The New York Knicks ruffled plenty of feathers with their coaching search last offseason. One of their central targets was Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd, who they were unable to shake loose.
The saga ended when Kidd signed an extension with the Mavericks. They just decided to part ways with the coach, despite that extension having four years and more than $40 million left to go.
From a competitive perspective, the Knicks objectively cost an opponent big-time: but Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont seems glad to foot the bill in his quest to rehabilitate the franchise's image after trading away Luka Doncic. Opening a coaching search in a $40 million hole, though, shows the extents to which the organization was willing to go to move on.
And that the Knicks dodged a bullet.
Brown couldn't have led the Knicks to the ECF if they had hired Kidd
Returning briefly to objectivity, the Knicks' playoff run as things stand would not have been possible with Kidd as their head coach in place of Mike Brown. Whether they would have achieved more, or less, will forever be unknown.
But with New York snatching a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals straight from the Cavaliers' souls, it's hard to imagine any Knick fan trading that feeling in for a re-do of a certainly stressful regular season.
Brown said all year, almost to an inundating extent, that his group would benefit from the adversity they were struggling to face during those times. The coach's words are aging prophetically, with the team's willingness to look inward and make adjustments after disappointing losses proving essential to their first-round victory over the Hawks.
It's entirely possible that having Kidd in charge could have prevented those struggles entirely. But it's undeniable that they were integral to developing the resilience and cooperation necessary to ignore ego entirely and do whatever was necessary to mount a 22-point comeback.
Knicks' best coaching hire was the one they didn't make
These Knicks have a habit of achieving feats previously thought to be impossible.
Their front office's hijinks have included the Mavericks before, with New York having been docked a second-round pick for tampering with Jalen Brunson ahead of his 2022 signing. But they never actually wound up landing Kidd, despite what were reportedly very legitimate efforts.
In the 2020's, it's going to be close to impossible to top signing away a superstar in free agency.
But the Knicks' second-best move on the Mavericks might just have been getting them to extend Kidd – a coach that they moved on from less than a year later.
Add us as a preferred source on Google