Founders' Choice: Rethinking Jason Kidd

Perhaps the Mavericks' coach demonstrates an important lesson about perception.

Today’s piece is the first in our “Founders Choice” series for the summer where we will regularly write about topics that different founding subscribers have suggested they would very much like to have me address. This one is from a Founder named Jim, who asked me to offer an update on my feelings about Mavericks’ Head Coach Jason Kidd. It is particularly interesting to write you this on the airplane to Boston as I go to cover the 2024 NBA Finals featuring the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics.

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On March 6th, I had finally given up on the idea that this Mavericks team had a clue. I am not alone, of course, but that isn’t really important. Because here in this space, when I write something, it needs to be something that I believe in.

For those who listen to the radio show that I am on every day for The Ticket, you know that I was not at all against the hiring of Jason Kidd back in July of 2021. Several of my Ticket friends seemed very disappointed in hiring him after his failures in Brooklyn and Milwaukee, but I guess I was more in the “let’s see where this goes” camp.

But, by March 6th, I definitely could not take the direction of the team. The deadline had passed. The upgrades were made. And yet, they lost five out of six games and went from 33-23 to 34-28 overnight.

It was bad.

Especially the two home games against Philadelphia (without its best player) and then a rematch with Rick Carlisle and the Pacers (who smoked them badly in front of a very frustrated crowd).

It was difficult to see a world where the Mavericks could escape the play-in games, and honestly, things were pretty rough. This team did not appear ready to go on a massive run.

So, I decided it was time to write the story that had been on my mind. Perhaps the Mavericks needed to consider that as Year 3 was winding down, maybe the next move was to try another head coach this spring. Boy, was I hot under the sports collar.

Here is the link and the conclusion of the piece:

What happens when a coach is out of ideas?

I definitely think it is time to ask if Jason Kidd has the answers to the questions that are being asked. Yes, I would like to see him defend his players more and battle officials to make Luka not feel like he has to argue because his coach won’t fight for him. I would also like to see that they are responding to adversity and not giving into it.

But, more than anything, I just want to see progress from the Mavericks' tactical and strategic plans – especially on defense. And I don’t think that has been clear for quite a while. Yes, patience with new pieces, but how much patience is enough? They were not a Top 10 team in the West last season and now are teetering on that very similar status, despite having an MVP talent in his prime and a 2nd piece that has been spectacular by his side. I realize that coaches have weak points, but defensively is where this team needs to be saved by scheme. I don’t think you can mess up the offense too much with Luka and Kyrie here.

Does Kidd have the ability to grow a team from where he took them to their ceiling?

If he does, he is doing a good job of fooling me. Because right now, he looks like a man who has no idea what to do next. And that is when you know it is time to give the job to someone with fresh ideas.

On one hand, perhaps I over-reacted. On the other hand, the Mavericks themselves told us when Mark Cuban appeared on the Hardline the next morning – the same March 6th that I wrote my story. They got in a room and decided it was time to make two significant changes to the starting lineup that was not working. Out would go Dereck Lively and Josh Green and in would come Derrick Jones and Daniel Gafford.

And then, as if those moves were a magic potion, they went on a 16-4 run to finish the season in a dead sprint before winning three consecutive series as a lower seed with no home court advantage. Somehow, they have now won 28 of their last 37 games, with a few of those losses occurring when they sat their guys to end the season.

They transformed into a team that looked like the best team in the NBA, and this transformation literally began the moment I considered firing Jason Kidd.

Hilarious timing, right?

Thus, the question: care for a do-over?

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13-38-3.

Imagine winning just 13 games out of 54. That is a winning percentage of 24% and a clear sign that the franchise is going nowhere.

Then, imagine the owner deciding that he should extend that coach for 10 more years.

Many of you reading this know that this really happened in this very city. In 1964, young first-time coach Tom Landry received a massive 10-year extension as he entered the final season of his 5-year initial contract from his owner Clint Murchison.

It ended up being one of the best moves in Cowboys history, of course, to not lose patience with the young coach who had taken Dallas from an expansion team in 1960 to near the very top of the NFL by 1966. However, there were surely times when the public had plenty of doubts.

