Another area that was not mentioned that makes this situation even more difficult is the improving play of Barea. Would you feel comfortable with Barea? What price for Kidd would be the break-even point for you in regards to what you can get out of Barea? It’s a very screwy situation. Im a MFFL but consider myself a realist (some may consider pessimistic) when it comes to the 2010 F.A. Market. I cannot see any of those big-names choosing Dallas. The only possibility I can think is Bosh, but wouldnt we essentially be adding another Dirk? The Miami collapse’s ripple effect seems to be still going strong nearly 3 years later.

I thought the addition of Kidd was supposed to make Dirk, Terry and Howard so much better. If you look at these guys stats for this year compared to 2006-07, they are actually worse this year. Sure Dirk and Terry are scoring more, but their field goal percentage is down. Kidd was supposed to create better shots for them and theoretically make them shoot a better percentage. I just don’t understand everyone’s fascination with Kidd. I think Kobe or Lebron would be making a huge mistake if their teams sign Kidd. We better not sign him.

This decision was made at the trade deadline. Keeping Kidd’s expiring contract meant resigning him in the summer. A multi-year deal won’t matter because there aren’t enough pieces to be a 2010 player in FA, and they’re all going to be locked out in 2011 when the CBA expires.

Wes: Looking at a box score is one of the poorest ways to judge a player’s impact on Ws and Ls. For more on this, begin here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Then listen to Bill Simmons’ chat with Daryl Morey, the Rockets GM, about how Jason Kidd is very similar, in how he affects the game when he’s on the court.

This team is stuck it’s self made Hades for the next 3 season…minimum,probably longer.

Kidd would be a fool not to bolt for LA or CLE for the MLE and a ring. No viable trade pieces, no draft pics and an aging superstar leaves no hope for the future.

Realistically the Mavs window has been shut. They’ve missed a chance to build around a franchise player and will hope and pray they find another one.

Eric- good article. And I agree with you for the most part, but I was not looking at Kidd’s box score. I think the stats of the players around him are important. If Dirk, Josh and Terry all became less efficient at shooting after Kidd joined, that seems relevant to me. Certainly when the hype surrounding Kidd coming here was that he would make them more efficient and create better scoring opportunities. But they obviously do not show the defensive impact of a player. I do not know whether Kidd helps the Mavs defensively or not.

The Kidd trade was a bust. Sure the Mavs would have had the same record with Harris or Kidd. That just proves how bad this trade was. Kidd was supposed to make the Mavs a title contender. If they wouldn’t have made the trade, they would still have a young PG and two 1st round picks (at least the Mavs can feel good because the Cowboys trade for Roy Williams is worse).

I think the Mavs have to try to sign Kidd to a 3 year deal. Take Kidd away and this team isn’t all that great. I don’t know what they could get to replace him.

Ok, here are the problems I have with Sturm’s comments.
First, the understanding when we traded for Kidd was that it was a 1.5 year deal. We were supposed to win a championship “now”. That’s why we traded for him. That’s what we were “promised”. That was the deal. So the talk about “we’re losing him after only one season” is irrelevant. That was the deal. He was supposed to bring us a championship. Someone thought he was greatness incarnate and would solve all our problems. Didn’t work. Time to cut bait and move on.
Second “it will give NJ a lottery pick in 2010”. So what? What does that have to do with how the Mavs perform? Anyone with half a brain KNEW it was going to mean a lottery pick for NJ in 2010, because most people knew acquiring Kidd wasn’t going to help us, it was going to hurt us. The intelligent people anyway. You trade a young athletic PG for an old slow PG who can pass and rebound, but is a defensive liability against any of the top teams in the league. It didn’t require the genius of an Einstein to see that wasn’t the brightest move ever made. It is why our winning percentage has dropped after the trade. We went from having a 69% winning percentage and a record of 8-4 against Western conference playoff teams before Devin Harris got hurt last year (we went 2-1 vs Western conference playoff teams after Devin’s injury and before Kidd’s arrival last year). This year we have dropped 9 percentage points in our overall winning percentage to a 60% winning percentage and have a 7-13 record against the other playoff teams in the West (take out Portland and that become a horrendous 4-13-thank God for Portland!).
This leads me to my third problem: So Kidd has performed fine? In all honesty, he probably has. But we are performing worse than we were, and his performance is a downgrade at PG, not an upgrade. I would agree, if we hadn’t made such a ridiculous trade to get him. If he had been our PG all along and this was just the stage he was at in his career, sure, he’d be fine. But he’d still be done, and he is done. The problem is, he is worse than what we had before.
And fourth, we would be performing the same with Harris. What is that based on? Antoine Wright is clearly better than anything we gave up with Harris (Ager, Hassel, Fazekis (not in trade-we had to let him go), Van Horn, Diop (who we actually got back). And I would argue many of our backup players are better than they were with Harris here (Green, Hollins, Barea, Singleton). So What explains the drop in our performance? Howard hasn’t played as well? He was injured a lot last year too, before Kidd got here. With Harris as the only noticeable difference before the trade, we were performing at a MUCH higher level. We were competing for the top 2 playoff seeds. Now we’re struggling to hold onto the 7th spot and HOPE to move up to 7th. So what leads you to believe we would be performing at the same level with Harris? Even if true, so what? That only makes the point Kidd is not the answer. Which leads to my conclusion:
KIDD IS NOT THE ANSWER! We will not win with Kidd, so it’s time to tear down and start over. Re-build. Trade everyone, including Dirk and begin the rebuilding process. That’s the only chance we have to get better any time in the foreseeable future. Holding on to Dirk until he loses all his trade value will just perpetuate our mediocrity. It’s time to accept that the trade was a failure and realize we’re going to have to re-build if we EVER want to see a banner hanging from the rafters here.

Jim is right, but we should’ve been rebuilding after the Warriors loss. The Mavs like every other team in their position, the Mavs thought they could “look to next year.”

In the last 20 years, since the Pistons came back and beat the Lakers after they lost in the Finals to them the previous year, no team has lost in the Finals have came back and won the title (Lakers did but that was 11 years apart). I’d love to see Dirk retire as a Mav, but the best thing for both parties is to move on.

As for 2010, don’t count the Mavs out. The economy will more that likely be bad or worse (hopefully not)and teams won’t be able to pay for top talent. People that aren’t availiable now will be throw out on the lawn with a for sale sign.