Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd is the latest person in Dallas to be irritated with general manager Nico Harrison.
Now months removed from the stunning Luka Doncic trade, Kidd “resented” the Mavericks front office over the latter half of the season.
“While Kidd was understandably frustrated this season with the team’s injury crisis, he also resented the front office’s midseason Doncic trade, multiple team and league sources say,” DLLS Sports’ Tim Cato reported. “Even if he shared some of Harrison’s frustrations with Doncic that led to his trade of him.”
When the unexpected trade initially made headlines and shook the basketball world, Harrison took things another step further as he revealed that he did not even consult Kidd beforehand — the man who would actually have to deal with the challenges of the completely turned-upside-down roster.
“J-Kidd didn’t know about it, but J-Kidd and I are aligned and we talk about archetypes and we talk about the culture that we want to create, so I know the type of players that he likes without actually talking to him,” Harrison said in February of the trade. “I think when you’re aligned with your coach like that, I know the type of players he likes. I felt good about it making sense to where we’re trying to go.”
Whether that was the truth at the time, the trade didn’t age well in Kidd’s eyes.
Anthony Davis headlined the return package in the deal and got hurt in his first game with Dallas.
That was just one of many injuries suffered by the team, as Dallas also lost Kyrie Irving for the season and was down to just an astonishing seven healthy players at one point.
But the injuries — which can also be attributed partly to Harrison as he fired key members of the training staff and instead employs numerous “yes-men” — weren’t what frustrated Kidd the most, it was the wild roster switch-up.
“Kidd felt he had been asked to reinvent what had been a roster built around one specific star, team and league sources say,” Cato added. “[This] led to the midseason exasperation that notably culminated in him skipping a league-mandated post-game press conference in February.”
Kidd skipped said postgame press conference after a loss to the Kings, which essentially summed up his overall stress and frustration with the entire situation.
