To appreciate Jason Kidd fully, it was best to watch him play, not compile statistics, says The Post’s Mike Vaccaro. (Getty Images)
This was early in the game with Jason Kidd and the Nets, a sleepy Saturday afternoon at the old Meadowlands Arena, the place barely half full. As with much of Kidd’s career, it is impossible to detect the impact he had on the game if you look though the cold prism of a boxscore — 10 points, 3-for-11 from the field, four assists, seven rebounds.
No. To appreciate Kidd fully, it was best to watch him play, not compile.
Better still to talk to his teammates afterward.
“The boxscore lies,” Kenyon Martin growled after the game, an 87-84 Nets win.
“If you play the game seriously, you don’t ever want to mess up because you feel like you let the team down,” Keith Van Horn said. “With this team, you see how hard that man goes from start to finish” — he pointed at Kidd — “and you don’t want to have to explain yourself to him afterward for letting him down.”
Kidd, for his part, looked at the stat sheet, laughed and set it aside.
“Only two numbers that ever matter,” he said, “are the ‘87’ and the ‘84,’ and as long as you got the right number, you did your job that night.”
That, in essence, is what the Knicks get now, even 10 years later, Kidd agreeing at age 39 to sign on for three more years at the place that had to be his office at least once before he heads off to Springfield, Madison Square Garden. If you want to recount Kidd’s more glorious nights — all the triple-doubles, all the playoff games he single-handedly dragged the Nets home, the ring he finally won with the Mavs last year — you’re welcome to revel in them.
But what makes this transaction so important for the Knicks is to remember his workaday value to those Nets teams back in the day, his daily demanding of excellence from teammates, many of whom — before him, after him — weren’t necessarily what you would call grinders. Kidd still brings that insistence of accountability with him to the arena, and that, as much as anything, is what this assemblage of Knicks needs, what it craves, what it’s yearned for.
Yes, there are still nights Kidd can turn back the clock, and a pure point guard like him is sure to relish the chance to feed Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire regularly, and he already has a history of shared success with Tyson Chandler. And there is little doubt he will be a perfect mentor for Jeremy Lin — assuming, as we must, that the Knicks will bring him back no matter what the cost — especially since Lin was effusive in talking about how much Kidd — a fellow native of northern California — meant to him as a role model growing up.
After Lin torched Kidd for 28 points and 14 assists at the Garden Feb. 19, Kidd said of Lin: “He looks a little bit like Steve Nash out there. Nash has had a lot of success running that system, and a lot of point guards have gotten to go through that system in the Olympics. It’s a point guard’s dream.”
Kidd was talking about Mike D’Antoni’s system, of course, and while D’Antoni and his pinball offense are gone, having Kidd as a daily standard probably will be even more useful for Lin’s development into whatever he’s destined to be as a player. And that is certainly a valuable Kidd asset.
But this is the bigger one: good luck to Anthony or Stoudemire or J.R Smith — if he returns — trying to play the prima donna next season, a role each was so often allowed to assume last season. Such is the depth of respect that Kidd commands across the sport, even if he only plays 20 or 25 minutes a night now.
Has he always been a perfect basketball soldier? He hasn’t. Kidd once executed the exact same gang-planking of Byron Scott that Melo and company pulled on D’Antoni last winter. His time with the Nets ended badly. All of that is on Kidd’s permanent record.
But so is this: Every day he shows up in a uniform, he grinds and he bleeds and he commands and he demands. The Knicks have plenty of talent. They were lacking soul, and a basketball conscience. It’s been a gaping cavity for years. Not anymore.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com