Jason Kidd is out as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks after five seasons, the team announced Tuesday evening, ending a tenure that took him from the 2022 Western Conference finals to the 2024 NBA Finals and through one of the most turbulent stretches in franchise history.
Kidd leaves with four years and more than $40 million left on the contract Patrick Dumont extended during Dallas’ Finals run and again before last season. He compiled a 205-205 record in the regular season and went 22-18 in the playoffs, but the Mavericks decided to move on after a year that saw the roster and the front office change almost as quickly as the results on the court.
That reshaping started with Masai Ujiri, who was given full authorization to determine the head coach’s future with the franchise and was introduced in Dallas on May 5. It also included the November firing of Nico Harrison, a move that came eight months after Dallas sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025 in a deal headlined by Anthony Davis. Kidd had said he did not know about the Doncic trade until “the 11th hour,” and repeated that account in early April after Mark Cuban appeared on a podcast and accused him of being directly involved.
The split lands as much as a judgment on timing as on coaching. Kidd had expressed interest in being promoted to president of basketball operations after Harrison was fired, but Dumont told him months ago he would not be considered for the front office. He was also kept out of the loop in the process that led to Ujiri’s hiring, leaving him with little control over the direction of a team he had been asked to steady through repeated upheaval.
Ujiri made the case for the reset plainly in Dallas, saying, “As we evaluate the future of our basketball program, we believe this is the right moment for a new direction for our team,” and adding that the franchise has “a responsibility to build a basketball organization capable of sustained championship contention.” He said the team would conduct “a thorough, disciplined search” for its next head coach and continue to evaluate the basketball operations staff, while also making clear the review would be broad: “He’s done a great job, but we are going to look at this thing from head to toe.”
Kidd’s case for keeping the job rested on a body of work that was uneven but hard to dismiss. Dallas reached the 2024 NBA Finals under him and advanced to the 2022 Western Conference finals, and his long relationship with the franchise runs deep: the Mavericks drafted him in 1994, and he played a critical role in the team’s lone championship in 2011 during his second stint in Dallas. But the numbers also reflect the strain. The Mavericks went 26-56 last season, and Kidd’s overall coaching record stands at 388-395, including stints with the Brooklyn Nets from 2013 and the Milwaukee Bucks from 2014 to 2018.
The wider backdrop is even messier. Dallas traded Davis to the Washington Wizards at the deadline last season in a move aimed at creating financial flexibility for a rebuild around Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 pick and Rookie of the Year. Under Kidd, the Mavericks were 136-87 with Doncic in the lineup and 69-118 without him, a split that captures both the lift Doncic provided and the instability that followed him out the door. For Kidd, the return to Dallas as coach ends the way so many recent chapters have ended for the Mavericks: with a hard pivot and a search for the next fix.
