PUNK KIDD: We now have confirmation, for anyone who had any lingering doubt: Jason Kidd is a classless piece of shit. The New Jersey Nets' star free agent guard, after a week of indications that he is learning towards leaving the team to sign with the San Antonio Spurs, is now smacking around his current team as though they were his wife: Kidd is saying that for him to even consider returning to New Jersey next year, the Nets will have to take the extraordinary step of firing head coach Byron Scott.
The Nets organization, of course, was known for decades as one of the major laughingstocks of professional sports, until turning things around two years ago, and under the leadership of coach Scott and floor leader Kidd, the team has reached (albeit lost) the NBA Finals two years in a row, the only two Finals appearances in franchise history. That Scott, in only three years, has already become the Nets' all-time second-winningest coach says a great deal about the organization's historical futility.
Superstar players currying favor with management and gaining reputations as "coach killers" is a tradition as old as the NBA itself. But the difference is, when Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and others have forced coaches out, they have a) done so behind the scenes, and b) done so while under long-term contract and presumably in the team's best interests. Kidd is a free agent, who was prepared to walk out the door anyway, and now he's demanding that the team commit to firing Scott- without even making a reciprocal commitment to staying put if the coach is in fact fired.
Had Kidd approached management a year ago, or even at midseason, and said "I'm a free agent after the season, and I'd be more likely to stick around if Byron were fired," that position would've at least been defensible. But instead, he's waited until mere days before his decision is due- as far as I know, there's no precedent in sports history for a free agent demanding a coaching change as a condition for signing. Even worse, Kidd is putting Scott in danger of being unemployed long after every coaching job in the league (save for the Clippers) has already been filled. Does Kidd's selfishness know no bounds?
So now, Kidd's demand has been made public, and published reports have the Nets considering Mike Fratello, Rick Carlisle, and other big name coaches for Scott's job. So either way the Nets are screwed: if Kidd stays, their great coach is out the door; if Kidd goes, Scott will know the team was prepared to shove him aside in order to appease a player who likely didn't want to stick around New Jersey anyway.
What really pisses me off about Kidd is his lack of gratitude. Two years ago he had a reputation as a career underachiever, who had never come close to even sniffing the NBA Finals, and was just a few months removed from a highly-publicized arrest for spousal abuse. The Nets took a chance on him, built their team around him, and as a result he's now got two Eastern Conference titles on his resume, and (regardless of where) is about to sign for exponentially more money than he ever could've imagined before. So how does Kidd repay the Nets? He holds them hostage by demanding they fire the man who is far and away the best coach in franchise history.
When lifelong Cleveland Indian Jim Thome left that team to sign a big bucks contract with the Phillies after last year, he handled the situation with class and integrity, and as a result he's retained his status as a respected player. Kidd, it goes without saying, has done the exact opposite.
(Kidd's demands, by the way, also include that the Nets bring in his buddy Alonzo Mourning. New Jersey already has Dikembe Mutombo; perhaps Kidd also wants them to lure Patrick Ewing out of retirement, giving the team a monopoly on over-the-hill centers from Georgetown).
The Nets, of course, are not blameless here; they should have seen this coming, and if at any point in the past year they've had any kind of contigency plan for the very real possibility of Kidd leaving, I'm yet to hear it or read about it.
I have no dog in this fight; in fact, as I've made clear in the past, I'm very much not a fan of the Nets. But if I owned the team and were put in this situation, I would engage in the following course of action:
1) Call Jason Kidd and tell him to go fuck himself.
2) Call Byron Scott and offer him a contract extension, and
3) Get on the horn with Mark Cuban and start talking sign-and-trade. If the Nets could escape this mess with at least Steve Nash (and maybe Eduardo Najara too), then they'd be in good shape for next year.
But the real Nets leadership won't do any of those things; instead, they'll offer Kidd whatever he demands, and either end up with a player more powerful than the coach or GM, or lose Kidd for nothing and start the season with no superstar and a coach who knows he's not wanted.
Whichever way the Kidd drama shakes out, I'm starting to think maybe mediocrity is the Nets' natural state; the last two years never felt quite right anyway. The only difference next year? It'll be a non-contending team that fails to sell out the arena, as opposed to a championship-caliber squad.