Just over a week after the Dallas Mavericks elected to part ways with long-time general manager and president Donnie Nelson and head coach Rick Carlisle decided to step down, the franchise has reportedly found their successors.
According to reports from The Athletic's Shams Charania and The New York Times' Marc Stein, the Mavericks have reached agreements to hire Jason Kidd as the next head coach and Nike executive Nico Harrison as the general manager and director of basketball operations.
The Mavericks have completed their deal with Nike's Nico Harrison for Harrison to run the team's basketball operations ... with Jason Kidd having also agreed to a deal to be the Mavericks' new coach, league sources say. They are expected to arrive in Dallas next week.
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) June 25, 2021
The report confirms what Stein and ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Tim MacMahon had alluded to a day prior on the direction of the Mavericks franchise.
Stein added that the Mavericks "envision Nike's Nico Harrison and vice president of basketball operations Michael Finley working side by side, with special advisor Dirk Nowitzki also a significant part of Mark Cuban's reshaped brain trust." He also mentioned that Harrison and Kidd have a "longtime relationship."
According to ESPN's MacMahon, Kidd, a champion with the Mavericks as a player under coach Carlisle in 2011, was the recommended candidate by the franchise's head coach of 13 years.
Rick Carlisle on his Mavs: "It's hard to put an exact finger on it. It’s just a feeling that I had that it would be mutually beneficial. My hope is that Jason Kidd will be the next coach of the Mavs because he and Luka have so many things in common as players."
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) June 24, 2021
Since retiring as a player in 2013, Kidd has been in the coaching ranks. He served as head coach of the Brooklyn Nets for one season in 2013-14 before taking over as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks from 2014 to 2018. He was fired by Milwaukee midway through the 2017-18 season and the following offseason would be picked up by the Los Angeles Lakers as an assistant under head coach Frank Vogel.
Kidd served as an assistant with the Lakers for the past two seasons, helping Vogel lead Los Angeles to its 17th title in franchise history in 2019-20. He is now tasked with maximizing the potential of superstar Luka Doncic and the Mavericks, who have fallen in the first round of the playoffs in consecutive seasons.
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