The chants never let up at American Airlines Arena.

"Fire Nico!"

They started in February after Dallas Mavericks general manager and president of basketball operations Nico Harrison initiated a trade that sent superstar Luka Doncic to the Lakers and continued to occur at home games throughout the end of last season and into the 2025-26 campaign.

On Tuesday morning, those vocal fans got their wish, as Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont announced that Harrison had been let go weeks into his fifth season with the team. Dallas went 182-157 under the former Nike executive, including a 3-8 start to this season.

Assistant general managers Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi were named co-interim general managers to oversee basketball operations.

Read more:Luka Doncic underlines his 38-point night with monster dunk in Lakers' win

“This decision reflects our continued commitment to building a championship-caliber organization, one that delivers for our players, our partners, and most importantly, our fans,” Dumont said.

Harrison spent nearly two decades with Nike before being hired by the Mavericks in June 2021. The team made it to the Western Conference finals the following season and to the NBA Finals in 2024, with Doncic as its undisputed star.

Then came Feb. 1, when the Mavericks traded Doncic, Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris to the Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round draft pick. Harrison reportedly approached Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka about the possibility of the trade, and Dumont is said to have approved the deal before it was finalized.

The move shocked most people involved with the NBA, and Dallas fans felt blindsided. That's when "Fire Nico" started. The words appeared on signs and T-shirts in addition to being yelled during home games, including the Mavericks' 116-114 loss Monday to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Read more:L.A. native upset Luka Doncic is a Laker. He's raising money to protest trade with billboards in Dallas

During that game, Dumont was seen sitting courtside having a lengthy conversation with a fan in a Lakers jersey featuring Doncic's name and number. That person, 18-year-old Mavericks fan Nicholas Dickason, told The Athletic that he had initiated the conversation to apologize to the team governor for yelling curse words at him and giving him the finger at a game earlier this season.

According to Dickason, Dumont accepted his apology and added an admission of his own.

“Basically Patrick was like, he feels horrible for the trade. And wants to make it up to us,” Dickason said. “That’s basically what he said. He accepted my apology for it as well.”

The next day, Dumont explained his decision to fire Harrison in an open letter to Mavericks fans. He did not specifically mention the Doncic trade but acknowledged "the profound impact these difficult last several months have had" on the team's supporters.

"You have every right to demand a commitment to success from us," Dumont wrote. "No one associated with the Mavericks organization is happy with the start of what we all believed would be a promising season. You have high expectations for the Mavericks, and I share them with you. When the results don't meet expectations, it's my responsibility to act."

In April, after the Mavericks finished the 2024-25 season with a 39-43 record and missed the playoffs, Harrison admitted he underestimated the level of outrage the trade would cause.

“I did know that Luka was important to the fan base,” Harrison said. “I didn’t quite know it to what level.”

He added: “When you have 20,000 people in the stadium chanting ‘Fire Nico,’ you really feel it. ... But my job is to make decisions I feel are in the best interest of this organization, and I gotta stand by the decisions, and some of them are going to be unpopular. This was clearly one that’s unpopular.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Michael Ray Richardson, who played for both the Knicks and Nets during his eight-year NBA career, has died at the age of 70.

"We are saddened to hear about the passing of former Knick Michael Ray Richardson," the Knicks said in a team statement. "One of the fiercest defensive players of his era, the four-time NBA All-Star made an incredible impact on the Knicks during his four seasons with the franchise. Our deepest condolences go to his family, friends and teammates."

Selected fourth overall in the 1978 NBA Draft, Richardson averaged 14.2 points and 2.6 steals per game in four seasons as a Knick, making three All-Star teams.

He also played in parts of four seasons with the Nets, earning his fourth and final All-Star appearance during the 1984-85 season. 

Richardson was a two-time First Team All-Defensive selection. He led the league in steals three times and led the league in assists in 1979-80.

The Dallas Mavericks have fired general manager Nico Harrison, the team’s governor, Patrick Dumont, has confirmed.

“This decision reflects our continued commitment to building a championship-caliber organization, one that delivers for our players, our partners, and most importantly, our fans,” Dumont said in a statement.

His exit comes nine months after Harrison sent five-time first-team All-NBA selection Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in a blockbuster trade. It also comes one day after Dumont, an owner of the Mavs and the team’s representative on the NBA’s board of governors, was seen talking to a fan who was wearing a Lakers Dončić jersey during Monday’s 116-114 home loss to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Related: Mark Cuban made the Mavericks relevant. But is his legacy rotten? | Lee Escobedo

“Fire Nico!” chants were audible during the fourth-quarter of the game, in which Dallas squandered a 13-point lead.

Harrison, 52, accepted responsibility for the trade and defended the move by claiming there were concerns over Dončić’s physique and commitment to conditioning.

“I did know that Luka was important to the fanbase. I didn’t quite know it to what level,” Harrison said in explaining the move, comments which themselves drew widespread criticism from fans and NBA commentators alike.

