It was a tough end to a season with high expectations for Coach Jason Kidd and the Dallas Mavericks. But they will look ahead and try to learn from the 2022-23 season with an eye toward getting back to the top of the Western Conference in short order.
After falling just a few games short of a NBA Finals appearance in 2021-22, Jason’s first season as head coach, the Mavs suffered a setback this season, falling a few games short of the postseason entirely with a final record of 38-44, culminating in a 138-117 loss to the Spurs.
It’s a familiar feeling for Coach Kidd, who has seen it all in his 19 seasons as a player and now nine seasons as a coach, including seven as a head man. In those 28 years around the NBA Jason had experienced success and failure repeatedly, and what he knows about the latter is all that matters is how you respond.
“When you’re building a championship team you have to be patient. It doesn’t happen overnight…it takes a couple seasons. Going through that, in 08-09 when I came [back as a player] we didn’t win right away. But we did end up putting the right team together to finally win a championship….We’re not happy with the way things finished. But we promise that we will continue to work and push forward, and we’ll get better,” Coach Kidd said. “We came up short. We didn’t make the play-in or the playoffs. So we’ll look at that this summer, how we can get better. All losses hurt, especially when you’re fighting to get in. We just didn’t deliver. We didn’t play well….we weren’t consistent and we have to look at that this summer, going into next year, how to be consistent, not just sometimes. Through training camp and through the season.”
Watch Coach Kidd’s final media availability for the 2022-23 season below.