After NBC got the chance to break the news of an incredibly tight NBA Rookie of the Year win by Dallas’ Cooper Flagg on Monday night, Carmelo Anthony took the opportunity to revisit one of the league’s most ridiculous stories of the past year.
That would be the rise and fall of Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison, the galaxy-brained architect of the trade that sent franchise cornerstone Luka Dončić to the Lakers — widely regarded as one of the most lopsided trades in sports history.
Given the national profile of Dončić, who at the time he was traded was coming off his first NBA Finals appearance, and the constant spotlight on the Lakers, NBA media has churned through numerous news cycles around the trade in the year since it happened. Once Dallas lucked into (or, if you prefer conspiracies, was given) the No. 1 overall pick in the following draft and selected Flagg, some in the media began to turn back to Harrison’s side.
Of course, the Mavericks remained a mess behind the scenes and sucked for most of Flagg’s rookie season. So even as some commentators attempted to spin the story to give Harrison more credit, the team fired him.
Which made it all the more bizarre when Anthony, in celebrating Flagg’s closely contested ROY win on national television, chose to once again heap praise on Harrison.
“Shout out to Nico Harrison, man,” Anthony said. “For seeing this right here, for understanding this vision. No matter what happened, how it happened, Dallas got something back. They got the No. 1 pick.”
“You start talking about Cooper’s ceiling and a young face of this league in the NBA, that’s Cooper Flagg.”
It’s one thing to defend Harrison, as some in the media have, after seeing Doncic continue to struggle with his conditioning or commitment to defense in L.A.
It is another for Anthony to credit him for “vision” when it comes to Flagg and claim that “they got something back” in relation to the Dončić trade. The whole reason the Dončić trade was considered such a disaster for the Mavericks is that they got so little back. The pick that became Flagg did not come back in that deal; Dallas entered lottery night in 2025 with a 1.8 percent chance at the top selection and miraculously came away with the right to pick Flagg.
Either Anthony completely forgot the details of how Dallas came to pick Flagg during a segment coronating the star rookie, or he genuinely wants to give Harrison credit for the way the ping-pong balls fell at the lottery.
Regardless of how a viewer might have parsed Anthony’s praise for the ousted GM, the audible laughter that came from Anthony’s fellow NBC panelists as he argued on Harrison’s behalf is all you need to see just how preposterous the take was.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.