The Mavericks’ all-time great wants his former team to go all-in on Cooper Flagg.
The primary election is one month away. Check out our voter guide to see candidate profiles, recommendations and build your sample ballotFormer Dallas Maverick player Dirk Nowitzki applaudes Mark Aguirre during his jersey retirement presentation at halftime during an NBA basketball game between the Dallas Mavericks and Charlotte Hornets, Thursday, Jan.
29, 2026, in Dallas. , discussed the Mavericks’ trade of Davis from the perspective of a fan hoping to move forward and embrace the future of the franchise around rookie Cooper Flagg.“I’ll tell you one thing, I think Mavs fans are happy with this,” Nowitzki said on Saturday. “I think they didn’t want to be reminded of what happened a year ago in the Luka trade. So to me, looking at this deal at first glance there’s not a lot that came back, picks or player-wise. This is all really about financial flexibility for the future.” The Mavericks have, of course, dismissed the primary architect of last season’s Doncic deal, as they fired Nico Harrison in early November. Ultimately, though, it sounds like Nowitzki agrees that the time was right to pull the plug on the Davis experiment as well and instead “go young.”“I’m a little disappointed, I think when AD actually played with Cooper, they played off each other really, really well,” Nowitzki admitted. “But we’ll never know. What this ultimately is now is build around Cooper, go young. See what the next year brings with the draft this summer. Ultimately now, they’re all in on Cooper Flagg and his future.” Dirk might’ve even thrown a bit of a not-so-subtle dig at Harrison, as after a bit of teasing from his co-stars Steve Nash and Blake Griffin about the Mavericks landing Flagg on a 1.8% chance, Nowitzki replied: “"There's not a lot that came back with picks or player wise. I'm a little disappointed. I think was a solid combo but we'll never know" When Steve Nash brought up the Mavs low lottery odds to land Cooper Flagg, Dirk said that was “the vision” 😂Watch: Dirk Nowitzki, Cooper Flagg talk rookie year, fadeaway tips in new Prime interviewThe SportsDay staff is a team of editors and producers on the sports desk who create content for The Dallas Morning News.McKinney protest against ICE drew dozens of residents across Collin County
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