The Dallas Mavericks, particularly the front office and ownership group, have racked up plenty of criticism over the last few weeks. Not only did the Mavericks trade franchise star Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers but general manager Nico Harrison and team governor Patrick Dumont both took shots at the 25-year-old on his way out the door.

The entire operation has felt grimy since the beginning with Dallas even going as far as to eject fans from home games vocally protesting Harrison to blurring out Doncic’s face on a recent highlight video that made its way around social media.

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Over the last few weeks, the Mavericks have become an example of how not to operate when trading a star player. Harrison and Dumont are earning plenty of heat for the way they’ve guided the reins, essentially turning the fanbase against them with no real hope of flipping them back.

Shortly after the conclusion of the NBA All-Star Break, CBS Sports’s Sam Quinn took a stab at ranking every front office in the league. He pooled the teams in 11 tiers from ‘nearly perfect’ to ‘I have real questions’ and finally, ‘I can’t defend what you’re doing.’

It probably won’t be too hard to figure out where Dallas ended up. If you guessed the bottom-tier, ding, ding ding.

‘I can’t defend what you’re doing’ is probably the highest words of affirmation you can offer Harrison and Dumont at this point. Whether they are asleep at the wheel or just plain inept, the pair at the top of the franchise have undoubtedly delivered an injustice not only to Mavericks fans but also to Doncic himself.

“The human element of the Dončić trade is what will lock Dallas into the bottom tier of these rankings so long as Nico Harrison remains employed by the team,” Quinn wrote. “He and Patrick Dumont have shown such a fundamental misunderstanding of why fans root for a basketball team that they simply cannot be trusted to serve as effective caretakers of an organization.”

“They’re asking the city of Dallas to root for laundry instead of the human being who wore it,” Quinn continued. “We freely use words like “asset” to describe players, and in many cases, though a bit unseemly, it’s an accurate description. It isn’t where someone like Dončić is involved. Those players are why we watch sports in the first place.”

All in all, the Mavericks slotted in as the fourth-worst front office in the league just in front of the Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings, and Chicago Bulls. In case you’re wondering, the Los Angeles Lakers came in at No. 17, earning a tier of their own, ‘they’re just playing a different game.’

Lakers GM Rob Pelinka certainly outplayed Harrison, who might be considered the biggest loser in the trade if he’s out of a job in a few months.

Dallas likely won’t be making its way up the charts anytime soon with Anthony Davis out for the foreseeable future.

Mavericks: Anthony Davis, Max Christie, 2029 Lakers first-round pick

Lakers: Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber, Markieff Morris

Jazz: Jalen Hood-Schifino, 2025 Clippers second-round pick, 2025 Mavericks second-round pick

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