The Mavericks’ front office shake-up has been sweeping enough to nearly erase the entire Nico Harrison era, but one familiar name is still standing: Michael Finley.
Dallas recently moved on from vice president of strategy and analytics Andrew Baker and director of pro player personnel Makhtar N’Diaye, leaving only one executive from Harrison’s old setup still with the organization. That lone holdover is Finley, whose Mavericks ties go all the way back to his playing days.
Finley first arrived in Dallas as a player in 1996 and stayed through 2005 before later taking on an informal role with the team in 2012. His front office climb started in earnest in 2017, when the Mavericks promoted him to assistant vice president of basketball operations. The biggest leap came in 2021 after Harrison was hired, when Finley was elevated to assistant general manager and vice president of player personnel.
That move made him Harrison’s top aide, and the two worked together on a series of notable transactions. The list included trading for Kyrie Irving, drafting Dereck Lively II, signing Derrick Jones Jr. and Naji Marshall, and trading for P.J.
Washington. But everything changed when Harrison dealt Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in what has been called one of the worst trades in all of modern sports.
Harrison never recovered from that decision and was eventually fired in November 2025. After that, Dallas handed Finley interim general manager duties alongside Matt Riccardi. The pair stayed in those roles through the 2025-26 season and were considered possible long-term answers before the Mavericks made another major move and hired former Toronto Raptors executive Masai Ujiri.
Once Ujiri arrived, the changes kept coming. Jason Kidd was out two weeks later, several scouts and executives were dismissed, and Mike Schmitz was hired as the new general manager, replacing Finley and Riccardi.
Riccardi is gone, and so are plenty of others from that old group. Finley, though, remains.
There has not been an update on his exact title, but he is still part of the organization, making him the only executive from Harrison’s staff left in Dallas. His longer history with the Mavericks likely matters here. Unlike Riccardi and some of the other departures, Finley was not simply a Harrison hire.
His connection to the franchise runs deeper than that. He has lived through multiple regimes and coaching changes, and his standing inside the organization appears to have carried weight. The Mavericks know him, trust him, and value the continuity he brings during a stretch of constant turnover.
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