Daily Babble: Jason Kidd Wants To Have His Cake and Eat It, Too

There are players who should say what’s on their mind at times, and those that should not. Kidd appears to fall into the latter category. Perhaps his opinion of himself is so high that he doesn’t care or understand that public perception of him outside of his new home in Dallas is of a player who feels it’s all about me and my triple doubles.

It was interesting to see Kidd left on the bench in the final minutes of a tough game against the Spurs as Avery Johnson wanted to fill the court with shooters. It left Jason Terry to make the decision with the ball and predictably he made a bad one. Talk about a little bump in the road in your new home. The Mavericks haven’t exactly been hitting on all cylinders since making the trade though Nowitzki has been playing at a very high level (to quote Hubie Brown).

If Kidd doesn’t take Dallas all the way (after all, it is all about him), will this trade be seen as a failure? The Mavericks made the ever-dangerous move of giving up a primo young point guard, a move they felt they had to make. I wouldn’t have pulled this particular trigger. Kidd just doesn’t defend well enough anymore to handle the quick point guards like Parker, Paul, Alston and Williams. Parker, for one, was pleased to see Harris going to New Jersey.

I know this is probably an unpopular sentiment, but I dont see a whole lot of difference between Kidd and Cassell on this former team issue. Both players largely dictated to management the direction they wanted the team to go and then decided when and where they would go when it failed.

These were both cases where just maybe the management should have told the players to shut up, play and do their job. Then set up the team themselves.

Mediocre leadership, mediocre performance and mediocre results. 8)

you should read a little book by seth godin called “the dip”. i haven’t finished it yet but the concept is very straightforward. basically, sometimes quitting is exactly what’s called for. you go through “dips” in life. in your job, in relationships, in exercising, whatever. the key, and the hard part, is knowing when to quit so you can move on to something that’s worth your time and energy, and when to stick it out through the dip because there are major rewards on the other side.

interestingly enough, we have a perfect example of a dip with the celtics. ainge was criticized, and i’m sure very stressed at times, trying to rebuild this team and put together deals that would launch a new era of celtics success. a lot of fans and sports writers over the last few years said, “give up, it’s not working, you don’t know what you’re doing.” but the ownership and ainge stuck with it and were determined to make it work, and it has. now, i don’t know how much confidence they had that it would ultimately work out, or how worried they got. but clearly there was some level of faith that it was worth putting their heads down and grinding through that dip, that there would be worthwhile rewards on the other side.

with kidd, i think he came to the recognition that this dip wasn’t worth getting through. either it was too long of a dip for his timeframe, or he just doesn’t have what it takes. maybe he even should have recognized that sooner, i don’t know. another great example near and dear to us is kg. i would argue that it would have been beneficial for him to recognize earlier that the timberwolves dip was not going to lead anywhere good for him. was it “right” for him to stick with the organization for so long? it was loyal, and sure, loyalty is a good quality. but people were loyal to enron, and how did that work out? (i’m not comparing the wolves or the nets to enron, just making the point) i don’t know about you, but i’d probably praise people that quit on the enron “team”.

so yes, you can say kidd quit on the nets, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. maybe we’re too quick to think of quitting as a bad thing in every case. maybe we should reconsider that judgement—a good investor “quits” early on a bad stock, before it crashes, a good company “quits” on a bad product line that is losing money and isn’t competitive.

so, on the one hand, i say, “good for you, jason. and kg. and sam. for quitting. think about doing it sooner next time.” and then i say, “don’t play these games and say you didn’t quit, just say yeah, i quit, and i think it was the best thing for everyone involved.”