Jason Kidd is well aware of what happened during his tenure in Dallas, and no comments from the owner are going to dampen that memory.
The veteran guard will face off against his old team tomorrow night at the Garden for the first time as a member of the Knicks, and Kidd is not letting some remarks by Mark Cuban affect his state of mind heading into the game.
On Dallas radio in mid-August, the Mavericks owner was upset by what he thought was Kidd’s quick and unexpected departure for New York.
“I’m sure I’ll get over it at some point,” Cuban said at the time, “but as of now, I wouldn’t put J-Kidd’s number in the rafters.”
“I don’t play for a jersey [in the rafters], I play for my teammates,” Kidd said after yesterday’s practice. “Cuban owns the team, so he has every right to his opinion. The one thing he can’t take away is the championship ring that we helped him get.”
That came two seasons ago, when Kidd teamed with Tyson Chandler and star Dirk Nowitzki to bring the Mavericks their first title. Now Kidd and Chandler are teammates in New York, and the Mavericks team coming into the Garden has changed substantially.
“It’s a different team than I played with, especially with Shawn Marion going down and Dirk not being there,” Chandler said of the team’s two injured stars. “It’s not the same, but Dallas will always have a special place in my heart because we won a championship together.”
Kidd, who is now 39 years old and was drafted second overall by Dallas in 1994, also has a special affinity for the city and its fans. He even went so far as to say “the owner is great,” before addressing the stark circumstances of his departure.
“That’s just the business of basketball, it happens,” said Kidd, who signed a three-year, $9 million deal with the Knicks after getting a reported offer from the Mavericks for three years, $11 million.
“A lot of championship teams have been broken up before,” said the 10-time All-Star and likely future Hall of Famer. “The Dallas team was broken up, so it’s not something new, it just happened.”
Now Kidd is determined to focus on the task at hand, which is bringing the Knicks back into the discussion as a championship contender. He has helped them get off to their first 3-0 start in 13 years, and has helped most by way of imparting all the knowledge he has amassed in his 18 seasons.
“He’s like having a coach on the floor,” Chandler said. “Even defensively, he’s constantly out there coaching. To have multiple coaches out there is always a positive.”
Kidd played a similar role in the early-2000s when he was at the helm of the Nets (still in New Jersey then), leading them to back-to-back NBA Finals. Asked if he would want to retire as a Net, Kidd was non-committal. He is nothing if not a consummate professional, and this game against a former team with a mouthy owner is not going to rile him up at this point in his career.
“If I was 23, yes,” Kidd said when asked if the game would carry extra meaning. “But I’m not 23. To see the guys, Cuban and those guys, [it will] be good to see them, but they’re on the other side. Maybe I’ll see some of those guys [tonight] for dinner, but come game time my job is to try and win a ball game.”