After Game 1 victory, former Bucks coach Jason Kidd moves closer to NBA Finals

The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals Wednesday, putting the team three wins away from the NBA Finals. Head coach Jason Kidd, who led the Bucks for 3½ seasons starting in 2014 and ending in 2018, has been with Dallas the past three seasons and reached this stage of the season twice, along with the 2021-22 Mavericks.

If Kidd leads the Mavericks to a series win, he'll become the first Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame player to coach in an NBA Finals since Paul Westphal with Phoenix in 1993 — though Westphal wasn't inducted until 2019. Other Hall of Fame players have coached in the Finals (Billy Cunningham, K.C. Jones, Bill Russell, Tom Heinsohn, Bill Sharman among them), but none had already been already enshrined once they guided a team to the Finals.

Kidd was inducted as a player into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2018.

When and why did the Bucks fire Jason Kidd?

Much like Adrian Griffin in 2024, Jason Kidd was fired in January, in this case back in 2018.

The Bucks came into the 2017-18 season with high expectations but were treading barely above .500 when Kidd was let go. Milwaukee finished the year 21-16 under interim coach Joe Prunty and lost to the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs, 4-3.

"I evaluated this, I made a recommendation and ultimately made a decision that had unanimous support from ownership," said Bucks general manager Jon Horst, in his first season in the position. "That's the way we come to all of our conclusions and decisions. …"

"It’s a very, very proactive move," team co-owner Wes Edens said. "We don’t think that the season is over. We’re a winning team right now. We think that with Jabari (Parker) coming back, we have a playoff rotation that’s as deep as anybody in the East. We want to give ourselves the best chance to have a great position going into what we think could be a very successful postseason.”

The Bucks saw themselves as a top-five defense in the league but instead had been in the bottom five.

The Bucks actually traded draft picks for Jason Kidd, and guess who ended up getting taken with one of the picks?

Before Milwaukee could appoint Kidd head coach for the 2014-15 season, less than three months after Edens and co-owner Marc Lasry purchased the Bucks from Herb Kohl, the club had to work out a trade with the Brooklyn Nets, where Kidd had just finished his first career year as head coach.

Milwaukee sent two second-round picks to Brooklyn for the exchange, including one in 2015. The player taken with that pick was future Bucks guard Pat Connaughton, who was drafted by Brooklyn and then immediately traded to Portland.

Connaughton played for the Blazers three seasons, signed with the Bucks in 2018, won a ring in 2021 and remains with Milwaukee today.

Kidd's first year was a success at 41-41, one year after the club achieved a franchise-worst record of 15-67 under first-year coach Larry Drew. It was only the second time in NBA history a team went from having the worst record to reaching the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.

The success perhaps washed away some of the tension that came with the hiring, like Drew saying he was "blindsided" by his firing and Kidd having attempted a reported power play to seize more control in Brooklyn before he was sent to Milwaukee.

The Bucks never took another step forward, record-wise. Milwaukee went 33-49 in 2015-16 and 42-40 in 2016-17 before Kidd was fired with a 23-22 record in the following year. One season later under Mike Budenholzer in 2018-19, the Bucks took a quantum leap forward and won 60 games for the best record in the league.

Did Jason Kidd have a lasting impact on Giannis Antetokounmpo?

Then in his second season, Antetokounmpo expressed immediate disappointment with the firing, indicating that he would pull whatever strings he could to change the outcome, with Kidd assuring him the move was for the best.

“It's kind of uncomfortable, especially for a guy like me that is — as I said, one of my characteristics is that I'm being loyal to the people around me,” Antetokounmpo said in his first public comments since Kidd's firing. “That's one of my characteristics, but it's kind of uncomfortable knowing before it happened.”

In the years since, Giannis has credited Kidd with helping him evolve into a dominant player, including as recently as earlier this year in discussing his evolution as a "point forward."

“The person that enhanced it the most was probably J-Kidd because he was like, no, no, no, he’s the one that gets the ball,” Antetokounmpo told the Journal Sentinel. “I was the point guard of the team. And I enjoyed it. I learned a lot, I learned how to play with the ball, I learned how hard the job is.

“The last year he was here (2017-18), I was the point guard. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to do.”

Some of those sentiments were echoed in the Giannis biography "Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an MVP" by Mirin Fader, which arrived on bookshelves in 2021. However, Kidd was criticized for some of his practice methods detailed in the book, including insisting on practice on Christmas Day.

It could be argued Kidd had a similar impact on Knicks star Jalen Brunson, who broke out under Kidd with the Mavericks in 2021-22 before signing a free-agent deal with New York.

What's Jason Kidd's coaching record since leaving Milwaukee?

Kidd became an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers and immediately won a ring with the 2019-2020 team coached by Frank Vogel, securing the title in the "bubble" playoffs. It was a disappointing turn of events for Kidd's former employer; the Bucks headed into those playoffs with the best record in the East but were defeated by Miami in the second round.

Kidd became head coach in Dallas in 2021-22 and led the team to a 52-30 record, his best season. After a 38-44 showing last year and missing the playoffs, the Mavericks went 50-32 this year and secured the No. 5 seed in the Western playoffs.

Dallas has gone on to upset fourth-seeded Los Angeles Clippers and top-seeded Oklahoma City, both in six games, before grabbing Game 1 against third-seeded Minnesota.

Jason Kidd signed an extension to remain in Dallas

Earlier this month, Kidd, 51, signed a contract extension the day before opening a playoff series against Oklahoma City. Kidd's name had surfaced in some reports looking at the Los Angeles Lakers coaching vacancy, created when the organization fired former Bucks assistant Darvin Ham.

"I have known Jason for a long time, and I cannot think of a better, more qualified candidate to lead this team going forward,” Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison said in a release announcing the extension. “As a former NBA Champion Hall of Fame player, Jason brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this role which cannot be duplicated. He has earned the trust and respect of our players and that of so many across the league, and I look forward to working alongside him as we continue to build upon the culture and foundation of success he’s helped foster throughout his tenure as head coach.”

Is Jason Kidd one of the best coaches in the NBA?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At least as Coach of the Year honors go, Kidd received one third-place vote for NBA coach of the year this season, tying him for ninth in that voting. He understandably wasn't among the 14 coaches who received votes last year when the Mavericks missed the playoffs.

The year before, Kidd tied for sixth in the voting in his first year with Dallas. The highest he's finished is third that first season with Milwaukee, distantly behind Atlanta's Mike Budenholzer (who went on to replace Kidd in Milwaukee) and Golden State's Steve Kerr.

The Mavericks finished the 2023-24 season 10th in offensive rating and 18th in defensive rating after finishing sixth and 24th in those departments last year. The year before that when the team went to the Western Conference finals, the roles were reversed, finishing 15th in offensive rating and sixth in defensive rating.

Even this season wasn't completely free of discontent. The Mavericks were 34-28 on March 5 but then won 16 of 18 games to solidify their playoff standing.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ex-Bucks coach Jason Kidd closer to NBA Finals as Mavericks win Game 1