Multiple national sports news outlets are reporting today that the Milwaukee Bucks have hired Jason Kidd to be their next head coach.
The Bucks reached an agreement to send 2015 and 2019 second-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets to allow Kidd out of the final two years of his contract and become the Bucks’ coach, according to Yahoo Sports.
The Bucks will fire coach Larry Drew, who had been on the job for one season, Yahoo reported. New Bucks ownership had communicated nothing to Drew through the past several days of negotiations with Kidd and the Nets, sources said.
Kidd lost a power play in Brooklyn, where he had tried to usurp the power of general manager Billy King through ownership, sources said. Kidd had gone to ownership seeking the president of basketball operations title and was denied. It led to Brooklyn allowing him permission to talk with the Bucks, whose new co-owner, Marc Lasry, has been a longtime financial adviser for Kidd.
Sources said Bucks co-owners Lasry and Wes Edens and met with Kidd on Friday in New York City after asking for and receiving permission to talk to Kidd a few days before last Thursday’s NBA draft.
Around the NBA, there’s a strong belief that Kidd will ascend sooner rather than later to run the Bucks’ basketball operations, Yahoo reported. The Bucks current general manager is John Hammond. However, ESPN reported that Hammond and high-ranking Bucks officials David Morway and Dave Babcock are all “safe” in their jobs, even if Kidd is hired as coach.
In his one season as Nets head coach, Kidd was 44-38 and won an Eastern Conference first-round series over the Toronto Raptors.
