Igor Kokoskov Rips Jason Kidd, Calls Former Mavericks Boss ‘the Worst Guy in the NBA’
Coaches do not usually talk like this. Assistants especially do not talk like this, because the assistant coaching world is small and today’s grudge is tomorrow’s job interview. Igor Kokoskov went on the “X’s and O’s Chat” podcast this week and torched Jason Kidd anyway.
Here is Kokoskov, via a rough translation from Serbian by EuroHoops: “I didn’t have a good experience with him, nor do I have a particularly high opinion of him off the court or as a head coach. And it’s fine for people to know that. That’s not just my opinion. He generally led some really gifted teams.”
Read that last sentence again. Kokoskov is not just saying Kidd was hard to work for. He is saying Kidd’s resume was built on other people’s talent. That is the meanest thing you can say about a head coach, and Kokoskov said it calmly.
Then he got specific
The second quote is the one that will follow Kidd around. “After that first year in Dallas, once the season wrapped up, I got a call from Steve Nash, inviting me to join the Brooklyn Nets,” Kokoskov said. “I remember thinking ‘I was working for the worst guy in the NBA, and now I have a call from best guy in the NBA.'”
The worst guy in the NBA. Not a difficult guy. Not a demanding guy. The worst one, out of everybody, ranked. You do not accidentally phrase it that way.
Kokoskov also described tension with Kidd over Luka Doncic, whom Kokoskov coached in Serbia before Doncic ever reached the NBA. That detail explains a lot. Kokoskov arrived in Dallas in 2021 with a relationship to the franchise’s best player that predated the head coach, and Kidd apparently did not love the arrangement. Kokoskov lasted one season, then went to Brooklyn under Nash.
The record does not rescue him anymore
A few years ago, Kidd could have shrugged this off. He took Dallas to the NBA Finals. That buys a lot of patience for a coach who is known around the league as difficult and who reportedly did not get along with some of his own players in Dallas.
But the Mavericks fired him earlier this year, and the final math is not flattering: 205-205 over five seasons, exactly .500, with two playoff berths and that one Finals run. A coach who goes .500 across half a decade is not a coach whose results shield him from criticism about how he treats people. He is a coach whose results invite the criticism.
Kokoskov, for what it is worth, is not some disgruntled kid taking a shot at a legend. He is 54, has nearly two decades of NBA assistant experience, and was the head coach in Phoenix in 2018-19. He knows precisely how this sounds and he said it into a microphone anyway, adding that it is fine for people to know.
That is the part that should worry anyone considering hiring Kidd. One bitter former assistant is a story about the assistant. But Kokoskov explicitly said the opinion is not his alone, and it lands on top of an existing reputation for being hard to work with and player friction in Dallas. The pattern is doing more damage than the quote.
Kidd is 53 and will almost certainly coach again, because the NBA never really runs out of second chances for guys with his name recognition. Whoever calls him should just know what the people who worked next to him are willing to say out loud now that they no longer have to be polite.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.