DALLAS – Former Montana State standout Nico Harrison moved into an executive role within the NBA as the Dallas Mavericks announced his official hiring on Monday, June 28, as the organization’s general manager and head of basketball operations.
Harrison was a 1,000-point scorer in three seasons at Montana State after transferring from Army. After a redshirt season, the future Bobcat Hall of Famer seamlessly moved into the starting lineup as the program embarked on one its most successful three-year runs in history.
Harrison led the Big Sky Conference in field goal percentage as a sophomore in 1993-94 with his clip of 62.4% still ranking among the top 10 single-season marks all-time at Montana State. The 1994-95 and 1995-96 Bobcats posted back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since the early 1950s, which was also the last time the ‘Cats won as many as 58 games in three consecutive seasons. His senior year in 1995-96 culminated an impressive stretch in Bozeman for Harrison.
Known as one of the best defensive players in the league at the time, Harrison helped lead Montana State to a Big Sky Conference Tournament title and NCAA Tournament appearance for the first time in nine years. He became just the 14th player in Big Sky history and third Bobcat to land all-Big Sky honors three straight seasons at the time, while his first-team selections on each occasion match the laurels of Bobcat greats Jack Gillespie (1967-69) and Nate Holmstadt (1997-99).
Harrison still ranks fifth in program history in career field goal percentage (61.1%) and 10th in steals (121). Harrison was known for his academic prowess during his college career.
He’s just one of three Academic All-Americans in the program’s history and is the most recent men’s basketball player to earn the distinction. He was a two-time Arthur Ashe Jr. Scholar Athlete and earned an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.
A Montana State Athletics Hall of Fame inductee for the class of 2015, Harrison spent seven years playing professional basketball overseas following his college playing career. He began working for Nike in 2002 and rose to the position of vice president of North America basketball operations in May of 2015. Harrison is the first Bobcat men’s basketball alum to hold a front office role in the NBA.
