New Jersey travels to Minnesota tonight, but if PG Jason Kidd had his druthers, he’d be toiling elsewhere reports the Bergen Record’s Dave D’Alessandro.
Kidd’s agent Jeff Schwartz, recently asked Nets president Rod Thorn to move his client to a contender before next month’s trade deadline, according to several league officials who cannot be identified without betraying confidences.Thorn would not comment when asked about the request, but it is becoming increasingly clear he may not be able to grant it even if he wanted to.
The primary reason: The Nets are extremely vulnerable now, and they have learned that they cannot get anything close to resembling a fair deal for a 34-year-old point guard making $20 million, even if he is still capable of performing on a Hall of Fame level.
Thorn cannot trade Vince Carter, because the 31-year-old former All-Star has just signed a long-term deal valued at $62 million and is currently underperforming. Thorn also cannot afford to be without Richard Jefferson, who will be part of the nucleus going into the post-Kidd transition stage. And the team cannot get a fair return for its young front-court players, who are on their rookie contracts.
That leaves Kidd as the most viable trading chip, even though it would probably result in an irrevocable shift in philosophy, style and long-term planning.
One could easily argue, however, that any team with an eight-game losing streak — one that is two losses away from falling into 13th place in the Eastern Conference is due for some kind of demolition anyway.
Dakota Wizards F / blogging maven Rod Benson is averaging a robust 12 rebounds per game in the D League, and as a result, he tells his Yahoo readers “I’ve got guys coming at me from every angle now.”
I’ve got people calling me who I never gave my number to. I’ve got people blowin’ up my MySpace page and my Facebook. I even get AOL Instant Messages from guys talking about jobs. I got an email from a guy who asked me if I had an agent. I was like, “Dog, of course I do. C’mon now.” My teammate even got a phone call from HIS agent. His agent first asked how he was and if he was ready to leave or if he was content with the D-League. Then the guy said that he had a job for me, Rod Benson, for $50,000 a month and for my teammate to tell me. My teammate pretended that his phone was breaking up, just to ask this guy to repeat himself. The agent continued to ask about me. My teammate fired him the next day.
The situation I’m in actually reminds me more of the girl who got hot after high school, but still stayed with the same boyfriend she met when she was 14. Think of Jules and Seth from “Superbad” and how much more awkward it will be for them when they get to college. Every guy would come at Jules at the college level. That’s what’s happening to me right now. Every grimy agent in the world thinks they can convince me to take a deal with them.
Hey, watch the replay for yourself a few times — short of delivering a full-on body check to Hedo Turkoglu, Paul Pierce did everything possible to deny the Turkish forward a game winning trey as time expired in Orlando’s 96-93 win over Boston. For much of the season, I’ve presumed claiming the Eastern Conference title would be a formality for the Big 3, but the Magic duo of Dwight Howard and Turkoglu have been fantastic night after night. Of course, after seeing ABC’s brief clip of Howard being tutored by Patrick Ewing, we need to remember that Eddy Curry requires no such mentoring. Either that, or there’s no Scores in Orlando.