The Dallas Mavericks and Jason Kidd are parting ways, the team announced Tuesday, an abrupt ending to the franchise icon’s five-year run as head coach.
Kidd was hired in 2021 to lead a team with Luka Dončić as its centerpiece. The Mavericks went 52-30 games in Kidd’s first season in charge and made a surprise run to the Western Conference finals. Two years later, the Mavericks won the Western Conference and reached the NBA Finals, where they lost a six-game series to the Boston Celtics.
But the situation in Dallas deteriorated quickly after the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025, only eight months removed from the team’s finals run.
Former general manager Nico Harrison was the driving force behind the trade, but prominent voices inside the Mavericks organization — namely, minority owner Mark Cuban — alleged that Kidd influenced the trade more than he said publicly.
“That doesn’t justify it for our coach and our general manager to stand up and trade our best player,” Cuban said on the “Intersections” podcast in April.
Days later, Kidd said he was “not part of the process” and that he was made aware the deal was happening only “at the 11th hour.”
The Mavericks on Tuesday also parted ways with Matt Riccardi, who was the team’s assistant general manager when it made the Dončić trade and was promoted to co-interim general manager alongside Michael Finley upon Harrison’s firing in November.
Injuries ruined any chance the Mavericks had of succeeding after they traded Dončic. Anthony Davis, whom Kidd coached on the Lakers, suffered a left adductor strain in his first game with the Mavericks on Feb. 8, 2025. Weeks later, star guard Kyrie Irving tore the ACL in his left knee. Davis and Irving played a total of 25 minutes together in Dallas before Davis was traded to the Washington Wizards in February.
The Mavericks lost 30 of 37 games to close the regular season. On April 12, following Dallas’ regular-season finale against the Chicago Bulls, Kidd said it was difficult to evaluate the Mavericks’ last two seasons because of their litany of injury issues.
“We have to be healthy at some point,” Kidd said. “We want that to be next season. If that is, we can be judged.”
Per league sources, Kidd had interest in moving into a front office role with the Mavericks. The Athletic was first to report in February that was unlikely to happen.
In May, the Mavericks made a splash by hiring championship-winning executive Masai Ujiri as president and alternate governor. Ujiri was noncommittal about Kidd’s future with the Mavericks when asked May 5 if Kidd would be back for a sixth season as coach.
“He’s done a great job, but we are going to look at this thing from head to toe,” Ujiri said then.
In the Mavericks’ news release Tuesday, Ujiri said he believed “this is the right moment for a new direction for our team.”
“We have high expectations for this franchise and a responsibility to build a basketball organization capable of sustained championship contention,” Ujiri said. “We will conduct a thorough, disciplined search for our next head coach and continue to evaluate our entire basketball operations staff to ensure we compete at the standard Mavs fans expect and deserve.”
Last summer, the New York Knicks had interest in hiring Kidd as coach. The Mavericks declined to let Kidd interview for the job, however, and awarded him a contract extension in October. Because of the number of years and money remaining on Kidd’s deal — four years and $40 million, league sources said — there was skepticism in some corners of the NBA that the Mavericks would part ways with him now. But sources with knowledge of governor Patrick Dumont’s thinking insisted all along that Ujiri would have full control to shape the Mavericks organization as he saw fit, which Tuesday’s news made apparent.
Kidd forged strong relationships with both of the Mavericks’ stars, forward Cooper Flagg and Irving, in his time in Dallas. While Flagg, 19, just completed his rookie season and has three years remaining on his current contract, Irving has only one more year left on his deal before he can exercise a player option in summer 2027.
In his stops with the Denver Nuggets and Toronto Raptors, Ujiri chose to hang on to the coaches he inherited — George Karl and Dwane Casey — for multiple seasons. Yet in this instance, Ujiri didn’t push to retain Kidd.
The Mavericks must now find a coach as they continue building around Flagg. Kidd’s time in Dallas is over 15 months after the Mavericks traded Dončić, the superstar Kidd was hired to work with.
Kidd finishes his tenure as Mavericks coach with a 205-205 record.
