Mavericks will grant Anthony Davis & Kyrie Irving their wish if Kidd rumors are true

Alarm bells were rung across the Dallas Mavericks' fanbase this past Wednesday when it was reported that the New York Knicks have interest in Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd to fill their coaching vacancy left behind by the recent firing of Tom Thibodeau. Kidd has obvious ties to New York from his playing days as well as the fact he coached Jalen Brunson in Dallas for a season, but him potentially leaving Dallas for New York would cause unneeded organizational upheaval considering what this franchise has been through the last few months as well as the fact they are about to welcome consensus No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Cooper Flagg.

While the door isn't completely closed on Kidd pining for the head coaching job in the No. 1 media market in the entire country, it has also been reported that it would be unlikely for the Mavericks to accept New York's request to speak to Kidd about filling this position, which would bode very well for Dallas' continuity as well as the desires of their two best players.

Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis both have deep ties with Kidd, as Irving has coveted being coached by a former Hall-of-Fame point guard who can see things through the same lens he does at times, and Kidd was the lead assistant on Davis's Los Angeles Lakers team that won the NBA Championship in 2020.

Irving and Davis clearly want Kidd to remain coach of the Mavericks

They also have deep ties to Mavericks GM Nico Harrison from their days at Nike, which plays into the difficulty of firing Harrison right now as well, even if his Luka Doncic trade has been widely criticized across the association and national media as one of the worst trades in all of professional sports history.

Like it or not, Davis and Irving are the backbone of this Mavericks team with Doncic gone, and firing a GM they presumably like would probably have some negative ripple effects, but it would be far worse if they fired Kidd. Kidd is a player's coach and proved to keep Dallas' locker room dialed on trying to make the playoffs last season despite the immense adversity they faced over the back-half of the season, and Kidd has evolved into a far better in-game tactician since he first stepped foot in Dallas in 2021.

If Dallas fired Harrison at any point, Irving and Davis could eventually move on considering how bad the fan outcry was to fire Harrison as well as the fact that he's not near as involved in day-to-day basketball procedures as Kidd is as the head coach, but losing Kidd to the Knicks would be as crushing of a blow Dallas could suffer to their roster besides losing one of their stars. Davis and Irving want to play for Kidd, and this will hopefully be enough to keep him in Dallas.

Luckily, it seems this scenario is definitely a stretch, as Kidd has been injected with a new sense of life by getting the opportunity to draft and coach Flagg, so even if he had any sort of inclination to look elsewhere for employment next season considering how disastrous last season ended, any coach in the league probably envies the situation he is walking into next season.

Kidd will definitely have his challenges with this Mavericks roster next season in terms of trying to accurately piece together the rotation, but this won't be because of a lack of talent, and he still has the opportunity to become a championship head coach in Dallas over the next two to three seasons.

The Doncic trade proved that anything can happen in the NBA and with the Mavericks, but keeping Harrison and letting Kidd leave is probably the worst outcome the Mavericks and their fans could imagine this offseason, despite a small portion of the fanbase still voicing their discontentment with Kidd. For now, the Mavericks should be happy that this report about Kidd heading to the Knicks seems like a negligible rumor, as they should be excited at the prospect of Davis getting a full season under his belt with Kidd and Irving getting to re-join Davis and Kidd sometime after the halfway point of next season.