BOSTON — It was more than a decade ago that Jason Kidd was the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets.
At the time, he was a rookie on the sideline, struggling to manage a disgruntled point guard and a couple of aging Hall of Famers who had been transferred from Boston.
Kid had a lot to learn.
And he did just that over the years.
That’s why he’s coaching the Mavericks to the NBA Finals for the third time in his coaching career.
But instincts don’t need to be learned; they are instincts.
And Kidd is instinctively tactical and calculating, just as he was on the field.
Kidd was never the most athletic player, but he found angles.
So, late in the 13th game, the former point guard told teammate Tyshawn Taylor, “Hit me.” Taylor followed the order by bumping into his coach, and Kidd’s soda cup spilled onto the court at Barclays Center. Suddenly there was a mess to clean up. You can’t play on a wet wooden floor. The game stopped. Kidd used the time to talk his team through the final nine seconds, down two. They needed a timeout, but they didn’t have one. And they found an angle.
Fast forward to Saturday, and Kidd was ranting about the NBA Finals.
When asked about his defense against Jaylen Brown, the Mavs coach made a point of calling him Boston’s best player twice.
“Jalen is their best player,” Kidd said. “So you look at what he does defensively. He beats Luka. [Doncic] Full court. Got to the free throw line. He did it all. That’s what the best players do. He plays both sides of the ball, he runs a high percentage offense. And he did it all throughout the playoffs. He was the Eastern Conference Finals MVP. And he picked up right where he left off.”
This was no coincidence.
There has long been debate about the pecking order of the Celtics’ two best players, but if anyone is No. 1, it’s Jayson Tatum.
Not Brown. Tatum was named to the All-NBA First Team this season.
Brown didn’t even make the third team.
But the debate recently came back to national attention after Brown was named Most Valuable Player of the Eastern Conference Finals.
It was a rebuke to Tatum, whose rise to stardom was most crippled by his failure when it mattered most: He shot just 36.7 percent from the field in the NBA Finals two years ago and averaged fewer points than Brown.
Tatum was similarly inefficient in Game 1, scoring just 16 points on just 6-of-16 shooting.
But he was picked up by Brown and Kristaps Porzingis.
Kidd was wise enough to say Saturday that Brown was the conference finals MVP.
He knows what he’s doing.
Why get your best players to think about anything other than the success of their team?
It creates discord. Jealousy among teammates is never productive.
Tatum understands what’s going on.
This is a mind game. Now everyone will be talking about Tatum vs. Brown, not how Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic struggled in Game 1.
“People try to put a rift between us,” Tatum said. “I think that’s a smart thing to do, and I think that’s a smart thing to try to do.”
“We’ve been in this position for years, trying to split us apart and say one should be traded or one is better than the other, so this is not the first time this has happened to us.”
“We’ve talked about it before, we’ve had to deal with it for a long time, actually,” Tatum said when asked how he and Brown have dealt with the “wedge” offense. “I think it’s just part of us maturing as guys. Coming into this league very young and basically having to deal with all the ups and downs of the success we’ve had. There’s been some good and some bad that comes with that.”
“We’re not the first duo to go through that process and we won’t be the last, so we just have to figure out that side of it and keep the main thing the main thing and focus on the job at hand.”
That’s correct.
Brown had a similar reaction after hearing Kidd’s comments, saying, “It’s a team game and everyone has their own opinion.”
But there’s no harm in trying something different.
Maybe Tatum will have the ball late in Game 2 on Sunday and try to beat a double team rather than pass to an open teammate.
Or maybe he takes a contested fadeaway three-point shot on a key possession because he needs to be the hero.
In the end, the Mavericks looked underpowered in Game 1 and looked more like a team closer to being swept than hoisting the trophy.
Tough problems call for creative solutions.
Like spilling soda on the floor.
That tactic didn’t work in 2013, as his flashy plan fell flat and the Nets ended up losing.
Let’s see if his latest move makes a difference.
