DURHAM, N.C. — Everyone knew this was coming, of course, so it wasn’t like the men who run the Nets had to be knocked over with a feather when the news arrived late in the morning.
From the moment the Nets hired Jason Kidd, they understood they were going to start the 2013-14 season before he would, that the consequences for the drunk-driving charges levied against him 14 months ago were coming, that old bill coming due.
Kidd already has paid public penance for that appalling lack of judgment in his early hours as a Knick, out in the Hamptons last summer. He already has spoken to a couple of groups of schoolchildren as part of that. And Friday he learned he will miss both the season opener, Oct. 30 in Cleveland, and the home opener two nights later against the Heat.
“We all knew that was going to come at some point,” Kidd said Friday, following his team’s penultimate practice at the Coach K Practice Court at Duke, after a 10-minute closed-door meeting with general manager Billy King. “You have to be responsible and I accept that.”
The crime itself was as much a lapse of common sense as it was of the law, a reminder that even someone who made just south of $190 million as a basketball player can inexplicably opt for a steering wheel instead of a car service. He wants to put it behind him, and so do the Nets, and once he has paid his the debt to the league as he has to the community, that’s certainly his right.
This, however, is what lingers:
The reality that as carefully as King and the rest of the Nets’ brass have crafted this coming season, there is, and will be, one wild card that is impossible to completely ignore, or define. The fact it’s Kidd — who for most of his career, going all the way back to Cal, has been the one certainty every one of his teams could rely on day after day — simply adds to the intrigue.
Kidd didn’t lead a perfect life during his 19 years as a player, we know that. There was an old domestic violence charge before he was traded to the Nets. There was the gangplanking of Byron Scott, a mutiny during which Kidd was the captain. There was, of course, that SUV he drunkenly drove into a telephone pole out East.
But Kidd always was smart enough to figure out how to maneuver out of serious trouble, and how to claw free from its grasp whenever it ensnared him. So the question really shouldn’t be if he will duplicate his past sins — if anything, the one thing we know about Kidd is he learns from his mistakes, and that’s supposed to be a laudable trait.
No, this is the question: What happens when he suffers a lapse of judgment or wisdom now that he’s a boss, now that he’s in charge of a roster of highly evolved professionals, now that he’s being paid for that very same judgment that has been shown wanting every now and again across a very public basketball life?
“I know I have to be willing to learn,” Kidd said earlier this week. “That’s why it was important for me to build such a terrific staff. I trust them completely.”
The first few practices have revealed a Kidd who is true to that, who has let his assistants handle the drills and the hands-on coaching and the individual work, who seems comfortable in his role as a delegator. It surely will allow a smooth temporary transition when Kidd sits the first two games and, presumably, Lawrence Frank slides a chair or two down for the interim.
What happens from there, though, is anyone’s guess. And that probably includes Kidd himself. There’s a good reason why players almost never make the immediate transition he is making, and it’s something that’s even worse than a guarantee of failure: It’s a guarantee of nothing, of having no earthly idea what will happen when a $53 trillion roster is entrusted to an entry-level coach.
Especially one whose judgments will — and should — be subject to a telescope of scrutiny. It was oddly appropriate that this day, Kidd should welcome to practice his old Nets teammate Rodney Rogers, who five years ago was paralyzed in an ATV accident, a reminder of just how fickle these wonderful basketball lives can be, how quickly it can all be stolen away, even when the only mistake you make, as Rogers did, was falling off a disagreeable vehicle.
And not wrapping one around a telephone pole.
Vac’s Whacks
Is it possible that when a certain bard/sportswriter wrote about “sound and fury signifying nothing,” he’d had a premonition of ’Tone Time?
Who says Yankees and Mets can’t work and play well together? Together they helped end 21 years of Pirates misery by donating Russell Martin and Marlon Byrd to the cause.
The problem with TV right now is that even the good shows look like bad high school plays in the wake of “Breaking Bad.”
Alex Rodriguez is putting his money where his mouth is, and as a result, his mouthpieces will get a lot of that money.
Whack Back at Vac
Bob Buscavage: It sure seems that Knicks coach Mike Woodson took a “pot-shot” at J.R. Smith when he told him he had to grow up …
Vac: There are some comedic memes that will simply never grow old.
Ken Schlapp: Since they are splitting the 2015 NBA All-Star Game events between Knicks and Nets, how about suggesting the Slam Dunk Contest be held at Rucker Park? With a local amateur contest as well?
Vac: If the game weren’t held in February I’d be all over that … wait, because it’s in February, that makes it even more awesome!
@ogsmar: I want to know if you’re getting any royalties for this WaxVac thing they advertise on late night TV. #OUCH
@MikeVacc: I’ll say this: If getting what’s mine includes having to stick that huge monstrosity in my ear … no thanks.
Mike Ostrowski: This one-game series is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. A two-of-three series still would provide plenty of incentive to win the division. And there’s plenty of time. Season ends Sunday, games Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Next series Thursday. What do you think?
Vac: I like what Theo Epstein dreamt up the other day, later endorsed by Bob Costas: a day-night doubleheader at the higher seed, followed the next day by a winner-take-all, if necessary, at the lower seed. Seems like a perfect compromise.