After addressing the aftermath of his shocking Luka Doncic trade with the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison discussed another trade he made, trading Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin. He also landed a second-round pick in this year’s draft. While Harrison doesn’t think losing Doncic will hurt the Mavericks land free agents, he believes trading Grimes was best for his team’s future.

Harrison responded transparently to why he made the deal in February.

“We looked at our managing of the salary cap as maximizing it to its full potential. So, Caleb was one of the players that we were able to get that would actually just barely fit under the first apron,” Harrison said. “We took that, and we knew what we were giving up. We knew we were only going to be able to sign one 10-day guy. But the chances of 10 players out of 18 available players being hurt, we took that risk to get a player of Caleb, who we’ve liked forever. And so we did it.”

Harrison says the deal taught him a valuable lesson.

“Absolutely, we did,” Harrison replied. “There are scenarios where you can have more than 10 players hurt, which doesn’t typically happen. So that will be something that we’ll keep in mind as we move forward.”

As for Doncic, Harrison says he’s ready to move on from talking about the deal, such as the former Mavericks All-Star, and is looking forward to the franchise’s new era.

“I feel the same way he does,” Harrison said. “I’ve actually never spoken ill of Luka at all, and I’m just ready to move on with this team that we have.”

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Nico Harrison’s surprising take on Luka Doncic, Mavericks fans

Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison watches warm ups prior to a game against the Memphis Grizzlies at FedExForum
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Mavericks GM Nico Harrison addressed Luka Doncic’s trade impacted fans in a manner he didn’t anticipate. While his Quentin Grimes trade for Caleb Martin didn't go as viral, Harrison discussed how jarring the backlash was for him, per X, formerly Twitter.

“I did know that Luka was important to the fanbase, but I didn’t quite know it to what level,” Harrison said. “But really, the way we looked at is if we’re putting a team on the floor that’s Kyrie [Irving], Klay [Thompson], PJ [Washington], Anthony Davis, and [Dereck] Lively, we feel that’s a championship caliber team and we would’ve been winning at a high level and that would’ve quieted some of the outrage. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that, so it just continued to go on and on.”

Mavericks fans will wait to see what happens next as their team’s offseason unfolds.