There was no sports radio in 1964, no internet experts, and no round-the-clock Cowboys talk to roast a coach who couldn’t win. But can you imagine how we all would have reacted to a coach who had never won before being given a 10-year mandate from the owner to keep on keeping on?

I will go out on a limb and suggest that there is a chance I would have lost patience with Landry by 1964. This defensive coordinator from the Giants clearly doesn’t know what he is doing and is clearly not a head coach.

Perhaps this is a good time to offer you two paragraphs from Landry’s biography:

In addition to his record 20 consecutive winning seasons from 1966 to 1985, Landry won two Super Bowl titles in Super Bowl VI and XII, five NFC titles, and 13 divisional titles. He compiled a 270–178–6 record, the fourth-most wins all-time for an NFL coach, and his 20 career playoff victories are the third-most of any coach in NFL history. Landry was also named the NFL Coach of the Year in 1966 and the NFC Coach of the Year in 1975.

From 1966 to 1982, a span of 17 years, Dallas played in 12 NFL or NFC Championship games. Furthermore, the Cowboys appeared in 10 NFC Championship games in the 13-year span from 1970 to 1982. Leading the Cowboys to three Super Bowl appearances in four years between 1975 and 1978, and five in nine years between 1970 and 1978.

I am not trying to tell you anything about Jason Kidd by reminding you how Tom Landry got going, except to tell the story on how being impatient with a coach can sometimes be a very bad idea.

If I was the owner of the Mavericks, would I have felt the panic and urgency of this city and the fear of losing Luka Dončić by pulling the plug on Kidd on March 6th?

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As I re-read my piece from March 6, it is clear there are two things that really bothered me. First, the defensive structure still had not come into focus, and this team was not able to defend much better than they traditionally had. The moves had been made and the personnel adjusted, but they still did not seem to grasp that end of the court. It was perplexing and disappointing.

From that day forward, the Mavericks somehow transformed from the 23rd-best defensive rating in the league to the 1st for the remainder of the season. If most of us never imagined in our wildest dreams that was possible, I submit that it was difficult to find clues in advance of the reality. Going from a defensive rating of 117.3 to 107.2 was a plot twist I had not considered, and honestly, it is tough to be too upset about not seeing that one coming around the mountain. Sometimes, sports are weird like that.

But the other element is actually more interesting to me.

I was upset about how Kidd did not seem to get mad enough when things were going badly. He had zero technicals and was the only coach who had yet to get reprimanded by the officials in any capacity in the entire league. What was he doing over there with his hands in his pockets? Why wasn’t he screaming? Do something!

In retrospect, I was equating the lifeless Mavericks performances to the docile demeanor of their head coach. Why? If he was ranting and raving and turning red with rage, would that have made me feel better? My logic at the time was basically this: If he would twist off at the refs, then maybe Luka would not feel he had to. I confess, this was more of a public theory that was gaining widespread agreement in the groupthink world we live in. Zero technicals means zero clue, I guess?

Well, I would like that one back.

In the last three months, I have thought about this quite a bit. And yes, today is the 3-month anniversary since that piece was published. What a wild ride it has been.

Since then, I have thought back to the first days of Jason Kidd being hired. July of 2021 was a while back, and the context of that time is important. Kidd was being hired at the exact moment that the last franchise he had coached was in the NBA Finals and about to claim a championship. Literally, he was introduced between Games 4 and 5 of the NBA Finals for Milwaukee. It seemed they were much better off saying goodbye to him.

Also, the introductory press conference included questions about the Mavericks “zero tolerance policy” as it might pertain to Kidd’s problematic past involving domestic violence.

It is certainly not great to ignore something that happened 20 years earlier, but I was a bit confused by the media’s rationale given that he had already worked for the Mavericks (and delivered a championship) as a player in the time between. However, we do live in odd times, and people felt they needed to get it on the record and see if the answers were reasonable. Obviously, leading the franchise as the head coach is a step up in leadership, so he had to prove he is a different guy now.

