Per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, there is mutual interest between Jason Kidd and the Knicks’ organization to make him the new head coach in New York.
The New York Knicks had a great season, making it to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 26 years. However, they disappointingly came up short against the Pacers after brilliantly upsetting the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. After that loss, the Knicks decided to fire head coach Tom Thibodeau. Thibodeau had done an incredible job of taking the Knicks from one of the worst teams in the league to a top team in the conference. However, the Knicks’ brass has decided that Thibodeau was not suited to take the Knicks from contenders to champions. They need a new voice and new leadership to get to that next level if they want to win it all. There are plenty of candidates that the Knicks could be interested in, and Jason Kidd has emerged as the new favorite to take the job on the DraftKings Sportsbook.
Knicks Next Head Coach Odds
There are four primary candidates for the New York job. Current Mavericks head coach, Jason Kidd, is now -160 to be the next Knicks head coach after the aforementioned Windhorst report. As Kidd is still under contract in Dallas, the Knicks would need to trade for Kidd. With Luka Doncic gone and Cooper Flagg soon to usher in a new era of Mavericks basketball, it could make sense for Dallas to move on from Kidd and hire a new coach.
Outside of Kidd, Cavaliers assistant coach Johnnie Bryant, former Nuggets head coach Michael Malone and former Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins are the other top candidates. If the Knicks can’t come to an agreement with the Mavericks, those are the targets that they are likely to go after.
Bryant has the second-best odds. He is a young star in the coaching world, who spent four years as an assistant for the Knicks before becoming an assistant for the Cavaliers in 2024-25. Bryant reportedly played a huge role in developing some of these Knicks players and taking the Cavaliers to the next level as the top-seeded team in the Eastern Conference.
