‘Wake-Up Call’: Mavs Accepted Kidd’s Defense Challenge

Jason Kidd challenged the Dallas Mavericks roster earlier this season, and they have answered the wake-up call.

The Dallas Mavericks arguably hit their biggest low point of the 2021-22 season on December 3rd when they lost by 16 points to the severely undermanned New Orleans Pelicans—a team the Mavs had beaten by 32 points just a few days earlier.

"This team is built to play offense," said Kidd after the embarrassing loss. "This team isn't built to play defense (either). We have to get out of that mode."

At the time, those comments from Kidd were perceived as somewhat of a public nudge at the Mavs front office. After all, general manager Nico Harrison has said that he and Kidd have no problems challenging one another. But maybe it was actually a wake-up call Kidd provided for his team.

In the 21 games the Mavs had played before Kidd’s public challenge, the Dallas defense was giving up 106.7 points per game to its opponents and had a negative 1.5 net rating. In the 17 games since then, the Mavs are giving up just 99.3 points per game to their opponents and have a positive 5.3 net rating—including a current streak of five games where Dallas has held its opponents under 100 points.

Even after the defensive intensity and overall level of play picked up, the Mavs were still losing a handful of close games, mostly while Luka Doncic was out for an extended period of time with an ankle injury. But Kidd loved the effort he was seeing from the ‘Makeshift Mavs,’ and he continued to preach patience to his guys.

“We just can’t get to the finish line right now,” said Kidd after a tough Christmas Day loss to the Utah Jazz that was close until the final minutes.

“We’ve just got to, again, stay positive and keep working because I think it’s going to turn here.”

Sure enough, things have turned for the Mavs just as Kidd envisioned. Dallas is riding a season-high four-game win streak heading into Houston on Friday night, including an impressive dismantling of the revamped Golden State Warriors on Dirk Nowitzki’s jersey ceremony night.

Throughout the last 15 games, the Mavs have had the third-best defense and the fifth-best net rating in the entire league. The offense is still a work in progress, only ranking 14th during that span, but it continues to get better than it was at the beginning of the season.

Jason Kidd was the subject of a lot of scrutiny during the offseason and the early part of this regular season, but as the dust has settled, everyone should be able to see that he has actually done a fine job with the Mavs so far.

The Mavs used to be known as an ‘all offense, no defense’ team, but Kidd has changed the defensive identity of this team for the better, something that had to happen at some point if the Mavs had any chance of making a leap into contender status.

Dallas still has many ways it can improve, both on the offensive end with its current roster or through upgrades ahead of the February 10 NBA trade deadline, but no matter what happens over the next month, though, it feels like the disposition of this team has been established.

That’s not only a testament to what Kidd has done so far this season, but also to the Mavs’ players for accepting his challenge and committing to the process.