HIS GREATEST gift remains the simplest gift: As long as the basketball is in Jason Kidd’s hands, he has a limitless capacity to make everything seem all right.
As long as his teammates fall in line behind him, Kidd can clear away the clouds that hover, the questions that linger, the obstacles and impediments that litter the Nets’ pathway back to the Finals. How many players in the NBA are capable of that? Three? Five?
“With J-Kidd leading the way,” Kenyon Martin says, “there ain’t nothing we can’t do.”
Funny how that can happen. In the days and weeks leading up to their rousing 109-96 playoff-opening victory over the Bucks Saturday afternoon, the Nets were awash in question marks and skepticism. They’d lost their fire, some said. They’d lost their soul, others feared. The Meadowlands parking lot prior to Game 1 was a vast concrete couch, rife with amateur shrinks.
So Kidd promptly began the playoffs thusly:
Steal, basket: 2-0, Nets.
Made jumper: 4-0, Nets.
Made jumper: 6-0 Nets.
Gorgeous feed to Kerry Kittles for a lay-up: 8-0, Nets, time-out, Bucks. And hello to the jazzy Jersey basketball for which we’d all grown so terribly nostalgic.
“If you could draw it up on a blackboard and have all the perfect thoughts come to life, that’s exactly how you would do it,” Kidd said yesterday. “It isn’t often that you can jump out to such a great start, but we really wanted to set a tone early. Fortunately, that’s exactly what we did.”
Almost two full years into the Jason Kidd Experience, it’s clear the Nets are more reliant upon their best player’s leadership than ever before. The faces change. The players get better, grow into their roles. And it doesn’t matter: as Kidd goes, so go the Nets. Period. You want to beat the Nets, you’d better have all your faculties, all your focus, and not be worrying about pending legal difficulties, the way Gary Payton was Saturday.
Period.
Kidd is the reason why the Nets can shrug off the ill-timed me-me-me warblings of Dikembe Mutombo, who should have the good sense not to moan about playing time on the day Jason Collins has the best game of his life, and be savvy enough to recognize that his broken wrist and personal issues are the only reasons he doesn’t already wear the tag as the NBA’s biggest bust this year.
Mutombo should learn what every other Net has already come to accept as absolute truth: every minute they get to play alongside Kidd is manna from basketball heaven. Every game they play as his teammate is one more game in which the Nets can call themselves contenders without choking over the word.
“You see what he does so much, sometimes it’s easy to take it for granted, I guess,” Nets coach Byron Scott said. “But I can tell you that the guys who play with him and are on the receiving end of his unselfishness never will. They know they’re playing with royalty.”
Better still, they’re playing with someone who really can make everything seem all right. Every day, from now until the end of the playoffs, from now until 12:01 a.m. on July 1, Nets players and Nets fans will embrace the precious present, since the future – especially a Kidd-free future – is something too frightening to ponder.
Everywhere, it seems, are reminders. Saturday night, Kidd himself flicked on the television in enough time to watch his pal Tim Duncan miss three late free throws, enabling Stephon Marbury to break the Spurs’ hearts with a last-second bank shot. It isn’t only every game the Nets win that makes their fans nervous, but every game the Spurs lose.
And with good reason. The Spurs know what the Nets know. How many players can take a sad song and make it better all by themselves? Three? Five?
We know of one for sure, and he wears No. 5 for the Nets.
For now, anyway.
GAME 1
Player Minutes Field Goals Assists Rebounds Steals Points
Kidd 38 6-10 14 6 3 14
