Last Friday, a few hours before the Mavericks and Lakers met at Crypto.com Arena, the two top decision-makers in Dallas’s basketball operations department huddled in a pair of courtside seats. For nine months Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi were in a bunker with Nico Harrison, the recently deposed Mavs general manager, riding out the aftershocks of February’s trade that ended Luka Dončić’s run in Dallas. With Harrison gone, Finley and Riccardi, elevated to interim co-general managers by team governor Patrick Dumont, now run basketball operations, part of a group charged with deciding whether to continue down the path Harrison set the team on—or choose a new one.
In conversations, Mavs officials will insist: We believe we can recover. Dallas, 7–15 after Monday’s 131–121 win over Denver, isn’t getting boat-raced like say, Washington and Sacramento, two teams with double-digit negative net ratings. The Mavs have played an NBA-high 17 “clutch” games—defined as games decided by five points or fewer—and have won six of them, results Dallas sees as an indication the team is close to breaking through. Close games, said Mavs coach Jason Kidd, are “only going to make us better as the season goes on.”
