Right on time. Look at that. We are ninety seven on the Freak. We're the home of the Dallas Mavericks and also inside Sports Medicine with doctor TiO. Sorry, Elle and uh. We are these games and we're proud to do it. And it also gives us access to big name guests, and we have one right now. It is time to talk to the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, mister Jason Kidd. We got your coach my birthday brother. Oh you guys are birthday brothers March twenty third, Me and
Ja Kid. He's in far better fitness than you. Okay, thanks, what's up, coach? Coming off a nice victory just last night at the AAC one nine over the Orlando Magic. I got to start with one fastball, Derek Lively? Is this nose broken? A good? Great question? I don't think so. He took a nice hit to the nose. You had to cut shot. Big frea goes for us. He was a big
part of our success last night coming back. So I'm going to go and say it's he has a nice bump on his nose, but not broken, Okay, because I saw him with the free throw line and it looked like there was that bump that you mentioned, and I don't know how many how those bumps pop up when it's not broken. But he's seeing a tough, tough kid man as he's proven to be all year. But he goes in with the Kleenex up the nose and kind of gets the alley. You've dunk.
That sort of ice is the game. How how happy are we with the evolution of young Derek Lively. We're very excited just understanding at the beginning of the season, just you know, the unknown nineteen year old kid played at Duke, just understanding that could he pick up things quickly? He's answered that question. Could he you know, played with Luca and Kai. He's
answered that question. So he's been a big part of our success. And again I think we're very fortunate to be able to get him in the draft. He's a stud, no doubt. It's a great win, great third quarter. And I saw you on the podium last night, and I don't want to say a problem with the team, but it's a roller coaster. Man. Some days you guys look like, you know, you should be title contenders, and some days the defense just isn't there. How hard is
it? Because you said last night the defense is determined by effort and energy. How hard is it to get the modern NBA player to maintain the level of effort required to, you know, to play great defense in the league, which I do think this team is capable of. Well, I think it's it's hard. I think for any professional athlete, it's hard to be consistent. And I think that's what we all fight for as coaches, as players, is to be consistent. It's there's a human element to sport.
And right now, with the health of our team, you know, we've been hit with a lot of injuries. We have guys that are playing a lot more minutes that they normally would not be playing, and so we're stretching guys and we're asking guys to do more until we can get healthy. And so but again also at age, we have player a few young players, you know, who are trying to learn what it takes to be consistent. And again, the more time they're going to be on the floor, the
better chances of learning how to do that. And right now, with the injuries, we've got a lot of young players playing. Coach Gett the MAVs joining us here on a ninety seven to one coach. Is there a level of expectation going into a game like last night when you're facing a team that statistically is the worst three point three point shooting team in the league and they come out and just light it up from beyond the arc? Is there an amount of kind of surprise or shock that, Oh, my gosh, how
are these guys doing this? Now we have to adjust, maybe face them up a little bit tighter beyond at the perimeter. Is that kind of made you what got you guys in a little bit of trouble in the first half? Or Am I completely off base? No? I think one. Orlando is a team that doesn't shoot the three well. But for whatever reason, right now, we seem to pick a player and they're they're shooting thirty seven percent, and they seemed to make make them all when they shoot them.
And I think last night's game plan was to make them shoot threes. We were in the same situation in Orlando again. The game plan is to make them, you know, shoot threes, and they made them in Orlando in the first half, and we asked the guys to trust the game plan. Came out in the second half and then again took control of it. It's kind of the same thing that happened last night. We believe that the analytics will, you know, match our game plan, and it did in the
second half. Well, we held a team to twelve points. They shot the ball well in the first half. But there's a thing called not panicking, and I thought the group didn't panic. They made shots. We continued to keep playing and eventually they came back to earth in that third quarter where they didn't make those shots in the in the second half, and we did. And so again we took full advantage of that third quarter puts in a
position to win that game. Maverick's head coach Jason Kidd joining us on the downbeat Coach last night, I was the celebrity guest for MAVs karaoke cam, so and that happened. You know, right after a big run, you could really feel the energy rising in the building. I don't know what should get more credit for the big run in the second half. Would it be my karaoke camp performance or your halftime adjustments and maybe any type of halftime speech
that you might have given the team. No, I think the players are going to say ye're karaoke. What was the reason why we went on that big run? So you might have to do it again on Saturday. I'll be there. Yeah, I can handle that. Sorry, I was Milwaukee. I'm in Oh yeah, I'm curious about that we were talking about because Kevin did you know he was on the jumbo tron last night representing the station.
