Longtime Utah Jazz executive Dennis Lindsey is reportedly close to landing a job with another NBA team, and it’s one that is close to his roots.
On Monday afternoon, Substack’s Marc Stein reported that Lindsey, a Texas native, is in “advanced discussions” to join the Dallas Mavericks’ front office as a consultant.
The addition of Lindsey, who has 25 years of experience working in NBA front offices, would be huge for a Mavericks front office that lacks experience and is facing a huge summer.
General manager Nico Harrison was hired in 2021 somewhat unconventionally, as he had been an executive at Nike before that (Stein reported that Lindsey was a finalist for the job then).
Harrison made a huge splash at the trade deadline in February by trading for Kyrie Irving, but the pairing of Irving with Luka Doncic did not go as planned, and the Mavericks tanked down the stretch and missed the playoffs with Irving set to become a free agent when the offseason begins.
Lindsey was hired by the Jazz as general manager in 2012 to replace Kevin O’Connor after stints as the assistant general manager of the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets (among other roles with the Rockets).
Lindsey built the Jazz into a perennial playoff team led by head coach Quin Snyder (hired in 2014) and was promoted to the role of executive vice president of basketball operations in 2019, with Justin Zanik becoming general manager.
In June 2021, however, Lindsey stepped down from that role to become an adviser for the team, with the move coming a few months after Ryan Smith bought the team from the Gail Miller family.
While the move was presented as though Lindsey would remain in a front-facing role with the team, that did not occur, as Danny Ainge was named CEO of basketball six months later and Zanik remained GM.
Since then, Ainge and Zanik have been the front-facing executives of the team.