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    3-Time NBA Champion Believes Mavericks GM Nico Harrison Was Forced Into Trading Luka Dončić to Lakers

    Three-time NBA champion B.J. Armstrong recently weighed in on the controversial blockbuster trade that sent Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers.

    According to former Chicago Bulls point guard B.J. Armstrong, who played with NBA legend Michael Jordan, this deal likely got done because the Dallas Mavericks’ ownership group (the Adelson family) coerced general manager Nico Harrison into making this move.

    B.J. Armstrong Outlines Suspicions Why Dallas Mavericks Owner Made This Deal Over GM

    On his podcast, “Pushin Thru,” Armstrong outlined some NBA realities from his experience in the league. Not only was Armstrong an All-Star who played 11 seasons in the league, he also worked in an NBA front office and serves as an agent, so he knows a thing or two about how these kinds of trades go down.

    According to Armstrong, the clandestine nature of the deal and its sudden announcement — going completely against all basketball norms — screams owner intervention.

    “That’s an owner-to-owner deal. Trust me on that. If the owner says they wanna make the deal, you gotta do your job. And if the owner wants to do that, what are you gonna do? This had nothing to do with the GMs or the Presidents or whatever the titles are,” he said.

    MORE: NBA’s Worst Trades of All Time

    “How do I know it’s an owner-to-owner deal? It happened in the middle of the night, on a Saturday. No one can talk about it tomorrow on all the talk shows. Someone knew about it, so I’m not sitting here acting like the GM made this call. No! Come on. You’re gonna do that? Someone knew. The someone are the owners — one owner to another owner.

    “We live in the age of information, right? And no one heard about it? No one heard about this? The owners felt it was good business for them for whatever the reason may be, and it’s done. Let’s play basketball. That’s what I wanna see.”

     

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    While most fans think Mark Cuban owns the Mavericks, that is no longer the case. He sold his majority stake in the team in 2023, and he has confirmed that he wasn’t involved in this deal. On FanDuel TV’s “Run It Back,” former Mavericks forward Chandler Parsons revealed that Cuban was blindsided by this move just like everybody else.

    “I texted (Mark Cuban) and I said, ‘I’m so confused.’ He wrote back, ‘That makes two of us.’ So that kind of tells you right there he wasn’t involved,” Parsons said.

    Armstrong is not the only person who believes that Harrison’s hand was forced into making this polarizing trade. Some NBA fans have theorized that Miriam Adelson, who leads the Adelson group that controls the Mavericks, is interested in tanking the value of the team in order to be able to move them to Las Vegas in the near future.

    However, this theory doesn’t seem to be based in reality.

    The NBA has long expressed its desire to expand and has outlined Las Vegas as one of its prime destinations to add a team. However, Dallas is among the USA’s most rabid sports cities.

    The Mavericks are an integral part of the identity of the Texas powerhouse and the DFW area. Leaving such a huge metropolitan area for a smaller, if more glamorous and lucrative market, doesn’t sound like sound business.

    Instead, Parsons has a different theory.

    “By the way, this new ownership group — Patrick Dumont, Adelson Family, they’re business people, they’re Vegas Casino, real estate moguls. They know nothing about the NBA and basketball,” Parsons explained.

    Either way, it’s important to note that trades like this just don’t happen, especially just seven months after an NBA finals sojourn. The fact that other NBA teams didn’t have a chance to beat the Lakers’ offer for Dončić makes it even stranger.

    It certainly seems there were other forces at play here or things happening behind the scenes that forced Harrison’s hand.

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