Age, Injuries Have Cut Into Kidd’s Effectiveness

The Nets will be the first to admit he hasn’t been himself lately. In the first three games of the New Jersey-Miami series, he has mostly stumbled around, feeling out of place, sometimes looking more uncomfortable than frumpy Heat Coach Stan Van Gundy in a suit.

But the refreshing change of scenery could do him good. He’ll most likely play one more game in New Jersey, among his people, on his home turf, and that might finally get him going.

But enough about Newark born-and-raised Shaquille O’Neal.

The real missing person in this playoff series is Jason Kidd, whose ineffective play has been a lot more alarming for his team than Shaq for his, because soon enough, a left thigh bruise will heal and Shaq will be back. But can anyone, especially the Nets, state with any conviction that the Kidd they have now will ever be the Kidd they had before?

Well, this much we know for sure. There is no series. Not anymore. The Nets are down a bad 3-0, not a closely contested 3-0, and you figure Shaq will eventually get around to giving them the boot as soon as he can swing his left leg. Therefore, the true focus for the Nets is less on the short term and whether they can recover a playoff series, and more on the long term and whether they can recover a franchise player.

It was just a few short years ago when, on most nights, Kidd was the best player on the floor. No question. Now there are nights when he isn’t even the best on his team. The difference between then and now is knee surgery, which in retrospect probably ripped the Nets off more than Alonzo Mourning did.

Since then, Kidd has gone from an MVP contender who occasionally mailed in a pretty good game, into a pretty good player who occasionally brings an MVP game.

Then there are times when Kidd makes little or nothing happen. Take Game 1 against the Heat, or if you need further proof, Game 2.

He said he needed to be more aggressive. Well, when Game 1 unraveled for the Nets for good in the first half, Kidd shot only two for 10, didn’t place the ball in the hands of his teammates enough and his defense was shredded by Damon Jones, a role player who dropped 30 points. In Game 1, Kidd had only five assists and no rhythm on his shot, getting only 10 points, none that mattered.

Normally, you could pass Games 1 and 2 off as a lapse, a temporary setback by a star who usually follows up with a string of big nights.

Yeah, normally. But when’s the last time anything was normal for Kidd? There are stages in the career of every athlete, even the great ones, when they begin to lose a little. When they’re no longer what they used to be. You wonder if Kidd reached that threshold last off-season, when surgery did what most opposing point guards couldn’t: slow him down.

Only time, and a healthy season from beginning to end, will tell us for sure. Meanwhile, the Nets must cope with a leader who doesn’t carry his team the way he did in the back-to-back NBA Finals years, who too often leaves the big shots and big moments to Vince Carter.

Before the injury, Kidd raised his game in the playoffs. He almost averaged a triple-double in 2002 and followed up with another strong all-around performance in ’03. Both times, he led the Nets in every meaningful category and pushed them well into June.

Then he came up lame last season, limped into the playoffs, had nothing left at the end of the Nets’ series with the Pistons and his scoring average dropped from 20.1 the previous playoffs to 12.6.

Kidd always had a burst of quickness handy for the half-court, when he broke down the defense and softly placed the ball into someone’s hands for an easy layup. And he could depend on his legs to keep him on his toes on defense. Today, those 32-year-old legs are either still recovering from the layoff after surgery, or they’ve lost something.

Obviously, you won’t find anyone on the Nets to support any Kidd-has-lost-a-step theory. He means that much to them and to the franchise. He still demands that much respect. Richard Jefferson calls any such talk “ridiculous.”

Lawrence Frank, Kidd’s hand-picked coach, expects big things from him today in Game 4. And Rod Thorn reiterated how Kidd cares nothing about numbers and never did, that Kidd “is all about winning.”

It’s time for Kidd to confirm what he’s about.