Anthony Davis Makes Critical Mistake, Defends Nico Harrison's 'Vision' For Mavericks

Nico Harrison trading Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis is going to go down as one of the biggest blunders in sports history. It was a mistake the moment it was made, and it somehow only got worse. The Dallas Mavericks have cratered since the trade, and it's not hard to see why.

Harrison was fired nine months after making the trade. The pressure from the fanbase was so loud and so distracting that ownership had no other choice. It didn't help that everything that came out of his mouth was just not believable at all, especially when he talked about fans starting to see the "vision" of the team after they lucked into drafting Cooper Flagg.

Despite all of that, when asked about it on Draymond Green's podcast, Anthony Davis thinks Nico Harrison didn't deserve as much hate as he got.

“I think the criticism was unwarranted, bro," Davis claimed. "When you sit in that seat, you have to make decisions that motherf***ers are scared to make. You have to make decisions that people think are f**king crazy. All the great ones have. I think Nico’s vision was on point! We just didn’t have the opportunity to show it. You get Cooper, the number one pick, paired with myself, Kyrie, PJ, Lively, whose whole foot was messed up; he had foot surgery, so he couldn't play. [Gafford], in training camp, rolled his ankle, was out a while. We got these pieces, but can’t put them together because of injuries.

"...I’ll never forget, we're playing Milwaukee at home in Dallas, PJ is at the FT line in a close game, and then fans are chanting ‘FIRE NICO.’ I was like, what? Like he made a business decision he thought would help the basketball team. We just never had the opportunity to put it all together.”

COOPER FLAGG WAS NOT A PART OF THE VISION

The view that Cooper Flagg was part of the vision is incorrect. The vision was Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis in double-big lineups without much spacing around them. They wanted Davis at power forward despite Davis being a poor three-point shooter for most of his career. At no point was lucking into the first overall pick after Irving tears his ACL part of the plan.

People will think the draft lottery was rigged, but you can watch the ping pong balls being drawn. The people who were in the room described the disbelief at those results. It was incredibly dumb luck, and the only reason that the Mavericks have any sort of future moving forward.

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