1 Kidd-Friendly Q&A
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
(Archive)
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The leading Kidd suitor at this juncture, then, would have to be Dallas. Kidd has quietly maintained a long-standing interest in returning to the team that drafted him and the Mavericks, according to one team source, strongly believed after Steve Nash's controversial departure in the summer of 2004 that they were close to getting him back. It didn't happen then and the Mavs resisted calls to make another run at Kidd after their first-round flameout to Golden State, claiming that they'd have been overreacting to change too much from a 67-win team.
No one's saying that now, though. Not with team morale, according to club sources, suddenly approaching new lows in the wake of this 3-6 skid, reinforcing my belief from the start that this group needed a bigger shakeup after two such disheartening playoff endings back-to-back. With the Mavs' lack of a proven winner/killer/closer in Kidd's class never more evident, Charles Barkley aptly concluded on TNT's postgame show Thursday: "Dallas is in trouble, man. They gonna have to do something.'"
5. Do the Mavs actually have enough to entice New Jersey?
Yes. The sticking point in a straight two-team swap would be
Josh Howard -- Howard would be the first player New Jersey asks for and the guy Dallas is apt to deem untouchable a la Bynum -- but Dallas has two other key pieces to get the conversation cranked up:
Devin Harris, as the promising young point guard to replace Kidd, and the ability to create a lucrative expiring contract to provide salary-cap relief and make the trade math work by giving a three-year deal (with only the first year guaranteed) to the unofficially retired
Keith Van Horn.
Harris is a Mark Cuban favorite and a proven nuisance to San Antonio as Dallas' answer to
Tony Parker. But Harris is not an
Avery Johnson favorite and, after a promising start to the season, is again struggling to run the team to the demanding coach's specifications. So …
Would New Jersey take Harris,
Jason Terry, Van Horn's cap-friendly deal and future draft considerations for Kidd? Would Dallas part with Harris
and Howard for Kidd? Probably not in either case. Yet even in three- or four-team scenarios, it's difficult to imagine New Jersey getting back a better young heir to Kidd than Harris, who could probably use a fresh start as much as any Mav.
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