Once their floor general, Jason Kidd now leading Mavericks as coach
Thirteen years after helping the Mavs win their 1st championship, Jason Kidd is back in the NBA Finals as their coach.
BOSTON — The NBA coaching profession sits at the intersection of perilous and perplexing, a street corner it knows all too well.
This season alone, J.B. Bickerstaff won 48 games and a playoff round and lost his job with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Frank Vogel, four years removed from a championship with the Lakers, lasted one (playoff) season with the Phoenix Suns. Adrian Griffin started 30-13 in his first season with the Milwaukee Bucks … and was gone by late January.
As Jeff Van Gundy, who once sat in the big chair with the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets, said: “If they don’t get you on your record, they get you on relationships.”
Given the volatility of the industry, how is Jason Kidd coaching the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals and four wins away from being a champion?
This time last year, Kidd was preparing for the Draft lottery. Just four short months ago, there was public grumbling about his rotations and game strategy.
What happened next was a swift, even stunning reversal: Kidd made bold changes to the lineup, earned the respect of his stars, developed and incorporated young players who became crucial pieces, then steered the Mavericks past three higher-seeded, 50-win teams into the NBA Finals.
And here he is, on the verge of his second ring in Dallas.
“J-Kidd,” Mavs guard Luka Doncic said, “has been amazing.”
He can follow the examples of Bill Russell (Celtics), Tom Heinsohn (Celtics), KC Jones (Celtics), Pat Riley (Lakers) and Billy Cunningham (Sixers) who won titles as a player and coach with the same team.
“It’s humbling,” Kidd said about having that chance. “Surreal.”
While it’s no surprise Kidd turned to coaching not long after helping Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks win the 2011 championship, it has been somewhat shocking that he struggled at times and had to take a step back in the profession before arriving at this opportunity.
Point guards make good coaches
At least that’s the belief in the NBA, with good reason — they’re natural leaders by virtue of the position and typically the smartest players on the floor.
Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown, Steve Kerr and Tyronn Lue won championships from the sideline, and scattered other former point guards had good careers in coaching. None had the robust reputation of Kidd, a Hall of Famer and triple-double master who seemed one step ahead of everyone during his playing career.
So, it was understandable that, with the Brooklyn Nets in 2013, Kidd became only the third person to start leading a team as coach the season after retiring from playing.
While Kidd was moderately successful — he won a playoff series and a Game 7 as a rookie coach — there were strained relationships. He demoted assistant coach Lawrence Frank (now President of Basketball Operations for the LA Clippers) and waged a power struggle within the organization. He was one-and-done in Brooklyn.
Kidd bailed to the Bucks in 2014, finishing third in Coach of the Year voting and grooming a young Giannis Antetokounmpo, who considers Kidd a mentor. He lasted 3 1/2 seasons, not unusual by coaching standards, and won four playoff games. But teams with openings weren’t exactly thirsting over Kidd when he was eventually fired.
He then spent two years as the lead assistant with the Lakers under Vogel. When the Lakers won the 2020 title, and therefore giving Vogel (temporary) security, Kidd accepted the Mavs’ job in 2021. Again, his first campaign was blissful — the Mavs reached the 2022 West Finals — before Dallas tumbled to 38 wins last season, sputtering late to avoid the Play-In Tournament and keep their first-round pick from the Knicks.
“It’s not easy to be a coach in this league,” Kidd said. “But I don’t care what’s written and said about me … it’s all about the group in that locker room and that group response.”
A timely turnaround
Jason Kidd could win a title with the same team as a player & coach, while Joe Mazzulla is among the youngest to reach the Finals.
Here’s what Kidd did this season to change perceptions, turn the Mavericks into a contender and ultimately earn a contract extension:
Connect with Kyrie Irving. The relationship between Kidd and Doncic was solid virtually from the start. Doncic, who can be mercurial — he often clashed with former Mavs coach Rick Carlisle — viewed Kidd as a necessary mentor, someone who played the point guard position similarly.
Once Irving arrived — in part because of Kidd — the coach served as the middleman to a pair of on-ball stars. All three have worked together to find common ground. Now, the chemistry between the guards is solid.
But just because Kidd once played point guard didn’t mean an automatic bond with Irving. Steve Nash won a pair of MVPs and that didn’t help him with Irving as coach in Brooklyn.
Yet Kidd won over Irving, who has his quirks. It didn’t hurt that Irving was at a career crossroads and he had to make this relationship work after leaving the Cavs and then flaming out in Boston and Brooklyn.
Give youngsters a chance. Some coaches have thin patience with rookies, not allowing them to overcome mistakes, throwing them to the player development crew or stashing them to the back end of the rotation.
Kidd did none of that with Dereck Lively II. Yes, it helped that Lively’s energy and rebounding skills were evident early. And that his only real competition for playing time at center, initially, was veteran Dwight Powell.
Kidd let Lively to grow on the job, earn minutes, rise in the rotation, and, ultimately, gain the trust of Doncic and Irving. As a payback, Lively became a difference-maker for the Mavs and has been arguably their third-most important player during the playoffs.
“I owe everything to coach,” Lively said. “He believed in me. Never doubted me. Always stuck by me. Still helping me.”
In what was another smart decision by Kidd, he hired Tyson Chandler, his former Mavericks teammate, to mentor Lively.
“When we got Lively, we felt he was going to fill one of the holes that Luka was looking for, a vertical guy,” Kidd said. “You could see the future of him being the anchor of our defense. The future just happened to come a lot faster. He was challenged. Sometimes young players will run away from that. He ran to it.”
Make a change for the better. The Mavericks were 34-28 in early March, with three straight losses and in danger of falling into Play-In Tournament territory. Kidd then shuffled the deck.
He put Derrick Jones Jr. and Daniel Gafford into the starting lineup and further reduced the minutes of Tim Hardaway Jr., formerly an elite sixth man.
It was a game-changer and season-saver as the Mavs were suddenly quicker and bigger. They went 15-2 and entered the postseason as the hottest team in the league. Not counting the last two games of the regular season (both meaningless losses), the Mavs’ record since the changes is 28-7.
Without question, Kidd was helped by midseason trades that brought Gafford and P.J. Washington. But he has also found ways to maximize their strengths (mainly defense and rebounding) while putting them in screen-and-rolls with Doncic to enhance their scoring.
Just as Kidd made teammates better as a player, he’s making players better as a coach.
Kidd is ready for what’s next
Everything is going right for Kidd. He’s on the same page with ownership and general manager Nico Harrison. Respect for him runs deep in the locker room. And respect beyond the locker room is expanding.
“Two out of the last three years we’ve gone to the Western Conference Finals,” Kidd said. “Some will say that’s pretty cool. Some will say that’s failure. You’re not going to make everybody happy. But I know how to win.
“I’ve done that since elementary school, to the highest level. I’ve won gold medals, I’ve won championships. I’ve won as an assistant coach. And now I have the opportunity to do that as a head coach.”
Yes, to have the chance to repeat what he did for Dallas against LeBron James and the Miami Heat in 2011, this time in a different role, is a driving force within Kidd.
“We weren’t favored to win (that) championship, and to be able to pull that off as a player was great,” he said. “And now to be able to guide these young men to win a championship, it’s real and a lot of fun. It’s been a highlight of my basketball journey.
“It’s an incredible opportunity and I’m just thankful to be in this seat. We got four games to beat Boston. We got to figure that out.”
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Shaun Powell has covered the NBA for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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