Mavericks will not let Jason Kidd interview with the New York Knicks

This weird story can finally go away

The Dallas Mavericks will not allow head coach Jason Kidd to interview with the New York Knicks for their own head coaching vacancy, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Charania reports that as of Tuesday night the Knicks haven’t made a request to interview Kidd, but the Mavericks will turn them down if that happens.

This finally puts to bed a strange and weird story that has managed to stay alive for almost a week. After the Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau last Tuesday, Kidd’s name was almost immediately tossed into the rumor mill by just about every credible NBA reporter. The Knicks were also interested in the Rockets Ime Udoka, but the Rockets unofficially shot that down pretty fast through leaks to the media.

The Mavericks did no such thing, as reports bounced around for the last week with iffy language about whether or not the Mavericks would allow Kidd to interview. Soft language flying around about Kidd’s interest and the Mavericks expecting Kidd to be their coach next season made it difficult to ignore this story, especially when the Mavericks hold all the power and leverage — Kidd can’t go to New York if the Mavericks don’t let him, since Kidd is under contract with the Mavericks.

Why Dallas let this story linger for almost a week is anyone’s guess. For Kidd, reports indicate he’s using the Knicks as a boogeyman to secure another, longer-term extension as the Mavericks organization is in a bit of a precarious spot after the Luka Doncic trade, with Kyrie Irving’s ACL injury and the soon-to-be-drafted Cooper Flagg on the horizon. It wouldn’t have taken much for the Mavericks to squash this story, literally a single text to any NBA reporter saying “no, Jason Kidd is our coach, he’s not going anywhere” would have done the trick. It didn’t even need to be an official statement, the Mavericks could have just leaked this to any media member and gotten the same result. Instead, the Mavericks never definitively put their foot down and the story persisted.

At the end of the day, why the story lasted as long as it did doesn’t matter, aside from the Mavericks seemingly never-ending quest to annoy their fans. Perhaps there was more smoke to this fire than reported, maybe the Mavericks and Knicks earnestly tried to negotiate a trade for Kidd and the deal fell apart. We don’t know and we might never know, but for now, Kidd will be Dallas’ head coach to start next season, so you can go back to your regularly scheduled Cooper Flagg YouTube highlight binges.