After eventful summer, Mavs' Kidd ready for another shot

Drive for show and putt for dough. That's the old golf axiom.

Jason Kidd had just come off Edgewood Golf course, having played in a scramble that leads up to this weekend's American Century Championship (Saturday and Sunday, NBC, 3-6 p.m. ET) in Lake Tahoe, Nev.

"That was the problem, right there on the green," he said. "We had our good shots. But we didn't make enough of them at the right time."

Just like the Mavericks in the playoffs.

Kidd's Mavericks went into the postseason on a roll, with the second seed in the Western Conference, and were promptly rolled right out by No. 7 seeded San Antonio. "We ran into a hot team at the wrong time," Kidd said. "They took most of the year to find themselves, but they really came together just when the playoffs started.

"The truth is I thought we had a team that was good enough to make a good run in the playoffs and contend for the championship. Actually, I still feel that way now. I like our team. I like what (owner) Mark (Cuban) and (president and general manager) Donnie (Nelson) have done."

Since their ouster, the Mavs made a Draft night deal with Memphis to get shooting guard Dominique Jones. They sent Erick Dampier, Eduardo Najera and Matt Carroll to Charlotte for a pair of big men in Tyson Chandler and Alexis Ajinca. But foremost, what they did was kept free agent Dirk Nowitzki in the fold with a four-year, $80 million contract.

"Of course, the whole summer was all about Dirk," Kidd said. "I was hopeful and pretty confident that what he wanted all along was to come back and keep playing where he's been his whole career and where we all still have goals. But when you become a free agent and you're finally out there and you have a chance to better yourself, you do owe it to yourself to see the other possibilities. So nothing is ever certain. There are some things you just can't foresee."

Tops among them: That headline-grabbing, ESPN-special-making move by LeBron James from Cleveland to Miami.

"I wasn't expecting it," Kidd said. "But you can definitely see why he would do it and why the other guys (Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh) would be there with him. Give those guys credit. They put together a plan and they executed it."

Kidd is not among the group that views James as conceding anything about his own abilities by trying to achieve collectively what he couldn't as the lone big-time star in Cleveland.

"From the time you start playing basketball, you're always trying to get yourself onto the best team. The more good players the better. If they're great players, better still.

"You don't even talk about a guy's legacy when he's in the middle of his career. You wait for him to get to the end of the line and then you evaluate that. If LeBron gets to the end of his career and this move has produced a championship or a bunch of championships, that's how he'll be judged -- as a key player on a championship team."

At the same time, Kidd isn't so quick to hand over the Larry O'Brien Trophy and a beach full of championships to the Supreme Team.

"Basketball is a crazy game," he said. "There are a lot of things that go into winning and losing and putting together a championship team. There have been so-called powerhouse teams in the past that have come up short and never won.

"There's no question that those guys have gotten themselves a lot of attention, deservedly so because of their track records. But I don't think all of the other players, all the rest of the teams, are necessarily pointing next season as Miami as the team to really get up for, as the team to beat. You have to look first at the Lakers. They're the two-time champs. I think if there's a game on the schedule that you can be sure that every team in the league is definitely going to be up for, it's the Lakers. No matter what's happened in Miami this summer, that's still the team to beat."

With James, Wade and Bosh following on the heels of the Boston threesome of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen and the San Antonio trio of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, threes are all the rage these days. Kidd, of course, was part of the Kenyon Martin, Richard Jefferson New Jersey threesome that went to the Finals in 2002 and 2003.

"More players, more possibilities always means more potential," he said. "But I don't really see a comparable three on the Lakers and look where they are. You know, sometimes you can have the best player and that's enough.

"That's why the whole summer for our team was about Dirk. I was as disappointed as anybody with the way our season ended. But now that he's back, I still like what we've got and think we're good enough."

Kidd the player, like Kidd the golfer, is ready to put the ball back on the tee and take another swing.

Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter.

The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.