Jason Kidd pleads guilty to leading the Mavs to the NBA Finals a year after a chaotic ending

DALLAS (AP) – Jason Kidd is not fond of non-public debt collection.

Leading the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals as their coach 13 years after he was the point guard on the franchise’s only championship team means more to Kidd than proving he was right about Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving needing time to grow into tandem competing for the title.

There is a a part of the 51-year-old, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame playerwho thinks he doesn’t have much to prove.

“I know how to win,” Kidd said. “I’ve been doing it since grade school, at the highest level. I won gold medals. I won the championship. I also won the championship as a coach and assistant coach. Now I even have the opportunity to try this as a head coach. “

When the Mavericks face the Boston Celtics in Game 1 on Thursday night, they will probably be overlooked of a 1-6 tie that has experts once more wondering how long Kidd will coach in Dallas.

The Mavs will probably be faraway from Kidd for nearly 14 months amid questions on his job security and the club’s strange decision to walk away two games before the end of the season while still retaining a likelihood to play in the postseason.

The Doncic-Irving pairing has deteriorated in the two months since the blockbuster trade that brought Irving from Brooklyn in 2023. Never mind that just a year earlier, Kidd’s coaching debut in Dallas resulted in Doncic’s first trip to the Western Conference Finals.

“I guess you have to go through a few losses to really believe that you can do it,” said Kidd, whose assistant title he won with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 playoffs. “We weren’t very good. But it’s ok. Even though people feel like they should be sold or fired because of their failures, sometimes it’s sad. We had to get through it.”

Now Kidd will try to grow to be the eighth person to win the title as a player and coach on the same team. Seven more did so under different franchises.

Kidd achieved this by giving a mixture of perennial All-Stars Irving and Doncic time to marinate and convincing the offensive wizards to play defense.

“He understands mine and Kyrie’s role because he’s played it himself,” Doncic said of the two-time Olympic gold medal winner. “That’s why he helps us a lot. But everyone. He kept everyone together. We were often weak, especially during the season. There were at all times ups and downs, but he kept us together.

Kidd and his staff made changes midseason, trading PJ Washington, a 3-and-D wing, and Daniel Gafford, a pick-and-roll rim protector to add depth at center with rookie Dereck Lively II.

The team that began the season repeating Kidd’s mantra that “our offense is our defense” has transformed into a defense-first group, very similar to his first season in 2021-2022.

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Here’s the summary.

In the 10 seasons from the 2011 championship until Kidd took over as coach, the Mavs didn’t win a playoff series. They won five in his three seasons, losing to Golden State in the West in the finals two years ago.

“It’s not very often that you go from the lottery to the final round,” Kidd said, referring to the draft pick the Mavs retained – and traded for Lively – by tanking at the end of the 2022-23 season. “But we actually believed we had the pieces. Sometimes you’re taking a step back to see what you’ve got.

Even when the Mavs felt that they had found the right combination, their seven-game winning streak dropped to 1-6. They were over .500 in six games and were flirting with the play-in tournament, which might put Dallas liable to missing one other playoffs after such a promising start under Kidd.

What followed was a 16-2 run that put the Mavericks in fifth place in the West. Now they’ve won three series without home advantage and can try to repeat that. Houston, which finished sixth in 1995, is the only minor leaguer to win the championship.

“I think at one point in the season everyone thought the world was ending,” Kidd said. “But we still came to work. We were positive and everything changed for the better. I think that’s just who we are. It’s just about trust, about working and having fun at the same time.”

The Mavericks are a reflection of their coach, stoic in the face of criticism and questions from a year ago, with possibly a little vitriol thrown in when there’s a sense of, “Enough is enough.”

Kidd has long preached that it’s OK to fail, which has impressed Lively as the 20-year-old has quickly emerged as an influential player the club didn’t necessarily expect so quickly.

“He puts me in situations where he expects me to fail, and even if I fail, he leaves me there to learn,” Lively said. “He comes into the locker room and asks, what do we predict? To find a way to have a coach like that who gets the players talking, talking to one another after which saying what they think is a tremendous process.

Last year, Kidd threw an expletive at a reporter when asked about the vote of confidence he received from then-owner Mark Cuban as the season ended, essentially saying those questions weren’t asked during the 2022 West Finals.

A ten-time All-Star and second in profession assists behind only John Stockton, Kidd shrugs as he looks back on the chaos.

“You ask all the hard questions. These are difficult questions,” Kidd said. “You’re doing all of your job. As the head coach of the Mavericks, I do my job. Last year these were tough questions, tough questions that will probably be a part of this series. I’ll offer you the answer. Some people may like this. Some may not.

Either way, Kidd prolonged his contract. He did it on the heels of the first of three series wins this spring.