Mavs Assistant Sean Sweeney Being Pursued by Jazz, Hornets
The Dallas Mavericks are coming off their best season in over a decade. The team went 52-30 in the regular season, which was good enough for the fourth seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Then, the Mavs defeated the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns en route to a Western Conference Finals appearance.
It was a great season, especially considering the Mavs hadn’t even been able to get past the first round since 2011. The All-NBA First Team play of superstar Luka Doncic in his fourth season had a lot to do with that success, but Jason Kidd and his coaching staff deserve a lot of praise for the breakthrough as well.
The Mavs going from being a bottom-10 defensive team to a top-10 defensive team in one year has apparently caught the eye of other teams around the league in need of a new head coach.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnaroski, the Jazz requested to interview Mavs’ defensive guru Sean Sweeney for their head coaching position after Quin Snyder resigned. Sweeney has already interviewed with the Charlotte Hornets as well.
It’s not a surprise that Utah and Charlotte have interest in Sweeney. The Jazz saw firsthand in the first round how effective his team’s defense was despite not having a true defensive anchor like Rudy Gobert. The Hornets, while having one of the best offenses in the league, were a bottom-10 defensive team. Perhaps Charlotte believes adding Sweeney would kickstart a change in that department like it did for Dallas.
As good as Jason Kidd was in his first year as the Mavs’ head coach, he also had a tremendous coaching staff around him as well, including Sweeney and Igor Kokoskov, who is expected to join Steve Nash’s staff on the Brooklyn Nets this summer.
Kidd will have to shuffle the deck a little bit if Sweeney also decides to leave, but with a solid foundation already set, the Mavs should be fine going forward. There will a handful of interesting names to choose from.
