Before we dissect Rick Carlisle’s possible motives for doing what he did Thursday, a little context: This odd coaching custom literally traces to basketball’s inventor.
We’re not referring to the news that Carlisle became Indiana’s coach exactly one week after he “stepped down” after 13 seasons as Mavericks coach. Whether jettisoned by choice or force, coaches, at least the good ones, often land softly.
Nor is it shocking that Carlisle landed at Indiana, where he worked three seasons as an assistant and four as a head coach and where his daughter Abby was born, although no one would mistake the 34-38 Pacers as a step up from 42-30 Luka Doncic-led Dallas.
From a Mavericks perspective, the most the most eyebrow-raising thing Carlisle told ESPN in what essentially was a goodbye-Dallas, hello-Indiana interview was this: “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.”
Carlisle did add “to me that just would be a great marriage, but that’s just an opinion,” though that did nothing to lessen the jolt of his words or timing.
So in summary: Carlisle walked away from the Mavericks, either on his own or with a gentle nudge, and now he’s offering unsolicited hiring advice to Mark Cuban?
As the 15th-winningest coach in NBA history and the only one to lead the Mavericks to a championship, Carlisle’s opinion certainly matters, but expressing it now on this topic is at best audacious and oddly-timed.
Ex-Mavericks great Kidd is in fact the leading candidate. A source told The News on Thursday that special advisor Dirk Nowitzki has recommended to Cuban that the Mavericks elevate Michael Finley to president of basketball operations and hire Kidd as head coach, but the source stressed that talks are ongoing and no decision has been reached about either position.
Also in the head coach picture is seventh-year Mavericks assistant Jamahl Mosley, whom, according to a source, has been told will be interviewed.
Carlisle’s public support of Kidd certainly isn’t meant as a slap at Mosley, whom Carlisle on many occasions has championed as someone who is overdue for a head coaching job, but it certainly doesn’t help Mosley’s case in Dallas.
The fact is that Kidd doesn’t need Carlisle’s endorsement. Kidd already has abundant support from within the franchise, at the highest levels, meaning Cuban and recently-appointed adviser Nowitzki.
Kidd of course is best-known in Dallas as the point guard who at age 38 quarterbacked the Mavericks to the 2011 NBA title, with Carlisle as head coach.
Kidd also played for the Mavericks in 2011-12 and verbally agreed to return the following season, only to change his mind and sign with the Knicks.
That created a brief chasm between Cuban and Kidd, mostly on Cuban’s part, but the pair soon smoothed their differences and became close again.
At no time was that more apparent than Sept. 7, 2018, when during his Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech Kidd singled out his former boss.
“Mark Cuban, thank you for giving me the opportunity to win a championship – one of the best owners in sports.”
Cuban, in the audience that night in Springfield, Mass., was visibly emotional. It was reminiscent of the 2007 day on which Nowitzki was named NBA Most Valuable Player, days after a crushing playoff ouster by Golden State, and Cuban nearly broke down while describing how much Nowitzki meant to the organization.
On December 12, 2018, months after Kidd was fired as Milwaukee’s coach, Kidd sat next to Cuban and watched the Mavericks and young point guard Doncic beat the Hawks.
Kidd was in town to spend a couple of days with Carlisle and his staff before heading to San Antonio to do likewise with Gregg Popovich and staff.
“This is home,” a beaming Kidd told me in the American Airlines Center hallway that night, between greeting well-wishing fans. “A lot of good memories, a lot good things happened here.”
He raved about the “great basketball I.Q.,” of Doncic, who was en route to joining Kidd as the only Mavericks to win Rookie of the Year.
“Rick, I think, doesn’t get enough credit for what he does as a coach and also just changing with the times,” Kidd added that night. “The game has changed, so I just wanted to pick his brain, if I get back into coaching, just to see what happens.”
Kidd did in fact return to coaching as a Lakers assistant the past two seasons, adding a 2020 NBA championship ring to the one he earned as a Maverick.
A Kidd-Mavericks pairing makes a lot of sense for the reasons Carlisle described, and there also would be irony: Finley is the primary player for whom Kidd was traded in Dec. 1996, to Phoenix, ending the Three J’s era.
“We just needed a little more time,” Kidd joked in his Hall of Fame speech.
So why did Carlisle on Thursday come out and publicly declare his desire for Kidd to replace him?
For whatever reason, coaches feel the need to have a say in hiring their successor. That’s been going on for well over a century.
Ever since basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, tabbed one of his former players, Forrest “Phog” Allen, to succeed him as Kansas’ coach in 1907.
