Dusty May and Jon Scheyer Are Both on the Mavericks’ Coaching Radar After Jason Kidd Firing
The Dallas Mavericks have made things very interesting in their head coaching search. According to NBA insider Marc Stein, Dallas is expected to pursue conversations with both Duke head coach Jon Scheyer and Michigan head coach Dusty May for its head coaching vacancy.
This is the kind of search that makes college basketball nervous. Two of the best young coaches in the college game are being courted by an NBA franchise with deep pockets and a roster headlined by Cooper Flagg and Anthony Davis. Either move would be a massive get for the Mavericks. Either move would also gut a top college program.
May, 49, just won a national championship in his second season at Michigan. The Wolverines finished 64-13 under his leadership and brought home the program’s first NCAA title since 1989. May has emerged as one of the most coveted candidates in basketball, and the Mavericks are not the only NBA team that has called.
Scheyer, who took over for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke in 2022, has built an impressive resume in a short amount of time. In four seasons, he has compiled a 124-25 record with two Elite Eight appearances and a Final Four trip. He coached Flagg as a Duke freshman in the 2024-25 season, which makes him an obvious candidate to take over a Dallas team that drafted Flagg first overall.
The Mavericks parted ways with head coach Jason Kidd, who led the team to the 2024 NBA Finals before things started to slip. Newly minted president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri is leading the search for the team’s next head coach, and his fingerprints are all over this approach.
Ujiri has a history of casting wide nets and making bold hires. The Scheyer-May exploration fits that pattern. Both coaches would be unconventional NBA hires, but both also have the kind of player development reputation that Ujiri values.
The reality check is that both candidates are deeply entrenched in their college jobs. May signed a new contract with Michigan in 2025 that ties him to the program through 2030. His buyout is around $5 million if he leaves before April 30, 2027, which is real money but not prohibitive for an NBA franchise.
Scheyer’s situation is even more complicated. Duke basketball is one of the most prestigious jobs in any sport, and walking away from it for the NBA would require a transformational offer. The Mavericks would have to make him one of the highest-paid coaches in basketball to even start the conversation.
For the Mavericks, the appeal is obvious. Dallas needs a coach who can develop young talent around Flagg, manage the locker room around Luka Doncic if he stays, and bring the kind of structure that Kidd’s tenure was missing in its later years. Both May and Scheyer fit that profile in different ways.
The Flagg piece of this matters more than anything. Scheyer coached him in college and knows his game in detail. May has the championship-winning resume and the offensive system that would let Flagg flourish. Either coach could be a long-term solution for Dallas.
The most likely outcome is that Dallas hires an NBA-experienced coach and these calls were exploratory in nature. The college head coach to NBA pipeline is full of cautionary tales, including Brad Stevens and Billy Donovan, both of whom needed time to adjust. Ujiri may decide the risk is not worth it.
But the fact that the conversations are happening at all tells you something. The Mavericks are serious about finding the best possible coach, regardless of what level they are coaching at. That is the kind of approach that pays off in the long run, even if this particular search ends with someone whose name was not in the headlines this week.
For now, both May and Scheyer get the courtesy call. What happens next is up to them.
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.
