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The New York Knicks theoretically have one of the most desirable head-coaching jobs in all of basketball. They have a roster that just came six games short of a championship. They play in the league's biggest market and its most famous arena. They have an owner famously willing to spend on coaches -- before Tom Thibodeau, his frequent firings meant that James Dolan was often paying two or three of them. The Knicks feel, perhaps correctly, that they have the sort of job that should be able to attract almost any candidate they desire.

That has led them to pursuing coaches currently under contract with other teams. The Houston Rockets shut them down immediately through the press: they would not allow New York to speak to Ime Udoka. The Minnesota Timberwolves have not been so definitive, but New York's interest in Chris Finch isn't expected to get very far either.

This is the norm on the rare occasions in which a team actively pursues someone else's head coach. If a team is happy with its coach, why let him talk to another team? This makes the inaction in Dallas right now so strange. Why haven't the Mavericks shut down the well-reported mutual interest between Jason Kidd and the Knicks?

There are a number of possible answers to that question, and the simplest is that, by all accounts, the Knicks haven't officially asked yet. Of course, they didn't officially ask the Rockets about Udoka either. They were shut down through the media. The Mavericks could do that at any moment. That they haven't hints that there might be a little bit of fire behind all of this smoke.

So let's dive into this a little bit. Why are the Knicks pursuing Kidd? Why might the Mavericks be open to letting him go? And what sort of trade might it take to bring Kidd to the Big Apple?

Wait... coaches can be traded?

Yes, they can. It's happened five times in NBA history, with Twitter user @CBAMavs helpfully chronicling the compensation received for each of them:

So, yes, coaches can be traded. The rules surrounding such trades are a bit different from player trades, and they can be a bit fuzzy. A coach can't be traded without consent, for example. And, at least so far as history tells us, a coach can't be traded for a player either. There were rumors in 2013 that, as part of the Rivers-to-the-Clippers deal, the Celtics would also trade Kevin Garnett for DeAndre Jordan. However, the teams changed course when it reportedly became clear that such a maneuver was unlikely to be approved by the league office.

As you'll notice, our story's main character, Jason Kidd, is on that list.

Why did the Nets trade Kidd in 2014?

Though Kidd has denied it, he reportedly lost a power struggle in Brooklyn. According to Adrian Wojnarowski at the time, "Kidd made a failed coup" in an attempt to "usurp the power of Nets general manager Billy King -- and failed spectacularly." Kidd has developed a bit of a reputation for palace intrigue as a result of this, and it has impacted his career beyond Milwaukee. 

In 2019, Ty Lue was deep in talks to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. However, he reportedly disagreed with their demand that Kidd be included on his staff. This seems somewhat notable as Kidd and Lue were briefly teammates with the Mavericks in 2008. Lue ultimately passed on the Laker job (though Kidd was far from the only reason), and Kidd rebuilt his coaching career as an assistant under Frank Vogel before getting the top job in Dallas.

All of this is now happening at, let's say, an interesting time for the Dallas front office. In February, Nico Harrison made the infamous decision to trade Luka Dončić to the Lakers. While owner Patrick Dumont has not fired Harrison as a result, it doesn't seem as though he has quite the same degree of faith in his top basketball decision-maker that he once did. ESPN's Tim MacMahon reported that Dumont wants to bring in another experienced executive. He also reported that the Mavericks would not trade the No. 1 pick when they stunningly won the NBA Draft lottery, noting in his story that "while Dumont has given Harrison great leeway to run basketball operations, the governor has final decision on all personnel matters."

So, what does this mean for Kidd? Well, once again according to MacMahon on a recent episode of The Hoop Collective podcast, "there certainly have been decisions, major franchise decisions that have been made, that he was not on board with." This can be read in a few ways. The obvious would be that Kidd is attempting to distance himself from the Dončić trade, but MacMahon spelled out once such decision: the firing of Casey Smith, who had headed up the health and performance staff in Dallas since Kidd's playing days. Who does Smith work for now? The New York Knicks.

So here we have a coach with a history of political maneuvering and a general manager who almost has to be on somewhat shaky ground by virtue of the sheer unpopularity of his biggest trade. We're obviously speculating at this point, but let's just say that all of this makes sense. Maybe Kidd is using the Knicks as a stalking horse for more say in Dallas. Maybe Harrison wouldn't mind seeing Kidd -- whom he did not hire -- leave so he can bring in his own coach. We're dealing with a lot of maybes here. Trust me, we're going to be covering some even bigger ones in a little bit.

Why are the Knicks so interested in Kidd?

