It is hard to define just how overrated Jason Kidd is at this point in his career, mostly because we are still forced to view him through the Vaseline smeared lens of the typical NBA telecast, replete with fawning analysis by Craig Sager. Clearly, he was once great, and he still has some legs left. But like fellow Bay Area Baller and sure-fire HoFer Gary Payton, he is clearly intent on playing long enough to tarnish his reputation by plying his diminishing skills to ever-less effect as a for-hire stop-gap point guard solution for teams on the cusp. But he is simply not the player he was 5 or 6 years ago.
The real problem in getting to the heart of why the myth of J.Kidd (and Vince Carter, just to name two examples who happen to be teammates) cannot be punctured: September 11th.
By that I mean, Americans have existed in this bizarre twilight for nearly all of the Ought's: the Bush presidency seems to have lasted entire lifetimes, while the election of 2000 seems like a recent travesty. And while this may sound like liberal bitterness, I offer the Bush examples up only because the time warp we now experience has an inextricable political dimension, and it is my assertion that this all stems from the simply unbelievable tragedy of 9/11.
I won't bother to discuss how/why we can't let ourselves heal. Instead, I merely offer this explanation up as a way to explain Jason Kidd, as in, how his career is sustained on the notion that he is ostensibly the player of old, the player that took the Nets to the Finals in 2002 (or whenever that was...one of the problems with the Great American Time Warp is that everything is decontextualized nowadays, such that I really don't have any idea exactly when it was that the Nets made the Finals, but I remember that it did happen...didn't it?).
The point is, tying the NBA back to our 43rd President, the ponderous state of American politics, even now ahead of such an exciting and consuming political campaign, is moored by the social underpinnings of our disbelief. Obviously, this is manifest in all social institutions. For instance, it is stunning to think that Kobe somehow feels like both a grizzled veteran and the future of the Lakers. Certainly, this is partially do to with his age (he's still only 29), but it is also, I contend, partially - perhaps mostly - do to our collective inability to move forward.
And the NBA is replete with examples of this inability to recognize the passage of time. Take the Knicks. Patrick Ewing left New York in 2000, and they have stunk up the joint ever since, but somehow the realization that they really, truly suck didn't set in until last season.
The inability to acknowledge this passage of time holds true for AI as well, who as hard to believe as it may be, entered the league in 1996 (same as Kobe). The difference between AI and JKidd, though, is that the Answer is still, well, the answer to the relevant question "who is the best pure scorer in the league?" Or, if the Answer isn't the answer, at least he's still part of the discussion.
Kidd's question? "Who is the best PG in the League." Does Kidd make your list? How would he rate if you changed the question to "who is the best PG in the East?" I'll give him this, I DO still think he has Best PG along the Amtrak corridor sewn up.
Well. The reason for this whole post, of course, is that as I sit here watching Cavs-Blazers, we are getting a lot of talk about a proposed JKidd trade, announced at halftime. So what to make of all this trade talk? I don't know; I'm just an unfrozen caveman law student. But I do know this: I've erased all my previous posts, because they all sucked. I like this one so far though. Purposeful, it is, and filled with good words, hard words like "ostensibly."
Here's a question I won't dwell on now, but the proposed trade involved some of these Trailblazers. So my question is, do you think they were told about this at all during halftime? Not by the coaches clearly, but do you think one of these dudes could have had one of his boys text him or something? How awkward would that be? And for the record, I've always been a big fan of Georgia Tech point guards, so I wouldn't trade Jarret Jack, whose name is being bandied about. Unless I thought I could get Matt Causey in next year's draft (he's a former Hoya to boot. Glorious).
POSTSCRIPT: I think I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that an old point guard isn't quite the same thing as an old power forward. I understand this as well as you do, but this is the NBA we are talking about, and youth will be served. That is the irresistible force, and Kidd is not the immovable object he once was.
