The New York Knicks have won the NBA championship in 2026, and they couldn’t have done it without some help from the Dallas Mavericks. A fair few former Mavericks played a role in the triumph, including Casey Smith, the Knicks’ vice president of sports medicine.
Smith is a Knick today because he was fired unceremoniously by former Mavericks GM Nico Harrison back in 2023, and he had some things to get off his chest on Sunday.
“Shout out to my real ones. @jalenbrunson1 @PJPatton52 @heathaaamau. They said we weren’t a good fit for their culture. Said we weren’t good enough in our roles. Peter Patton, Heather Mau, Jalen. We did and will continue to do the work.”
Shout out to my real ones. @jalenbrunson1 @PJPatton52 @heathaaamau They said we weren’t a good fit for their culture. Said we weren’t good enough in our roles. Peter Patton, Heather Mau, Jalen. We did and will continue to do the work.
— Casey Smith (@CaseyRySmith) June 14, 2026
Those are some major shots fired at Harrison and the Mavericks. Their loss was the Knicks’ gain.
The Mavericks had hired Smith as their head athletic trainer back in 2004. He was also named director of player health and performance in 2019, and to say he is good at his job would be an understatement.
Smith and his crew had been awarded the Joe O’Toole-David Craig Athletic Training Staff of the Year Award in 2021 and 2022. Harrison, though, bizarrely decided he wasn’t worth keeping around. He fired him in a pretty brutal manner, too.
According to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, Harrison had informed Smith they needed to meet in person, but was told that wouldn’t be possible. He had gone to his hometown of Ohio to be with his ailing mother for the final weeks of her life. So Harrison then set up a video conference meeting and told Smith his services were no longer needed.
“The reason for the dismissal centered on Smith being ‘too negative,’ according to sources briefed on the discussion who interpreted the vague reasoning to mean Smith wasn’t enough of a yes-man.”
From the outside, this seemed like a terrible decision, and that has proven to be the case. The Knicks hired Smith in 2024, and their staff won the Joe O’Toole-David Craig Athletic Training Staff of the Year Award for 2024-25.
Part of that crew was Heather Mau. Mau was an assistant athletic trainer for the Mavericks from 2019 to 2024. She was apparently let go in August, and the Knicks hired her as their senior athletic trainer in September.
As for the other relatively unknown name Smith mentioned there, Peter Patton was the Mavericks’ shooting coach from 2018 to 2023. Patton then spent two seasons as the Chicago Bulls‘ director of player development, after which the Knicks hired him as their shooting coach in 2025. Considering the team shot a league-best 39.1% from three in these playoffs, it’s safe to say he did his job well.
Lastly, we get to Jalen Brunson, who was named Finals MVP after the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs in five games. It was, of course, the Mavericks who had selected Brunson with the 33rd pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. He didn’t really impress in his first couple of seasons in the league, but took some strides in his third year, finishing fourth in Sixth Man of the Year voting.
In the 2021 offseason, Brunson claims to have expressed a willingness to sign a four-year, $55 million extension with the Mavericks. They didn’t want to give it to him then, though, and informed him they wanted to see where the team was about 20 games into the season.
The Mavericks would then say no again when Brunson approached later on. They finally put that deal on the table after the trade deadline had passed, but he felt he had outgrown it by then.
Brunson then helped the Mavericks make a surprising run to the Western Conference Finals in 2022. His stock had risen tremendously as a result, and the Knicks would steal him away with a four-year, $104 million deal. It was seen as an overpay at the time, but turned into a bargain.
In an ideal world, all four of Brunson, Smith, Mau, and Patton are on the Mavericks today. It’s stunning how they let go of such top-quality professionals.
As for Harrison, the Mavericks fired him in November 2025. That’s one of the few good decisions they have made in recent years. Harrison did a decent job as general manager at first after he was hired in 2021, but his last couple of years were a complete disaster. His worst decision was trading away Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025, and it’s hard to see him being hired by another team anytime soon.
The Mavericks replaced Harrison with Mike Schmitz, and he won’t find it easy to turn things around.