On that day, Mark Cuban suggested— and I am paraphrasing from an interview I cannot locate—that the Xs and Os are not nearly as important to him anymore as the relationships and the ability for his next coach to connect with Luka and perhaps resonate in a way Dončić had never experienced before.

And that was what I missed until this spring.

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In July of 2021, Luka was 22 years old and needed a Yoda in his life. His only coach to that point was Rick Carlisle, who at that stage in his career seemed to be sick of everything. Maybe it was just here, or maybe it was just working with Cuban, I don’t know. But I do know that in those final years, Rick had no patience left and was as abrasive as could be.

Of course, he had also won the 2011 title and was a genuinely great coach for many years, as well as a man of principle, so most of us felt weird criticizing him for any reason. But I had witnessed with my own eyes a list of things with Rick that were stacking up, though I figured were fairly normal for a head coach in the NBA:

• Openly arguing with his best player on a regular basis, including loud sparring matches that could be heard from a distance and seen on television. Dončić and Carlisle seemed like they disagreed all the time.

• Screaming down the bench at Cuban on a night I sat courtside, saying, “Hey Mark, do you want to coach the team?” while shooting an incredibly cold stare at his boss to shut up.

• In his last few days on the job, seemingly so sick of Kristaps Porzingis that he was willing to torpedo the playoff series with the Clippers to humiliate the frustrating and frustrated player by using him as a decoy while running his offense through Boban.

Looking back, it wasn’t normal at all. It was agitating and instigating that it would be his way or no way at all. Maybe it was a phase because Rick seems to have found peace again in Indiana with a young team that doesn’t seem to be underperforming or constantly fighting. And I am not suggesting that harmony means a team is playing its best and there is no place for differences of opinion.

We talked about the Kristaps story in this segment below this week on the Hardline if you want to hear it.

In a nutshell, I appreciate Rick Carlisle a ton—maybe too much—in that I was unable to see how the relational side of things was becoming an obstacle in getting Luka to take the next step.

Enter Jason Kidd.

Like I said, it took me until now to realize what Cuban meant on the day Kidd was hired. This was about a relationship—finding a way to communicate with and challenge Dončić in a way that doesn’t have to be confrontational. Incidentally, we might also recognize that there is one organization that figured out how to work well with Kyrie Irving using a very similar strategy: treat him with respect and find the best version of him.

What if reaching and resonating with Luka and Kyrie is Kidd’s greatest attribute? A former star player who had been through every situation a superstar could find and was widely respected throughout the league and by both of these stars themselves. Was Kidd in a very small pool of candidates that maybe Rick Carlisle and even Jamahl Mosely could not swim in due to his Hall of Fame playing career?

Furthermore, is keeping calm when the team is playing poorly or getting abused by the officials actually an open demonstration to Luka that composure is key above everything? And in doing so, can he smoothly ask Dončić to regather his calm at halftime in a private way that is not upsetting or humiliating to a stressed-out player?

I feel like these are all things I missed badly back in March. Finding the one coach on the planet who was capable of speaking wisdom to Luka while building a bridge for a Kyrie redemption story is maybe the most significant story that is still not discussed enough. I just don’t know that you can spend time evaluating his performance as a head coach without considering how he has somehow made this duo the very best version of themselves in such a short amount of time.

I missed it, and I hate that I did. I was wrong about Jason Kidd and his fit here with this roster. Because looking at it from that perspective, it makes all the sense in the world that you are willing to accept shortcomings in a few other categories to get a guy who those two openly respect and enjoy. Then, they feel empowered to take leadership of the rest of the roster, and suddenly, the whole thing makes sense.

I missed it because it is odd to call Jason Kidd—he of a domestic violence case—a calming influence of wisdom. It is odd to say Luka Dončić has matured dramatically while the basketball world still loves to focus on his moments of immaturity. And it is impossible for anyone outside of Dallas to acknowledge that not only is Kyrie Irving back, but he is now a trusted veteran voice in the room who advises the eager young pups to hear what he has learned.

It is an unlikely story that perhaps is only matched by the unlikely berth in the NBA Finals from a team that was lost at sea 90 days ago.

Sports are infinitely fascinating, and these Finals tonight will reveal the next chapter.

I cannot wait for this plane to land.