On paper, everything we just covered above would seem antithetical to the way the Knicks have operated under Leon Rose, right? Kidd isn't even a CAA client! He's been represented by Jeff Schwartz and Excel since his playing career. The Knicks have always tried to keep things in the family. Their best player is Jalen Brunson. Rick Brunson was Rose's first client as an agent. Rose represented DaJuan Wagner. Knicks executive William Wesley has publicly spoken about drafting his son, Arkansas guard DJ Wagner, one day. Rose used to represent Karl-Anthony Towns. His son, Sam Rose, represents OG Anunoby. We could go on. The Knicks are a relationship-driven organization. Thibodeau was part of the family. It seems a bit strange that this front office, specifically, would go after a coach with Kidd's reputation.

The fit in basketball terms is odd as well. Part of the motivation for firing Thibodeau was, seemingly, to get a bit more creative offensively. That really isn't Kidd. He has only had one team—the 2021-22 Mavericks—rank above the league average in passes per game, and that team ranked 15th in passes per game. Some of that is his personnel, but personnel really isn't an argument in Kidd's favor. The Bucks never ranked higher than 13th in offense in a full season under Kidd. When Mike Budenholzer took over in 2019, they jumped to fourth. The Mavericks team Kidd inherited in Dallas posted the best offense in NBA history to that point during the 2019-20 season under Rick Carlisle. Even with Dončić, Kidd hasn't coached a top-five offense in Dallas.

There are, however, a few straightforward reasons the Knicks might be interested in Kidd:

  • Though it was only for a single season, Kidd did play for the Knicks during their surprisingly successful 2012-13 season. That means he has relationships in the building, and there has been buzz that the Knicks want to hire a former NBA player as their next head coach.
  • Kidd's teams have historically fared very well in his first season. The Nets struggled early, lost Brook Lopez, but rallied to go 34-17 from Jan. 1 on. The Bucks won 15 games in the season before he arrived and 41 in his first year as coach. The Mavericks hadn't won a playoff series with Dončić before Kidd's arrival. In his debut campaign, they made the Western Conference finals. The Knicks don't have time to break in a new coach. They want to win right away. Kidd's teams do that.
  • Kidd's Mavericks teams tended to punch above their weight class in the playoffs. In that first season, he ended the Donovan Mitchell-Rudy Gobert era in Dallas despite Dončić missing the first three games of that series. He's beaten two No. 1 seeds (the 2022 Suns and 2024 Thunder) as a No. 4. He just made the NBA Finals last spring.
  • While Kidd's offenses have been lackluster, he does have some pretty notable defensive accomplishments. Dallas had the NBA's best defense in the last month of the 2023-24 season once it had successfully integrated its trade deadline acquisitions, and it carried that performance into the playoffs. That first Bucks team in 2015 jumped from 30th in defense before Kidd to second with him, though to be fair, it slipped significantly in the years that followed as Kidd refused to abandon the ultra-aggressive scheme that worked so well early on.
  • Kidd coached Jalen Brunson in Dallas. The Knicks wouldn't hire Kidd without Brunson's approval. There might not be a single thing in all of basketball more important to a coach's success than his best player buying in.

That last part is really important. This is where we address one of those bigger "maybes" we talked about earlier. Maybe this isn't just about the players the Knicks have. Maybe it's about one that they want.

There has been a lot of speculation about Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Knicks lately. Not firm reporting. Speculation. The growing sentiment, however, is that Giannis might very well be staying put with the Bucks for now. 

Here's what we do know: Antetokounmpo is very fond of Kidd. When the Bucks fired Kidd, he told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne Antetokounmpo offered to fight for him with the organization. When Antetokounmpo was asked for one word to describe Kidd on the 48 Minutes Podcast in 2023, he said "genius." The relationship here, by all accounts, is quite strong.

Of course, in this case, it takes three to tango. Even if the two want a reunion in New York, the Mavericks and the Bucks have to oblige. Maybe Dallas will. It seems harder to believe, without some very serious cajoling, that Milwaukee would too. Remember, the Knicks are mostly out of tradable draft capital (and would likely have to send some of what remains to Dallas for Kidd). If the Bucks move Antetokounmpo, they are probably rebuilding. Unless they're truly desperate to simply remain competent and sell tickets, players like Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges probably wouldn't appeal to them all that much. 

Realistically, this would have to be a multi-team trade, and even then, there's not an easy package that makes sense for the Bucks here. Several teams have the chips to outbid the Knicks. Antetokounmpo would have to ward all of them off and make it clear he wants to play in New York and only New York. And even then, he has two years left on his deal. Someone would probably be willing to take the risk anyway.

So, for the time being, the Antetokounmpo portion of this story feels unlikely. We say "unlikely" and not "impossible" because this is the NBA. Usually, when two famous people want to team up badly enough, they find a way to do so. It would be naive to think that a team as star-driven as the Knicks aren't considering it. We just can't assume that it's plausible. Let's focus on the first step here: getting Kidd to New York.

