MILWAUKEE — In the aftermath of Jason Kidd’s stunning departure from Brooklyn, he and Nets general manager Billy King agree on one thing: There was nothing personal about it.
“This is business,” Kidd said with a smile during his introductory press conference Wednesday morning at the BMO Bradley Center, home of his new team, the Bucks. “I think Billy said it best. This is business, and that’s what it comes down to.”
The future Hall of Fame point guard has conducted his business on his own terms throughout his 20-year tenure in the NBA. He helped engineer multiple trades and had coaches fired during his days as an All-Star player. He also endured what was at times a rocky first season as Nets coach, including the “reassignment” of assistant Lawrence Frank less than a month into his contract after Kidd publicly pushed for the former Nets and Pistons coach to be brought on board last summer.
That doesn’t include the events of the past few days, however. After recently going to Nets ownership with a series of demands — as The Post first reported Saturday night — including his desire to be placed above King in the organizational hierarchy and to be given control over basketball operations, Kidd went on a whirlwind courtship with the Bucks, who had asked for and received permission to interview him while they still had a coach, Larry Drew, under contract.
The Nets eventually agreed to let Kidd go to Milwaukee for a pair of second-round picks, and after Drew was fired Monday, Kidd was hired. On Wednesday, he sat on a stage, decked out in a suit with a red tie and a Bucks lapel pin, between Milwaukee general manager John Hammond and owners Marc Lasry and Wes Edens just hours before the Nets tabbed Lionel Hollins to replace him.
When Kidd was asked about his attempted power play, however, he replied without actually answering the question, or denying anything that has been reported.
“Is there a power outage in Brooklyn?” Kidd said with a knowing smile when asked if he had sought more power with the Nets. “I don’t know. I think they have a good borough president, so I think they’re in good hands.”
Despite what certainly have to be hard feelings behind the scenes after Kidd sat down with Nets chairman of the board Dmitry Razumov for a “great two-hour dinner,” in which he made the demands that ultimately were rejected by ownership, Kidd followed King’s lead from a day earlier and spoke glowingly of everyone he left behind.
“Look, Brooklyn, it’s all positive,” Kidd told The Post shortly after the press conference ended. “Billy has done a great job assembling that team. Dmitry, Mikhail [Prokhorov], for giving me the chance … there’s nothing but praise.
“I’m very happy, and I know they’re going to be great, and they’re going to do well.”
During the press conference, Lasry — a former minority owner of the Nets and a close friend of Kidd’s — said his new coach’s agent had been the initial person to make contact with the Bucks about any potential interest in having his client coach there.
When asked about it later, however, Kidd tried to claim he had been content in Brooklyn.
“I wasn’t looking,” he said. “When you look at looking, we just got to the second round.
“What am I upset about [with the Nets]? I’m a coach. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s it.”
Lasry also admitted it was “a mistake” to not bring Hammond into the process sooner, as both the GM and Drew only found out about the owners’ pursuit of Kidd when it was reported by The Post.
“I think in this process we learned that we made a mistake,” Lasry said, “and I think we’ve learned that pretty well.”
Despite suddenly leaving for the Bucks, Kidd repeatedly said he had been happy with things in Brooklyn. But when asked several times why he wound up leaving if he had been happy, Kidd seemed to pin the blame on the Nets giving him a chance to speak to other teams, as opposed to him deciding it was time to move on.
“I think the process, when Dmitry gave the permission to Milwaukee to talk, things happen,” Kidd said. “That’s how it goes sometimes.
“I think, when you look at business, if someone is asked to talk, and they give you permission, you would have to listen. That’s all I did. I liked what I heard.”
Nevertheless, Kidd said the early-season tension that engulfed the Nets had nothing to do with the way things played out.
“We started off slow, we ended fast,” he said. “That’s the NBA season. You have your ups and downs, no question, no doubt.
“We were good. We made it to the second round, and I couldn’t be more thankful to Billy and Dmitry and Mikhail and the guys that played. We had injuries. We never complained. We just played, and that’s why it’s simple. Everybody has their magic bullet or whatever. … It is what it is.”
It was only last Thursday Kidd was in Brooklyn at the unveiling of the site of the Nets’ future practice facility, speaking positively about the state of the franchise. Now he’s doing the same in Milwaukee, after a stunning series of events has both franchises with new coaches and going their separate ways.
For Kidd, this is a second messy exit from the Nets, the franchise that retired his No. 5 last October and hired him to be its coach two weeks after he retired from his Hall of Fame playing career last summer.
“It’s always hard,” Kidd said of the decision to leave the Nets. “[Coaching] was new, something I want to do for a long time, and Brooklyn is a special place. So, yes, this was hard to do.
“When you look at the business side, not just with coaches, but with players, that gets in the way. … But for me, I have to do what’s best, and this is what I think is best for me.”