Jason Kidd signed a four-year, $40 million contract extension after the 2024 season, seemingly cementing him as the Dallas Mavericks head coach for the foreseeable future.
Instead, he was abruptly fired Tuesday, prompting Charles Barkley to exclaim live on the ESPN set, “Oh my goodness! Jason Kidd was just fired. Wow. That’s a shocker.”
Why? It seems that despite Kidd repeatedly asking everyone to “move forward,” his presence was a constant reminder of the Mavericks’ ill-fated trade of superstar Luka Doncicto the Lakers in February 2025.
The executive who made the deal — Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison — was fired in November. For a long time it wasn’t clear whether Kidd was an advocate of the deal in which Dallas acquired oft-injured center Anthony Davis or a victim of a front-office blunder.
But Mark Cuban, the Mavericks’ former majority owner who currently owns 27% of the team, indicated March 31 on a podcastthat Kidd was complicit in the deal.
“I think there was animosity between [Harrison] and some people on Luka’s team — his agent and some of the people around them,” Cuban said. “I don’t think they got along. I think there were issues.
“J-Kidd had coached Anthony Davis and was close to him, and Nico was close to AD since he was like 13-years-old. So I think there was some confirmation bias as well. But that doesn’t justify our coach and our general manager to stand up and trade our best player.”
Boom. Cuban turning on the coach he had long supported was telling. Kidd spent 4 ½ years of his 19-year Hall of Fame playing career with Dallas, including helping the team win its only NBA title in 2011.
Kidd soon became a head coach, and after stints in Brooklyn and Milwaukee and two years as a Lakers assistant, Cuban hired the former point guard in 2021.
Under Kidd’s leadership, the Mavericks ascended to the NBA Finals in 2024. But then came the Doncic deal, the finger-pointing and a throaty rebuke by the team’s fans, mostly centered on Harrison.
Cuban linking Kidd to the trade caused the episode to bubble up again recently, much to the exasperation of the coach.
“When are we going to move on? We have to move forward,” Kidd told the Dallas Morning News. “We’re focused on the present and the future, and we’ve got an incredible opportunity to build.”
Someone else will do the building in Dallas under new team president Masai Ujiri. Cuban expressed mixed emotions about the firing in an email to Fox Sports.
“Obviously, I’m a J-Kidd fan,” Cuban wrote. “So I’m surprised and disappointed. But we have to give Masai a chance to see what happens.”
Kidd, considered one of the sharpest minds in the NBA, likely will catch on elsewhere. The Orlando Magic, Chicago Bulls and Portland Trail Blazers are shopping for a new head coach. The Magic courted Kidd five years ago before hiring Jamahl Mosley.
Kidd landed in Dallas instead and seemed in the driver’s seat for a long ride until the Doncic trade. Cuban’s comments were followed on Wednesday by a report from ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania, who on the Pat McAfee Show reported that Kidd supported the decision to move Doncic.
“How involved was Jason Kidd? He wasn’t making the trade, but Mavs sources do believe that he had a level of support for that trade,” Charania said.
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