The NBA coaching carousel is spinning today, and Dub Nation needs to take a second to look at the full picture.
Jason Kidd is out in Dallas after five seasons, and before we say anything else, let’s give J-Kidd his flowers. He’s a Bay Area legend and Hall of Famer. He’s absolutely one of the greatest point guards to ever lace them up. He took the Mavs to the 2022 Western Conference Finals and the 2024 NBA Finals. That’s generational work for a franchise that hasn’t sniffed success since Dirk Nowitzki
and Kidd won a title 15 years ago as players.
But this just shows exactly how cold this business is. New president Masai Ujiri got full authorization to determine his future per ESPN, and after taking your franchise to the Finals two years prior Coach Kidd is out of the picture. And with that, Kidd, Jalen Brunson, and of course Luka Doncic are now gone from a team that the Warriors knocked out of the Western Conference Finals in 2022, at a time when the Mavs looked like a team that was up next.
Now look across the league at what’s happening in San Francisco.
In the final moments of the Warriors’ season, Steve Kerr quietly told Steph Curry and Draymond Green that he loved them both, then sat in a hotel lobby bar in Phoenix with his coaching staff counting the years they’d all spent in the game together. And after a month of genuine internal conflict, walks with Lulu through the Presidio, sandwiches at Golden Gate Deli, and real conversations with Steph, Dray, Joe Lacob, and his own family, he said yes to coming back.
That contrast should hit different right now.
Kerr’s loyalty isn’t blind sentimentality. It’s earned, deliberate, and mutual. Lacob and Dunleavy sat with him and asked one shared question: what honored the Warriors’ past while setting the franchise up for the best future? The four Larry O’Brien Trophies in Lacob’s office are standing monuments to what this relationship is about. That’s a front office that treats its coach like a partner, not an employee with an expiration date.
Dallas handed J-Kidd a 26-56 season after trading Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis, a deal that Kidd insisted he wasn’t aware of until the eleventh hour, then showed him the door when a new regime walked in. Ujiri will build something in Dallas eventually. He always does. But don’t let the business language of “new direction” fool you into thinking a Finals trip two years ago didn’t happen. I’ll be interested to check out the opinions of those who watched his coaching tenure; will Coach Kidd get another landing spot soon?
Meanwhile, Steve Kerr is coaching Steph Curry hopefully until the end of both of their careers.
Kerr himself said he was the luckiest coach in NBA history because he lucked into over a decade of Steph. I’m definitely gonna believe J-Kidd deserves better than what Dallas gave him. LET HIM COOK, DAMN!
Dub Nation, we don’t take this for granted.