In a letter to fans on Tuesday, Dumont did not directly address the Dončić trade, but did allude to it. “I understand the profound impact these difficult last several months have had,” Dumont’s letter said. “Please know that I’m fully committed to the success of the Mavericks. ... Our goal is to return winning basketball to Dallas and win championships.”

The deal has by and large has not worked out for the Mavericks. Anthony Davis, who was the key cog in return from the Lakers, was sidelined for six weeks after sustaining an adductor strain in his Dallas debut. Davis currently is out with a calf strain for the Mavericks, who have limped out of the blocks to a 3-8 record this season.

Dončić, meanwhile, has continued to be one of the best players in the NBA with the Lakers. He is now averaging just over 37 points and nine assists per game this season, with the Lakers owning an 8-3 record as one of the better teams in the Western Conference through the early part of the season.

Dallas’s drop in form after the Dončić deal did enable them to win the top overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, which they used to select Cooper Flagg. In Monday’s loss to the Bucks, Flagg scored a career-high 26 points and pulled down a game-high nine rebounds.

ESPN reports that Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi, both assistant general managers, will be leading the Mavericks’ basketball operations on an interim basis.

One of the big drivers of the Knicks' controversial offseason firing of head coach Tom Thibodeau and ensuing hiring of Mike Brown was the push to refresh an offense that, to some, didn’t fully maximize its talents. 

Despite falling just two wins short of the NBA Finals, the Knicks' offense was average through the back half of last season and ranked only seventh in the playoffs.

The diagnosis? More threes, more pace and more movement -- pillars of most modernizing NBA offenses -- to where the Knicks have preached for these very things before. 

The difference? We’ve actually seen a radically different offensive system take hold through nine games, and the early returns are enticing. 

Thus far, the Knicks rank second in the league offensively, scoring 121.6 points per 100 possessions, a rounding error behind the Houston Rockets for first. In terms of raw numbers, they’ve scored above 110 points in every game but two, and haven’t yet scored under 100 after doing so six games into last season.

This alone doesn’t mean much, coming off a nine-game sample of an 82-game season in which the Knicks have played zero top defenses. But we’re seeing the underlying foundations of Brown’s vision being developed in real time, and if this is only the ground layer, fans should start getting excited.

The Knicks aren’t benefitting off some crazy hot streak, hitting a strong but not outsized 41.8 percent of their wide open threes, per NBA.com, and their other numbers are otherwise unimpressive. The improved efficiency has been an organic change, much of which has been in geography.  

Brown has radically cut out mid-range attempts from New York’s shot diet, with shots encompassing the non-restricted area paint to the three-point arc going from 30.4 percent to 22 percent of their attempts from last season to now. These have translated into a lot more threes: 43.3 attempts per 100 possessions, which ranks third in the league, and compares to only 34.5 percent last season, which ranked 26th. 

This has been huge for efficiency, and can be seen at the individual level. Guys like OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges are putting up career numbers on fewer shots, an impact the stars should be feeling soon. 

However, it’s not just where the shots are coming from, but how they’re generated. The scripted, often too stagnant offense of years past has been replaced with a freelance engine the Knicks can fall back on when things stall.

It won’t appear in many of the relevant statistics, but these Knicks are getting into their actions quicker and with real purpose. Spacing principles have been cemented so that inactive players are repositioning and still making defenses work. 

Because of this, the Knicks have been able to generate these threes naturally by way of their system as opposed to brute forcing attempts. Where past teams would default back to a Jalen Brunson isolation or pick-and-roll when met with resistance, this squad rolls right into the next swing pass, the next 45 cut -- and everybody on the roster is taking advantage.

New York is scoring 10 more bench points a night compared to last season, and getting lots of easier opportunities, too. Karl-Anthony Towns is getting more of his patented trailer center three, Anunoby is being targeted with semi-transition post-ups, and Brunson is taking a quarter of his shots off a dribble or less.

Though this is a positive start, fans should be wary before putting in their PTO for June 2026. The Knicks were also second in offense through nine games last season, showing off increased movement and three-point reliance before regressing as the season went on.

Naturally, as the games and injuries pile up, players can fall back into their old habits. The key is building new habits to fall into, so that when these Knicks face exhaustion in a Game 6 against Cleveland in May, they’re defaulting into a pinch post look for Towns with Brunson as an off-ball threat instead of dribbling the shot clock down to 10 before making a move.

There are other things to address before that time as well, like the Knicks' free throw rate failing to improve this season. You’d like to see more rim attempts and charity stripe trips with fewer mid-range tries, but it’s a work in progress.

Still, what Brown and his staff have accomplished thus far has been praiseworthy. They got the buy-in from one of the league’s most gifted rosters to undergo one of the most drastic offensive changes of the offseason in hopes of fully realizing its potential.

We won’t be able to judge its ultimate success for many months, but for now, they appear to be headed in the right direction.