Mavericks’ Kidd eyes big prize
In third coaching stop, Bay Area native has his team on the rise
“To develop players and help guys achieve their goals, to be part of their lives that way, is really cool.” Jason Kidd, Dallas head coach
Jason Kidd sat courtside Thursday at Chase Center, watching his Dallas Mavericks players hoist shots after practice. Kidd wore a baseball cap and sweats, one outstretched arm resting on the chair next to him. He looked relaxed, at peace, entirely in his element.
He looked nothing like a man who left tension in his wake at his two previous head-coaching stops (which he did). Rather, he carried himself like a head coach who has found success and happiness with his original NBA franchise (also true) and now is facing his childhood team while seeking a return to the Finals.
Kidd’s roots in the Bay Area run deep, of course. This is where he became a high school basketball legend at St. Joseph Notre Dame-Alameda, where he sharpened his skills in pickup games against Warriors players at College of Alameda, where he lifted Cal into a new realm in the 1990s.
Now, at 49, after a Hall of Fame playing career and unspectacular coaching stints with the Nets and Bucks, Kidd finds the Warriors in his way. He guided the Mavericks — who drafted him No. 2 overall in 1994 and won their only NBA title in 2011 with an aging Kidd at point guard — to a surprisingly strong season, punctuated by a Game 7 rout of top-seeded Phoenix in the Western Conference semifinals.
So the point-guard phenom who saw the game so clearly as a player — and stirred more questions than answers in his first two shots as a head coach — is taking full advantage of his third chance. It helps to have Luka Doncic in the fold, absolutely, but Kidd also shaped this Dallas team in his tenacious, defensive-minded mold.
“This is home,” he said of the Mavs.
“There are a lot of people here who were here in 2011, a lot of familiar faces I’ve known a long time. It’s just a comfortable place.”
Kidd downplayed the importance of taking another whirl on the NBA’s headcoaching carousel. There were no guarantees it would happen, especially after he sat out one season (mostly playing golf near his Arizona home) and then spent two years as a Lakers assistant coach. His name surfaced in rumors when Cal sought a head coach, though Kidd’s bid was hampered by the fact he didn’t have a college degree at the time (he earned one in August).
He clearly had an impact this season on Doncic and the Mavs. They ranked seventh in the league in defensive rating, after finishing 21st last season. They force opponents to play at their methodical pace, spread the floor and launch 3-point shots with abandon.
That formula didn’t work so well in Game 1 on Wednesday night, but it has carried the Mavericks to the conference finals for the first time in 11 years. And it has helped Kidd rediscover the joy in coaching.
He acknowledged this wasn’t something he planned to pursue after his playing career, even if his hoops savvy suggested it would be a logical path.
Asked why he ended up coaching, Kidd replied, “That’s a great question, I haven’t thought about it. But it’s fun, I’ll tell you that. It’s hard. To develop players and help guys achieve their goals, to be part of their lives that way, is really cool. So I enjoy that part of it.”
He didn’t especially enjoy
the acrimonious endings of his previous coaching gigs. Kidd reportedly demanded more power (and was rebuffed) after one season with Brooklyn, leading to his departure. He lasted three-plus years with a young Milwaukee team, before the Bucks fired him amid criticism over the way he interacted with players (though he had Giannis Antetokounmpo’s support).
Worth noting here: The Bucks won 60 games the season after Kidd’s dismissal, then captured the championship last year under Mike Budenholzer. That said, the Bucks are one of 26 teams now watching from home and the Mavericks are one of only four still playing.
Kidd inherited a more
ready-made team this time, starting with Doncic.
“In Milwaukee, the franchise was at the bottom (15-67 the season before he arrived) and we were trying to help build something and develop players,” he said. “Totally different than here in Dallas, where you have a megastar like Luka who’s playing at a high level and who’s been a pro since he was 14 years old.”
Kidd applied lessons learned in his two seasons with the Lakers, working alongside then-head coach Frank Vogel. Namely, Kidd watched the way Vogel coaxed elite defense from LeBron James and Co., and how that led to the Lakers winning the title in 2020.
Still, landing another headcoaching
job required clearing sizable obstacles unrelated to Kidd’s basketball resume. Most notably, he pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-wife in 2001 and attended six months of anger-management classes. While coaching the Nets, he also served a two-game NBA suspension in 2013 after a drunk-driving charge.
Mavericks CEO Cynthia Marshall acknowledged last summer that she had two “long, intense” conversations with Kidd about the domesticviolence incident before agreeing to hire him.
Fast forward to May 2022 and Kidd has steered clear of personal turmoil for nearly a decade. And now he finds himself on the brink of another trip to the Finals, even if it would require an abrupt reversal after the Warriors’ 11287 romp Wednesday night.
Kidd’s counterpart, Steve Kerr, lauded his creativity and willingness to try things such as trap Stephen Curry when the Mavs and Warriors met in the regular season. Kerr noted the uniqueness of a transcendent player such as Kidd becoming a head coach, contrary to the trend of role players (like Kerr) leading teams.
That gives Kidd instant credibility with players such as Dwight Powell, who remembered watching Kidd play while growing up.
“There’s a long list of reasons why he’s been great for us,” said Powell, a Stanford alum. “He’s been there before, first and foremost. We trust him. He trusts us. He’s a good communicator — everything is very direct. So adjustments happen quickly, because he can be very direct with us.”
Now, fittingly, the adjustments involve the Warriors, the team Kidd followed during his childhood in Oakland. Those were largely lean days for the Warriors, but Kidd has fond memories — because then-head coach Don Nelson invited him, as a decorated high school player, to join Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond and Tim Hardaway for workouts and pickup games in Alameda.
That filled young Kidd with confidence, he said, as he launched his playing career. All these years later, he’s back in the Bay Area in a different capacity, trying to stop his hometown team. He knows it won’t be easy.