Kevin Sherrington: Masai Ujiri's eerily quiet Mavs coaching search triggers post-traumatic Nico disorder

DALLAS - Unless my RSVP to the new head coach's opening presser got lost in the mail, it looks as if the Dallas Mavericks will greet their lottery pick Tuesday without the guy who should have the greatest impact on the kid's immediate future. Even for an era when the position has been downgraded to the point that you probably can't name a half-dozen NBA coaches, this level of indifference seems a little over the top.

Bill Parcells liked to say if he's cooking dinner, he should at least get to shop for the groceries.

Masai Ujiri is not only doing all the shopping, he's ordering in.

For the record, I don't question Ujiri's status as the basketball boss. Given his success in both Denver and Toronto, his, uh, deliberate approach may turn out fine. It's just that, as top-down approaches go, this feels like Eddie the Eagle on the down-ramp at the '88 Olympics.

Here's hoping the new coach, whoever that might be, is good at learning on the fly.

Until then, we're forced to take it on faith that the Mavs will get everything right even as they go into the draft as one of only two organizations without a head coach. Portland is the other. From all reports, the Blazers and Mavs may be in a tug of war for Micah Nori, a Minnesota assistant.

God help the Mavs if Nori's their man, and they lose him to the likes of Portland.

Anyway, the problem with taking the Mavs on faith is that we've lost ours.

Lost it the hard way.

Here in Dallas, where, historically speaking, the local NBA franchise wouldn't know a Hall of Fame point guard from a harp seal, we've endured all kinds of losses over the last half century or so. Even when the Mavs got it right, they didn't know what to do next. No sooner did they win their only title than they decided it was a one-and-done and blew it up. Then, when they got close again a couple years ago, down it went again, like the old Sheraton out in Arlington.

The Mavs don't let success go to their heads. They let it walk out the door.

The result of all this is a civic case of PTND.

Post-traumatic Nico disorder.

Nico Harrison turned out to be something less than the yes-man Mark Cuban figured. He kept everything close to the vest. Apparently made deals with little to no input from his coach, Jason Kidd. Remember Christian Wood? Gave up a first to get him, and Kidd was so thrilled, he sometimes went days without calling Wood's name or number.

Of course, that's nothing compared with Nico letting his head coach in on the Luka Doncic deal only at "the 11th hour," as Kidd famously put it. Now, as previously noted in this space, Kidd still could have done more to nix the deal. Should have threatened to quit. Might not have stopped it, but at least he wouldn't be linked to the worst decision in franchise history.

Nico operated in the loneliest of vacuums. When our Mike Curtis wrote a report making the rounds, Nico texted with not a little disdain that nothing accurate gets out that doesn't come directly from him. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, until you learn that one of the things he's tinkering with down in the bunker is trading the organization's greatest talent ever for a heap six years older on a bad set of tires.

Given the Mavs' recent front-office history and the nature of our disorder, you can see why the fact that Ujiri seems just as mysterious might make us, well, nuts.

Look, no one's asking for a blueprint, but it's been a month since Ujiri let Kidd go. The NBA Finals have come and gone. New York has already cleaned up from the parade, not that you could tell. Anyone Ujiri needed to talk to has nothing but time to do so. I realize he took at least a month on each of his last two hires in Toronto, but in neither of those cases did he wait until after the draft to name his man.

Frankly, it seems like something Jerry Jones would do. Remember when he said any one of 500 coaches could have won those Super Bowls? He's still whittling down his list, apparently.

This close to Tuesday's draft, I didn't figure on writing about the fact that the Mavs would still be without a coach. I wanted to write about what they should do with the ninth pick. Even asked Kidd near the end of the season what he looked for in a point guard, back when it looked like they might be in the sweet spot for one.

Now there's even talk that they've slid just far enough to make them consider Aday Mara, the 7-3 center from Spain by way of Michigan. Might be just the thing to counter Victor Wembanyama.

Then again, the smallest man on the floor just stole a championship out from under him, so maybe not.

The best thing I can think is that Ujiri has been so busy getting ready for this draft, a vastly important one, that he simply hasn't had time to hire a new guy. But do you want a coach who'd be good with that? Seems to me you'd want someone who wants to do both the shopping and cooking. Someone with the backbone to stand up to his boss when he wakes him in the middle of the night with the craziest thing he's ever heard. Around here, that's not just a nightmare.

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This story was originally published June 20, 2026 at 2:35 AM.