
In a way, the trade that rocked the basketball world feels like more than a flashback to the dark years of the franchise. Locally, it feels like a sort of death. Kemp takes things a step further.
“Except in this case,” he says, “the murderer is still in charge of our team.”
