For the better part of two decades, and as recently as a few days ago, the Dallas Mavericks were a bastion of stability.
Now they more resemble a dumpster fire, with 13th-year coach Rick Carlisle stepping down on Thursday, barely 24 hours after the departure of 19th-year president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson.
Granted the franchise has a highly valuable commodity in Luka Doncic, a generational talent, but at the moment he’s standing outside the ablaze dumpster, wondering when and how it will be rebuilt into something resembling Dallas’ championship organization of a decade ago.
Carlisle, 61, is the winningest coach (555-478) in Mavericks history and led the franchise to its only NBA championship in 2011, yet his departure was as abrupt and unceremonious as Nelson’s. Thursday’s news release consisted of four paragraphs, one fewer than the Nelson’s departure garnered.
“Rick is a great friend,” Cuban emailed to The News. “I can’t understate how much I have learned from him and what he has meant to this franchise.”
Carlisle did not return phone or text messages to The News, but in a statement that he sent to ESPN he said “this was solely my decision” after several of in-person conversations with Cuban in recent days.
Carlisle thanked by name Cuban, Nelson several members of the front-office, former players Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd and “every player and assistant coach I’ve ever had here,” but did not specifically mention Doncic.
An oversight? Too many names to squeeze into a couple of paragraphs? Figured he’d covered Doncic with the “every player” mention? Hard to say, but the omission was noticeable.
During Doncic’s three seasons, he on several occasions voiced and animatedly displayed disagreement with Carlisle during the heat of competition, but Carlisle never barked back, nor were any of the episodes close to as combustible as the Carlisle-Rajon Rondo tiffs of 2015.
Dallas’ season ended on June 6 with a Game 7 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the playoffs, extending the franchise’s drought without a playoff series victory to a full decade, dating to the 2011 NBA Finals triumph over Miami.
Carlisle’s “flow offense” certainly proved ideal for Doncic’s skills and creativity, helping him to be named first-team All-NBA the past two seasons, qualifying him for a five-year, $201.5 million supermax contract extension, which he is eligible to sign as soon as Aug. 6.
Doncic, 22, is in his hometown of Ljubjana, training with the Slovenian National team for an upcoming qualifying tournament for a berth in next month’s Tokyo Olympics. Hours before the Carlisle announcement, Doncic took part in a previously scheduled national team news conference, during which he was asked about Nelson’s departure.
Doncic and Nelson have been close since Doncic was a teenager, several years before Dallas targeted him in the 2018 draft, but a source told The News that Doncic was not made aware of Nelson’s departure until Wednesday, even though Cuban, according to sources, had fired Nelson on Sunday.
“It was kind of tough to me,” Doncic told reporters Thursday of Nelson’s split with the franchise. “I really like Donnie. [I’ve known] him since I was a kid and he was the one that drafted me. It was tough to me, seeing that, but I’m not the one making decisions there.”
Despite the jarring past 48 hours, a source said nothing has changed Doncic’s mind about signing the supermax extension. Yes, he is close to Nelson (not so much Carlisle) but he’s been a professional since age 13 and has a pragmatic view of basketball’s business side.
He made $8 million this past season and will make $10.1 million next season — very good money, sure — but not the kind of wealth that future Doncic generations will be assured once he signs the supermax extension.
The overarching questions now are who will be coaching Doncic and his teammates, and who will be responsible for building the kind of roster that will convince Doncic that Dallas has championship-caliber upside in coming seasons?
And will the dysfunction that was described early this week in a story in The Athletic be sufficiently addressed, enabling that team-building to occur?
Citing unnamed sources, the story described the increasing authority of Mavericks director of quantitative research and development Haralabos Voulgaris as a source of growing friction, usurping Nelson’s authority and making lineup recommendations to the coaching staff.
Although Cuban characterized the story as “Total [expletive]” on Twitter, for whatever reasons half of the franchise’s longtime brain trust — Nelson and Carlisle — are gone, with Cuban and vice president of basketball operations Michael Finley remaining.
Messy though this week’s upheaval has been, if one peers hard enough into the dumpster fire they’ll see that, if nothing else, this offseason’s order of business has been clearly defined.
Cuban told The News on Thursday that he has hired highly regarded consulting firm Sportsology to assist in the search and hire of a new head of basketball operations.
Typically, an NBA team’s president/general manager wants to hire the head coach who best fits their vision. Now, theoretically, Dallas’ next head of basketball operations will have the opportunity.
Clearly, though, the Mavericks have not been a typical NBA organization since Cuban’s January 2000 purchase of the franchise. Cuban’s taken the “socks and jocks” approach of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones by overseeing all basketball matters.
What will Sportsology tell Cuban about his approach? Will he listen? And more important, will potential general managers and coaches see Dallas as a desirable franchise? It’s certainly enticing to have young superstar Doncic to build around.
The Mavericks have strong internal candidates for both leadership roles. Finley has been part of the front office for seven seasons, the past three as VP of operations.
Jamahl Mosley has been on Carlisle’s Mavericks staff for seven seasons and has been the coach working closely with Doncic.
When Carlisle had to miss this season’s April 2 game against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden after a false-positive test for COVID-19, Mosley stepped up and coached Dallas’ victory that night, with Doncic raving afterward:
“He did an amazing job. He managed the whole game perfectly. ... Yeah, he can be a head coach, for sure. I work with him a lot. He’s got the things needed for a head coach.”
Other potential coaching candidates include former Maverick and Naismith Hall of Famer Jason Kidd, currently a Lakers assistant but formerly head coach of the Bucks and Nets; and Terry Stotts, the lead offensive assistant of Dallas’ championship team, recently fired after nine seasons in Portland.
Carlisle’s decision to step down with two seasons left on his contract made Dallas the seventh team with a head coach opening. Carlisle certainly will be an attractive candidate for several openings, given his championship pedigree as both coach and player.
Those are among the qualities that made him the greatest coach in Mavericks history. And despite the decade-long drought of playoff series wins, all signs were that the Carlisle-Mavericks marriage would continue.
Asked after the Game 7 loss in Los Angeles whether he was the right coach for Dallas going forward, Carlisle said, “Obviously, I do,” adding that Cuban was the better person to ask. To which Cuban told The News: “He isn’t going anywhere.”
The following day in Dallas, after presiding over player exit interviews along with Finley, Nelson and Carlisle certainly sounded like men who thought they would continue to be in charge, speaking optimistically of the franchise’s pivotal offseason ahead.
Now both are gone. Though jolting, Carlisle’s departure was made less surprising by Nelson preceding him.
Carlisle and Nelson have been friends for four decades, having attended Worcester Academy in Massachusetts three years apart.
Carlisle will forever be a cherished part of Mavericks history, as the coach who finally led the franchise to a championship, but the last sentence of his statement to ESPN certainly made him sound like a man with a clear exit plan.
“I am excited about the next chapter of my coaching career.”
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