Mark Campbell

MUCH more from Dirk Nowitzki's nearly two-minute answer on the firing of Nico Harrison: "Well, I think there's just too many distractions, too much going on to keep going this way. This move should have probably happened this summer honestly. I didn't want this negative energy and this black cloud over the Cooper Flagg era, but here we are now. "I just knew ... I figured this fan base is a passionate and loyal fan base. I was lucky enough to experience it for 21 years. And I knew they weren't (going to) just get over it, as people say, or forget about it. They're extremely passionate. "And this trade just made no sense. It made no sense to (the fans). And, really, there was no explanation for it, either. You go to the (NBA) Finals the year before. You gave up all these assets to build, really, the team around Luka with some 6-9 wings that all can switch and guard. You had two lob threats with (Daniel) Gafford and (Dereck) Lively and the team was built around him. You added Klay (when) the shooting was a little bit of an issue in the Finals against Boston. So you did all this. ... Going into (the) Christmas Day game, they were 14-3 out of the last 17 games, so they're just starting to hit their stride and then Luka gets hurt. And unfortunately that's the last game he's ever played in a Mavs uniform. "It was very sad. It was very sad how that ended and it felt like ... the fans feel like they got robbed of actually seeing the end, seeing this through, seeing Luka develop into a hopefully a champion one day and it feels like they never got to see the end to this. So this was very heartbreaking."