The morning after his NY Post colleague Tim Bontemps detailed the stunning developments that have Nets head coach Jason Kidd most likely leaving to take over Milwaukee’s basketball operations — after attempts to torpedo Billy King apparently came up short —the Post’s Mike Vacarro has a laundry list of ethical issues concerning Kidd to raise, but not before declaring Brooklyn’s better off without him (“their chances improve exponentially if they’re coached by any of a dozen legit candidates”)
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.