Have you read a situation where you're in the team huddle, you got the whiteboard on, you know, on and trying to draw up a play and you see one of your guys that's you know, rubber neck and around looking at the jumbo tron, watching some feature that he's part of, and you have to go, hey, lively head on the whiteboard. Does that ever happen to you? Uh? Yeah, it happens a lot. You know, guys can move, you know, their focus if something's funny it's
happening on a jumbo tron. You just make sure that they understand what the play is or they'll ask as they get up, hey what's the play? What am I supposed to do? So you know then that they were paying attention to something on the jumble on the jump tron. It just shows that they're no matter how old they are. They're all just big kids, and that's on TV. That's awesome. All right. Last thing from last night,
Well I got some fun stuff for you. But part of the job obviously is quick decisions that you do and don't make, and sometimes they work and don't work. Last night, two timeouts in the pocket, Tim had the ball, we didn't call one, and Tim and Luca kind of in the heat of battle, obviously pretty fired up. Do you think is it something in hindsight you think a timeout should have been called there? Yeah,
you know, this is the beauty of a game of basketball. I think we all we're talked at some point in Cyo or in high school or in college that when you know you have timeouts, that you can burn one anytime that you're in trouble. Unfortunately we did. We didn't do that last night. Again, at the highest level, we are teaching the rules of the game, and unfortunately that happened last night. But again no one panicked. We found a way to come back from that mistake and won the game.
But there's always teaching moments. I've given the guy, especially late in the game. You see players get fouled, Orlando gives them credit they didn't foul. Timmy traveled, and so yes, we could call the time out. Yes, the guy who had the ball could have called a timeout, and so it didn't. So we'll learn from that, and the next time we lear in that situation, we'll take a time out quick two parter to follow up on that. In that number one, in that instance, whose responsibility
is it ultimately to make the call for the timeout? And number two even since it even though it wasn't called, you were probably pretty thankful to have the two considering the difficulty you were presented by getting those inbound passes at the end of the game. Yeah, I think to be able to, you know, understand lake game. You know you're going to get fouled, and so give Orlando credit. They didn't foul. Timmy lost balance and the best
part of it is he ate the ball. He didn't throw the ball where they can get an easy basket, so they had to take the ball out and then sometimes there is a difficulty of getting the ball in. But I thought we did a good job of getting the ball to our best free throw shooter and he had a rhythm and that was Luca. But understanding, you know, in Atlanta, we had the same situation. We throw the ball
into the stands late in the game, we missed layups. You know, it happens, and so I think instead of being a negative, we learn from it, and as the season goes on and the game become a little
bit more important, we'll be better in those situations. Coach tell us about seventy three points, and if you've ever seen anyone who's gifted offensively as young Luka Doncice, Yeah, when you talk about what he did in Atlanta, a lot of us have never seen anything like that or been a part of that, you know, when you talk about Kobe or you know, players like MJ going for fifty to fifty five or sixty three. To see it in person, to be a part of it look like shoot around it.
It was very you know, seamless and easy. There was no stress involved in what he was doing, and you could see early on he was going to go. And so for us it was a matter of how, you know, how can we get umrested, How can we use him on the floor to get someone else to you know, carry some of the low But he clearly it was a bounce back game at a very very high level.
