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Hours before the Dallas Mavericks dismissed general manager Nico Harrison, team owner Patrick Dumont found himself at the center of a viral courtside moment that perfectly summed up the franchise’s ongoing turmoil.
A photo that quickly spread across social media showed Dumont in a lengthy conversation with an 18-year-old fan wearing a Lakers Luka Doncic jersey – a striking image given the anger that still surrounds the trade sending Doncic to Los Angeles earlier this year.
Mavs governor Patrick Dumont and a fan in a Luka Lakers jersey pic.twitter.com/YzzYJ1Qv6P
— Christian Clark (@christianpclark) November 11, 2025
That fan, Nicholas Dickason, later told The Dallas Morning News that the interaction wasn’t as hostile as the photo suggested. In fact, Dickason said he approached Dumont to apologize.
“I flipped him off at a game earlier this season,” Dickason admitted. “My dad saw it and told me to apologize to Dumont the next time I saw him.”
Dickason added “[Dumont] said he was trying to do what’s best for the organization and ‘Sometimes you have good intentions and you make mistakes. We all do it.’”
That remark fueled speculation that the owner privately admitted regret over the Doncic deal, though it’s unclear whether that was his true intent.
“We don’t have Dumont’s version of the story,” leaving room for interpretation as the report noted.
Still, the timing of the viral photo of the owner with the boy, surfacing just hours before Harrison’s firing, made the exchange even more significant.
Dumont’s willingness to speak with a fan wearing Doncic’s Lakers jersey highlighted both his awareness of the public sentiment and the deep frustration of a fan base still struggling to move on.
While Harrison ultimately paid the price for the disastrous trade, many around the league note that such a move could never have happened without ownership approval.
Tuesday’s firing was yet another acknowledgement of how bad things have gone since the Luka trade.
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