The Jason Kidd Trade Has Lost Its Luster

I said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm not sure how much this Jason Kidd trade does for the Dallas Mavericks.

In their first 7 games with Jason Kidd on the squad, the team went 4-3, with all of their four wins coming against sub-.500 basketball teams that have no chance of making the playoffs, except for the Chicago Bulls, who may have an outside chance of making the post-season... in the Eastern Conference.

As you can imagine, their 3 losses were against teams that are contending. The first one came against the New Orleans Hornets, and Chris Paul made it seem as if he was the 2001 version of Jason Kidd, while the present-day Jason Kidd was a slower version of himself. Paul put up 31 points, 5 rebounds, 11 assists, and 9 steals (of which the majority of those were off of Jason Kidd), and he did it in a practical route of the Mavericks. Of all the teams that are going to make the playoffs, the Hornets are supposed to be the youngest and most inexperienced one, and yet on that night, it looked like the Mavericks would have trouble with them if they matched up in the post season.

The Mavericks also lost to the Los Angeles Lakers. Now, I'll give them credit, it was an overtime loss, and Josh Howard had one of his worse games. However, in that game, you could really see the ill effects of the Kidd trade. First of all, with Erick Dampier as the lone experienced big man on the team, Dirk Nowitzki was forced to cover Pau Gasol on one too many occasions. And to say the least, he didn't look good doing it. In addition to that, with Dirk trying to guard Gasol, other players like Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse, and Devean George were left on Lamar Odom who has a serious height advantage on them. So you can judge that match up for yourself, but the trickle down effect of that was having Jason Kidd on Kobe Bryant, or even Stackhouse or Terry trying to guard him.

End result?

Kobe Bryant scored 52 points and forced the Mavericks to play zone defense... in overtime!

Then of course there was the match up the Mavericks had with the San Antonio Spurs. It was a very close game; one that could have went either way. But in the end, the game can't both ways, and this time it would end in favor of the Spurs by 3 points. There were times where Tony Parker just made Kidd look every bit of his 34 years of age; he was just that much quicker than Kidd was. Naturally, Kidd got the better of Parker on the other end, dropping 10 dimes on Mr. Longoria.

But Devin Harris, the point guard traded away, can be offensively productive against Parker. He is every bit as quick as Parker is, and he has scored on him in games and playoff series in the past. Kidd's arrival was supposed to help in defending Parker, but that was not very apparent that night. Just as it wasn't apparent when he was matched up against Kobe.

That said, they still only lost by three. But is that acceptable? Afterall, the Mavericks have played the Spurs close before, and they have even beaten them in the playoffs. Kidd's arrival was supposed to put them over the top.

Yet that is not the case at all, as the Mavericks are 4-0 against bad teams and 0-3 against likely playoff opponents since Kidd arrived. They could have done that without Kidd. Heck, they have done that without Kidd. And they have done better than that without him, as well.

However, nothing gave more credence to my point- that the Kidd trade may be no better than treading water- than in the final seconds of that game against the Spurs, with the Mavericks only down by 1-point, Mavericks Coach Avery Johnson elected to leave Jason Kidd on the bench. Here you have a coach who clamored about Jason Kidd for over a month, and he even said that Kidd would be a playmaker in the clutch. Yet Coach Johnson concocted a theory in his head where he determined that the best chance the Mavericks had to win this one possession game was to put Jason Kidd- the player they traded away two quality players and millions of dollars in cash for - on the bench watching from the sidelines.

If that doesn't speak to the ambiguity of the trade, I don't know what does.