Well until I see some official links or I hear his comments for my self,before I say to much. But anyway.. I think its going to be hard to get RJ to sign a long term deal if Kidd is gone. But on a side note its funny,once the chips are down everybody wants to jump ship. In the era of extreme free Agency & weekly trades, teams window of opportunity to keep their core unit together & chase after a championship is greatly shorten. So how long were they expecting our window to last,yes the door for our championship dreams closed kind of sudden & in the wrong fashion. But realistically our window of opportunity was closing anyway.
The Nets had 3 years where they had a very legit shot at coming away with the title,and now we have to fall back for awhile,it happens to the best of teams. But if cats was willing to stick around,it would make the period of time where we dont contend for a title alot shorter.
Perfect example the Spurs in the in the late 90's, David Robinson misses basically the whole season with back problems in 96'. And the spurs who were a 55-60 win team & championship contender became & NBA doormat for thar 96' season winning only like 20 something games, but never once did I hear there other core guys like Sean Elliot or Avery Johnson even talk about wanting to be traded. The stuck it thru ended up getting Duncan with the 1st pick in the draft,jumped back in title contention & ended up holding the trophy once jordan left during the lockout season in 98-99.
Now granted the situation is a bit different in the fact they knew they were eventually going to get D.Rob back and we are never getting K-Mart back. But when your star player misses an entire season, the 1st thing everybody thinks is he will never be the same player again. And everybody wants to rush to get off the sinking boat.But they didnt do that. And no we wont be getting a Duncan with those draft picks we got from Denver. But we might just find a player or two that is the missing part to us getting back in the thick of things.
One thing that we do have in common with that team is there problems only lasted 1 season.And Rob Thorn has went on record to say that he is expecting us to fall out of contention for only a season or 2. So the players need to give Thorn that one season or 2 window to make the team better again before they start to demand trades & decide they arent willing to sign long term deal etc. because its being proven so many times that a quick tun around is very possible. But its only possible if you keep a large part of your foundation together. and if the Nets lose both RJ & Kidd then there is no foundation for this team to build from for now & in the future. And the Nets are doomed to being the post Jordan bulls for the next 7 or 8 years. A team that gets great 1st round draft spots every year but has no direction,so its almost like the picks are wasted.
If kidd is a lost cause & he just doesnt want to come back, then the Nets need to do everything they can to keep RJ happy.Let him know that the franchise is willing to invest everything in his developement. And how do we do this? By the moves we make, if we trade kidd we trade him for parts that will help make RJ a better player like a young pg to replace kidd & grow with Jefferson, another legit wing scorer to take some of the scoring load off RJ and a legit bigman because you cant win in this league without one. We might not be able to solve all those problem with just one trade of an aging kidd but if we can solve at least 2 out of the 3,then I think that goes for something to prove we are still willing to put the parts in place to win in the near future.