So what would a Kidd trade look like?

As we've covered, the Knicks have already spent most of their draft capital in trades. Their 2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031 first-round picks belong to the Nets because of the Mikal Bridges trade. Their 2028 pick also goes to Brooklyn through swap rights. The Knicks do have second-round picks to offer, but they are mostly unappealing. The only one of their own second-rounders at their disposal comes in 2027, and the external second-round picks they have are either protected or the least favorable among several teams. This year, for instance, they have No. 50 and No. 60. Not especially enticing. So, what else can the Knicks do in terms of tradable draft capital? Well, they have a few options.

  • The Knicks control Washington's first-round pick next year. Sounds great, right? Wrong. It's top-10 protected. The Wizards aren't picking between No. 11 and No. 30 unless something has gone horribly awry. However, that pick reverts into Washington's second-round picks in 2026 and 2027 if it doesn't convey, and those are two pretty good second-round picks.
  • The Knicks can still offer swap rights on their first-round picks in 2026 and 2030. Those 2026 swap rights aren't worth much since the Knicks are so good right now. Those 2030 swap rights though? Those are more appealing. The Knicks will be a good deal older then, and we don't know what their future holds. More importantly, the Mavericks have already traded swap rights on their own 2030 first-round pick to San Antonio. Getting swap rights with New York offers a bit of insurance. If their pick loses ground because they Spurs swap picks with them, they can gain some of it back (or perhaps even improve upon their original slot) with a swap from the Knicks.
  • If the two sides wait until the league year flips into the 2025-26 season, New York's 2032 first-round pick becomes legally tradable. The Knicks could only offer swap rights on it because of the Stepien Rule, but this would be the big-ticket item. Brunson will be 35 during the 2031-32 season. This era of Knicks basketball will almost certainly be over by then, and without picks to rebuild with, there's no telling what the next version of the team will look like.

So, do the Knicks have the draft capital to plausibly get this done if the Mavericks are open to it? Yeah, probably. But that leads to the most important question of them all.

So... should the Knicks do this?

Here's the easy part. If there really is a path to Antetokounmpo, yes, the Knicks should do it. You'd take any coach in basketball for a chance at Antetokounmpo. That part's a no-brainer. It is also, again, unlikely for the time being. So we'll put this part of the equation aside and try to figure out if it makes sense in a world in which the Knicks are getting Kidd and only Kidd.

If the draft cost here is minimal, like, say, those two weak 2025 second-round picks, then it's just a simple matter of whether or not the Knicks believe that Kidd is the best coach available them. At that level, cost shouldn't get in the way of the hiring process.

Personally, I'd be skeptical that he is. When I ranked the NBA head coaches last offseason, Taylor Jenkins and Michael Malone were both in his tier, but both were ahead of him. So was Mike Budenholzer. All three of them are also available. All three are, in a sense, different flavors of Thibodeau. Sure, Budenholzer runs an entirely different sort of ship, but they are all ultimately solid, retread head coaches. Good enough to win with under the right conditions, but not so good that they'll elevate a team operating under the wrong ones.

It's just hard to justify firing one of the winningest coaches in franchise history after the team's best season in 25 years to hire that sort of replacement. Even if there's no guarantee that the Knicks would do better, they almost certainly could. That would mean taking a risk, but recent NBA history is full of such risks getting rewarded.

Steve Kerr, Ty Lue and Nick Nurse have all won championships in their debut head-coaching seasons of late. Joe Mazzulla did so in his second season. Ime Udoka made the Finals as a rookie. The Knicks are looking for a creative schemer. Any coach with such a track is taken. If the Knicks want one, they might have to go find one, but history tells us those coaches are out there. There are a lot of basketball geniuses out there. Even if it means taking a swing on a first-timer or someone without much experience in the coaching profession as a whole, so be it. The Knicks are trying to win a championship. Such a substantial reward usually requires a similar degree of risk. Kidd is a proven commodity. That makes sense in certain jobs. It doesn't seem like the Knicks should be one of them.

And if the cost goes up to, say, one or both of those swaps in 2030 or 2032? Run for the hills. It may not seem like it right now, but control of those picks means a great deal to the Knicks. They are the key to a post-Brunson rebuild, or perhaps more likely, some of the last remaining assets they can use to build around him.

Since we've been throwing around a lot of "maybes" in this story, we'll close on this last one. Maybe Kidd is the best coach available to the Knicks. I'd deem it unlikely, but maybe that's the case. But should the Knicks be so certain that he is so much better than anyone else in the field that they sacrifice high-upside draft capital to get him? The answer to that is almost certainly no unless he's bringing a very tall Greek friend with him.