The Mavericks are cleaning house again. This time, it feels sustainable

When Donnie Nelson was fired in 2021, and Rick Carlisle stepped down shortly after, no one argued whether or not this was the correct decision. Nelson had failed to put together a functional roster, and Carlisle’s relationship with Luka Doncic grew sour. The question revolved around who they hired to replace them. And, as history will now tell us, the skepticism was rooted in some amount of truth.

Jason Kidd and Nico Harrison were hired as a coach/general manager packaged deal before the 2021-22 season. At the time, there was a lot of caution exhibited when trying to project the tenures for both hirings. Kidd was a Hall-of-Fame point guard, but his head coaching resume to that point was far from stellar and included a lot of crucifying anecdotes from his time in Milwaukee. Harrison had no prior experience working in basketball and was the poster boy for Nike’s botched shoe deal pitch to Steph Curry. Needless to say, the Mavericks had a lot of hope in their young superstar in the summer of 2021, but the support from the coaching staff and organization remained to be defined.

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It was always a “wait-and-see” with those two. There was no clear-cut floor, and the ceiling was like one of those drawings of a tunnel on a wall. This time around, however, there is both a concrete expectation and an endless possibility of hopeful outcomes. Masai Ujiri is an accomplished basketball professional. He has the respect of a lot of players and personnel league-wide, and the way he has spoken to the Dallas media in two short press conferences is already leaps and bounds above the slop that Harrison produced.

Ujiri has won a championship, something that most general managers around the league cannot say. With the coaching search now underway following his dismissal of Jason Kidd, it feels different than it did in 2021. There is an adult in the room now, something that was not true of the past five years, which was made very clear in retrospect. Ujiri’s first hire, Mike Schmidtz, is a widely celebrated, draft-centric savant who adds a level of care for scouting and an emphasis on building through the draft….

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Publish date : 2026-05-21 12:00:00

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