Dusty May Takes Over the Mavericks After Winning the National Title. Here’s Why Dallas Won This Hire.
Dallas hired Dusty May away from Michigan two weeks after he won the 2026 national championship. That should tell you everything about how highly the Mavericks front office thinks of the guy about to coach Cooper Flagg.
May, 49, went 34-3 at Michigan last season and beat UConn for the title. He replaces Jason Kidd and inherits the most valuable young player in the sport. His job is simple to describe and very hard to execute: turn Flagg into the best version of himself while also fixing a Mavericks roster that has been drifting since the Luka Doncic trade.
Kidd’s tenure ended because the Mavericks front office, now run by Masai Ujiri as president of basketball operations, wanted a fresh voice around Flagg. Kidd’s play calls got stale. His rotations got predictable. And once Kyrie Irving went down with the knee injury, Kidd never adjusted the offense to give Flagg a real primary ballhandler role.
May’s system at Florida Atlantic and then Michigan was built on ball movement, spacing, and empowering versatile forwards. That is essentially the template for how the modern NBA uses a player like Flagg. He shot 51 percent from the field in college, hit 33 percent from three, and averaged 15.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 3.3 assists as a rookie last year in Dallas. The tools are there. He just needs a system that unlocks them.
Ujiri has said publicly he views the Mavericks as a five-year build. That is the timeline that made May a viable NBA hire in the first place. A veteran coach chasing a title next season would not want this job. May does not need to win 55 games in year one. He needs to develop Flagg, integrate whoever the Mavericks add through the draft and free agency, and put a system in place that can grow with the roster.
Kyrie Irving returning from knee surgery next season is the wild card. Irving at 100 percent gives the Mavericks a proven scorer who can carry offensive load while May figures out the Flagg wrinkle. Irving at 70 percent turns this into another lost season and puts real pressure on a first-time NBA coach.
The hire itself is a bet on player development. May is not a defensive tactician the way Rick Carlisle or Erik Spoelstra are. He is not a proven closer of playoff series. What he is, is a guy players consistently improve under and one of the best offensive minds in college basketball for the last five years.
If Flagg becomes a 25-point-per-game scorer next season, this hire looks like a masterstroke. If he plateaus, Ujiri will be back searching for a new voice inside two years. That is the deal Dallas signed up for. And they made it with clear eyes.
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.
