If this were somebody else — practically anybody else — this would all make you scratch your head a little bit.
The sheer gall of it all — of a rookie coach who had, to be kind, an up-and-down rookie season demanding a prominent role in a franchise’s decision making — is almost comical.
Almost hard to believe.
But this isn’t somebody else. This is Jason Kidd. And if this appalling power play shocks Mikhail Prokhorov and his Russian ownership cabinet, then shame on them.
Because even if it seems bold and brazen even by Kidd’s remarkably passive-aggressive standards, it’s simply a standard move from his time-honored (and dog-eared) playbook.
Goodness, Kidd’s been doing this since his freshman year at Cal, when he led a mutiny that wound up costing Lou Campanelli his job with 10 games left in the season.
And never were his Machiavellian methods more on display then the evening of Dec. 5, 2007, when, unhappy with the Nets’ unwillingness to trade him or extend his contract, he conducted a one-man job action, calling in sick and missing a game against the Knicks at the Meadowlands when the only thing wrong with him was a sour attitude.
Kidd was a genius player, and none of his clubhouse-lawyering and coach-killing will ever change that. But his off-court conniving is every bit as much a part of who he is, who he always has been, as his on-court brilliance. The Nets, of all teams, knew that as well as anybody, and hired him anyway last summer.
And then, in case anyone forgot, he chased a reluctant Lawrence Frank for weeks to be his top aide, demanded that the Nets make him the top-paid assistant in the league…then exiled him about 15 minutes into the season.
So really, the question shouldn’t be: He really went to management and tried to big-foot Billy King, and really tried to get himself a prominent decision-making voice after a year in which the Nets finished sixth in an historically bad Eastern Conference and finished nowhere close to the franchise’s stated mission of winning a title?
It should be this: What took him so long?
Of course, Kidd is about to discover he’s dealing with a different breed of cat now. He was a Hall of Fame player, so even if it made Rod Thorn have to hold his nose when he had to indulge Kidd in the old days, he had to enable his franchise cornerstone. Thorn was also a soft touch.
Prokhorov? You don’t become an oligarch by being a sweetheart of a guy, easily manipulated by an employee celebrating his first anniversary on the job. You know what an oligarch tells such a worker?
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. (If he’s lucky.)
It’s the right thing to say, the righter thing to do. If the Nets still fancy themselves contenders with a rapidly shutting window, their chances improve exponentially if they’re coached by any of a dozen legit candidates, starting with Jeff Van Gundy and Lionel Hollins.
If Kidd wants to chase the bright lights of Milwaukee, he’s friends with new Bucks owner Marc Lasry. (Maybe Lasry never has heard the old one about “with friends like this…”)
Godspeed. Bundle up. Order a big pile of cheese curds and a pint of Schlitz. Look out for the door. Milwaukee? He’s all yours. Enjoy.