Mavs GM Nico Harrison advised against trading Duke Blue Devils basketball phenom Cooper Flagg for Kevin Durant

Dallas Mavericks GM Nico Harrison won’t be making a similar mistake to the one that nearly cost him the fanbase’s support and his employment. Duke Blue Devils basketball phenom Cooper Flagg won’t be traded. On June 25 in Brooklyn, New York, Flagg will hear his name from Adam Silver as the first overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft.

DeMarcus Cousins wants Harrison to trade the pick for Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant. Cousins went on FanDuel TV’s “Run It Back” and made an argument for such a deal. He was serious.

The Smoking Cuban’s Jared A’Latorre advised against Harrison making such a move, believing that merely not pulling off a second generational screw-up in half a year could win him back the Mavs fans lost from the Luka Doncic-for-Anthony Davis blockbuster back in February.

“Harrison obviously knows that people have been calling for his job, and he already mentioned in his most recent press conference that he didn't realize how much Doncic meant to the city of Dallas. This was another mistake that Harrison wouldn't want to make again by trading away Flagg, and he can slowly win fans back by treating him like royalty,” A’Latorre wrote.

“This was no doubt the gift that the Mavericks needed, and while Durant would be a big help to that championship puzzle, this would increase the Mavs' age average even more, which was already a concern after the trade deadline.

“Harrison already crushed the city of Dallas by trading away Doncic, and now that the basketball gods gifted the Mavs another chance to draft a superstar, he can't mess that up. Trading Flagg for Durant would be a move that would flip DFW upside down once again, and Harrison should not destroy the positive luck that happened to fall into his lap just over a week ago.”

Harrison would likely only trade Flagg for Durant at this point if he purposefully wanted to go down as the worst executive in the history of American professional sports. By all accounts, it looks like Harrison knows he had one of the most miraculous mulligans the Association has ever seen and will more likely deal Davis, Daniel Gafford, Dereck Lively II, P.J. Washington, and Kyrie Irving than the highest-ceiling prospect since LeBron James.

As for Cousins’s comments, he may just have a skewed view of basketball in general. After all, he did claim he’d rather have Jalen Brunson as a teammate than Doncic.