How much of that performance do you think was Luca hopefully or maybe subconsciously silencing all the noise that happened that that came forth from the Phoenix game and some of the negative reaction that he had by getting the fan thrown out, and how much of it was just all planets aligned in the right way. He was absolutely on and and and it was just one of those crazy wild nights
that just adds to the resume of this kid. Yeah, I think any time he's questioned or you know, if there's something that is not positive, I think he's always responded in a positive way. I've said this before and I'll say it. You know, for as long as I'm here, he can't take this young man for granted. He's better than Dirk. He's in the in the in the atmosphere of MJ the best to ever do it, Lebron Kobe. And so just to appreciate what this young man is doing adage
at twenty four is something that Dallas has never seen. And that said this, internally he is he's better than Dirk. He does things that Dirk could never do. And now it's you know, the opportunity of getting the right people around him to ultimately win a championship. But he plays the game the right way. He gets double team the most in the league, and he relies on his teammates. He trusts his teammates, and so again, to be able to have the opportunity to coach one of the best players in the
world is an honor. And right now we're just trying to make sure that we don't we don't kill him. I mean we're playing him forty six minutes forty three minutes last night. We got to get healthy, and we got to get you know, back to getting him out of the game so that he is strong going into the fourth quarter. You just said two times that Luca is better than Dirk. Dirk won a title and had been to two Do you feel comfortable saying that on a guy that has not made the even
made the finals yet? Yeah, MJ is the same way. MJ didn't make it, didn't didn't make it into his thirties. This young man is twenty four and is breaking all the records that standing in front of him, and he's a winner and his ultimate goal is to win a championship and he will get there and not just you know, win one, but he will win multiple when it's all said and done, And so our job is to put him in that position and also put his teammates in that position to help
him achieve that goal. He's a pleasure to watch. I know he racks up some teas because he gets worked up with the refs. But part of me thinks, no one touch change anything about Luca. So I don't even think if he's not running hot, maybe it doesn't lead to these performances that are just breaking records every time he takes the floor. I know you talk to him about that managing his emotions, but is that even dangerous to even
threaten to change anything about you because he's playing so good? No, I think, you know, I agree. You know, sometimes the emotions get the best of all of us, and you know, and I think sometimes we can channel our emotions to help us in the dog days, or we're fatigued, we're trying to get us going, we're trying to draw someone into a confrontation. Times he use the officials. But I think when Lucas playing his best is when you see him smiling. I said it after the seventy
three points in Atlanta. He was smiling, and he was having a good time he you know, and when he is smiling, he is at his best and he's happy and he's not worried about those three other guys out there. When you talk about the officials, and sometimes he does, you know, get into it with the officials. He you know, he's one of the hardest players too, official because he has the ball ninety eight percent of the time he does get hit. It's kind of like Lebron and Shack.
You know, when you have the ball that much, it's hard for the officials to call a foul every every time. And you look at last night, he shoots over twenty three throws and so I think, you know, as he gets to understand the balance of when calls are going to you know, help and when to just let things go, I think that's again when he's going to get even better at what he's doing. We talk about that a lot with Michael Parsons, like he rushes the pastor every time, and
a lot of cowboys vans like it. He never gets they never call holding. It's like, well, the rats aren't going to call it every time because he's rushing the passer on almost every play. Last question before we let you go and get on with your day, coach, how close are we to getting Kyrie back? That's a great question. Hopefully soon. You know, we traveled to Minnesota this afternoon, so we'll see where he stands with his help. But I think with the rehab everything, he had a great
workout last night, so hopefully it's this week. All right. We appreciate the time this morning, and we'll be at cheering you on obviously all of our games there on this station is where the home of the MAVs. And if you ever need me for some karaoke cam magic, you know, just let me know. Happy to make it happen. We'll come Saturday. Yeah, that's you're coming back Saturday. Yeah, that's the plan, you want to know. With with Kevin on karaoke, I'm going to keep this going.
Who knew? That's all it took. All right, coach, have a great day and good luck in Minnesota tomorrow night. I appreciate it, guys. Alright, thanks coach, Jason Kidd. There he goes