Mavs 'Have The Personnel' to Play Better Defense: Jason Kidd Coaching for His Job?

The Dallas Mavericks beginning to have flashbacks to last season’s collapse after losing five of their last six games. If head coach Jason Kidd can’t get his team to turn things around, he could be fired at season’s end.

After going on a season-high seven-game win streak, the Dallas Mavericks have now lost five of their last six games during the most crucial part of their schedule. The Mavs been the league’s worst defensive team during this current skid, and with every loss, we start getting flashbacks to last season when they crashed and burned en route to falling out of the Play-In Tournament and became a lottery team.

Despite all the struggles, Mavs head coach Jason Kidd is doing his best to stay positive, although his positivity doesn’t seem to be resonating with his team.

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“Yeah, well, we tried everything,” Kidd said after his defense gave up 137 points to the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday. “We switched, switched to hit, we went zone, sometimes – give them credit. They’re one of the best offensive teams in the league. And so, for us, it’s about the rotations, not giving up the corner 3 – which we have been here, so we’ll go back, look at the film and see what we can do better.

“Understanding our offense is one of the best in the league, and so, if we can expend some of that energy on the defensive end, hopefully that gives us better chances to get a stop.”

Before the trade deadline, Kidd spoke often about how the Mavs lacked size when asked about his team’s defensive shortcomings. Now that Dallas has added P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford into the mix, there shouldn’t be anymore excuses, and Kidd knows that.

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“Yeah, we have the personnel [to be better defensively]. We have the team,” Kidd said. “This is actually a great test for us to be able to go through a hard time in March because it only gets harder in April, May, June. And so, this is a great test, to be tested in the sense of, ‘Are we going to let go of the rope? Are we going to continue to come to work?’

“Everyone’s come to work. Everyone has a positive mindset, energy. Everyone’s trying to do the right thing. Right now, it’s just not falling our way, but we’ve just got to keep continuing to keep pushing. We’ve got a game Thursday, and we’ll be better.”

When it comes to playing good defense, it helps when your best player spearheads those efforts. Luka Doncic has shown that he can be a solid defender when he’s fully engaged, however, his output on defense is inconsistent, perhaps due to the offensive burden he shoulders on a nightly basis.

“We all do. We all do,” Kidd said when asked if Doncic needs to reserve some of the energy he spends on offense for the defensive end of the floor.

“When you look at leaning on Luka offensively, which we do and he delivers, we have to be able to cover him and cover not just Luka, but Kai (Kyrie Irving) and the other three that are out there have to protect each other. It’s not just one-on-one. The players are too good in this league to just play one-on-one. We have to do, as a group, as a team, defensively, we have to guard the ball better.

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“We have to help each other and then we have to finish the play by rebounding, and we can do this. We show signs of it. We just have to be – all and all, we can’t just give up the 3, we have to be consistent. And we’re not being consistent right now, but we do have the guys who can do it.”

Kidd continued: “Luka can play defense, but we’re asking him to do a lot on the offensive end too, and so just understanding that it’s March. We can fix this. We’ll be ready for Thursday. We’ve got a lot of games left, but the personnel, we can look at different rotations. We can look at different starting lineups. We’ve talked about that before the game. We have options, and we’ll explore those.”

With Tuesday’s loss, the Mavs are now 72-72 in games played since the end of their 2022 Western Conference Finals run. Injuries and roster shakeups have contributed to that mediocre record, but other teams around the league have to deal with those same issues.

When you have superstar talents like Doncic and Kyrie Irving who produce at a high level on a nightly basis, as well as decent depth that has been placed around them by the front office, the only other place you can look to for answers when it still isn’t working is the head coach. If Kidd can’t find a way to turn this ship around in the final 20 games of this season, his tenure in Dallas might not make it to a fourth year.