Like the rest of the league, Jason Kidd will always be looking up at Ray Allen in terms of career three pointers.
Currently, Kidd sits in third place all time with 1,742 three-pointers - 813 behind Allen. But Friday night, Kidd made that 1,742nd really count.
Trailing by one point with the ball, Kidd received the inbound. Dribbling to his left, he found Jason Terry curling around a moving Dirk Nowitzki pick, in which Rondo tripped over. With Garnett now committing to Terry, and Rondo on the floor, Nowitzki was left open on the block.
Terry's bad pass to Nowitzki prevented him from going up with it. Instead it bounced off his leg, and Rajon Rondo, Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce collapsed in. That left Kidd wide open for three. As Nowitzki dished it out to Kidd, Allen sprinted to block the shot. Once Kidd pump faked, Ray blew past him. Kidd was again in the clear to drain it from dead center, which he did.
Prior to the start of the game, Celtics coach Doc Rivers was asked to touch upon Kidd's under-the-radar three point shooting, which turned out to be quite fitting based on the outcome of the game.
"Jason Kidd has always been known as the guy who couldn't shoot," Rivers said. "Yet he's third in the list of three point shots. He's literally laughed his way all the way to the bank."
Kidd once again got the last laugh Friday night. That shot won't exactly change people's opinion of his game, and he still won't be known as a shooter, but he has proved time and time again that he can be when called upon.
"People talked about how much he couldn't shoot so much of his career because he was a play maker; he didn't really have to shoot," Allen said of Kidd. "But that's what's kept him around for as long as he's been around, is being able to still facilitate, being a great teammate, and knocking down the open shot, keeping the floor spaced.
"It's just a message to all the young guys to just continue to hone your skills, and I think he's done that. He's evolved in the game where it can still keep him out there on the floor."
The fact that Kidd was wide open was not meant to be a knock on the type of shooter he is. It was just a defensive mishap on the Celtics' part, which doesn't happen too often.
"No, J Kidd if you look at his track record he has hit big shots, he's put teams on his back, he's carried the load and responsibility for a long time," Garnett said of Kidd. "He's no shag of a player, nothing like that. He's a respected player. I think everybody in our organization and our locker room respects this dude."
From Bad to Worse
If the Celtics' last second loss wasn't enough to start your weekend off on the wrong foot, leave it to Danny Ainge to put the icing on the cake.
Minutes after the C's dropped one to the Mavs, it was announced that Danny Ainge was going to speak to the media.
Uh-oh.
With the current state of health the C's have been in, it's usually not a good sign when the President calls an impromptu press conference.
Ainge started the conference with this:
"I'll give you a quick update on Jermaine O'Neal. So last time we talked Jermaine was not getting surgery and didn't respond like we had hoped for the first 4 or 5 days of that and reconsidered and had a left knee arthroscopy today. Had his left knee cleaned out. We're not sure about a time frame. Our best guess is six to eight weeks. Surgery went fine and we're hoping that alleviates the swelling that he keeps getting with extra activity. So we're hopeful that will fix that."
That means that in 6-8 weeks, O'Neal should be able to play in an NBA game. The goal, as Ainge stated was the beginning of April, but obviously things will change from here until then.
The O'Neal signing has been a disappointment from the start to say the least. At this point, there is a bone on bone issue with O'Neal, and that's something that doesn't go away.
"Whenever you have arthritis in your knee and there's bone on bone there's a long term issue there and this surgery was not anything to fix him long term," Ainge said.
That's right, he could be dealing with the same issues next season as well.
O'Neal played 70 games for the Heat last season, and there were no signs of his knee issues being this serious. As the season went on, MRI after MRI returned worse results according to Ainge.
The original plan to rehab the knee did not work, as it continued to swell even before working out on it. The Celtics are still holding out a glimmer of hope that O'Neal can return and contribute during the playoffs.
"I think that this is kind of the - if we didn't do it now, the window might've closed," Ainge said. [There was a] possibility of that. I think that's why Jermaine wanted to do it. I mean, he really wants to contribute to the team in the playoffs and we think he can. If he can get healthy, he's shown already in the short time he's been with us and in training camp how good he can be defensively."
But with the return of Kendrick Perkins, is Jermaine O'Neal missing another two months really that big of a deal? Weren't the O'Neal's brought in to bridge the gap until Perkins returns? Of course they need backups, but if Shaquille O'Neal can soldier through the season, he and Erden are enough to back up Perkins. Jermaine O'Neal would just be a bonus body for the playoffs at that point.
"We have plenty of big men," Ainge said. "The fact that Perk is back playing and playing well, and seems to be handling the minutes. Semih, I don't know how many minutes Semih played tonight, not a lot, 7 minutes, he's certainly capable of picking up some extra minutes there. Baby played 20, so we're OK the way we are now."