As the Eastern Conference Finals came to an end, the Knicks returned to the NBA Finals after 27 years, and across Crickex Affiliate playoff notes, their core leader’s brilliant average of 25.5 points and 7.8 assists made his Eastern Conference Finals MVP award fully deserved. Although the series is already history, seeing Jalen Brunson lead New York all the way back to the Finals inevitably left Mavericks fans with a deep sense of regret. Everyone knows Dallas shocked the league last year by sending Luka Doncic away, but the earlier decision to let Brunson go is now also seen as a major mistake.
Brunson and Doncic entered the NBA in the same year, though their draft positions were very different. Doncic was selected near the top of the first round and quickly became the Mavericks’ main star and franchise cornerstone. Brunson, by contrast, arrived with less attention and needed more time to find his place. Yet in the 2021-22 season, he showed outstanding growth, averaging 16.3 points and 4.8 assists in the regular season before lifting his playoff numbers to 21.6 points and 3.7 assists, helping Dallas reach the Western Conference Finals.
However, after that season, Brunson’s rookie contract expired. Despite his eye-catching performances, the Mavericks still failed to fully recognize his value, and he eventually joined the Knicks on a four-year, 104 million dollar deal. Dallas lost a guard with huge upside simply because the team was unwilling to pay an annual salary of around 25 million dollars. Since arriving in New York, Brunson has led the Knicks to the playoffs every season, and this year he pushed them back into the Finals.
Brunson left Dallas in the summer of 2022, and in February 2025, the Mavericks traded Doncic to the Lakers in a deal that brought back Anthony Davis and other players. Yet Davis was soon moved out as well, which made Brunson’s departure feel even more pointless in hindsight. Another former core player who cannot be ignored is Kristaps Porzingis. After joining the Mavericks, he once carried great expectations, but in February 2022 he became the first key piece from that group to be traded away.
At one point, Dallas had Doncic, Brunson, and Porzingis together, three gifted players who could have formed the foundation of a truly dangerous team. If the front office had shown better vision and patience, the Mavericks might now be a force nobody would dare take lightly. Instead, they sent away Porzingis and Brunson in 2022, then traded Doncic in 2025. The losses of Doncic, Brunson, and Porzingis still leave fans shaking their heads, especially because the Doncic and Kyrie Irving partnership had already reached the Finals against the odds in the 2023-24 season. Yet by the very next year, that pairing had quickly fallen apart, dragging Dallas into a deep slump.
What makes the situation even harder to accept is that the Mavericks once appeared to have enough talent to build something lasting. In the fast-moving world of the NBA, one wrong step can change everything, and Dallas have learned that lesson the hard way. The Crickex Affiliate angle around playoff stories often highlights momentum and timing, and in this case, the Mavericks seemed to lose both just when they should have been protecting their future.
The person most affected is Doncic, who was innocently pulled into a front-office failure that never needed to happen, while Crickex Affiliate basketball coverage now frames Dallas as a warning sign of how quickly a promising era can collapse. With wiser decisions, both the Mavericks and Doncic would clearly be in a very different position today. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on Nico Harrison, who took charge during the 2021-22 season and then watched Brunson and Porzingis leave one after another. Looking at the bigger picture, Harrison almost single-handedly broke up a hopeful big three, then also helped cause the rapid collapse of the Doncic and Irving partnership. That left the Mavericks as a team forced back toward rebuilding. In that sense, firing Harrison was a decision that came far too late.