Do Brooklyn Nets Regret Trading Jason Kidd?

As they make their way into Milwaukee to take on Jason Kidd and his surprising 28-23 Bucks and on Monday night, no one doubts there will be an elephant in the room for both he and the Brooklyn Nets.

And the awkwardness about how things ended last summer between Kidd and the organization it seemed he loved to disappoint isn’t the only thing that won’t be spoken about out loud.

With the well-ahead-of-schedule success Kidd has encountered leading a young Bucks group in only his second season as an NBA coach, and the unexpected first-half struggles the 21-29 Nets have faced under veteran coach Lionel Hollins, many of those observing tonight will inevitably have a question come to mind.

Did Brooklyn make the correct decision in trading away Kidd over the offseason and starting over just one season after naming him their head coach?

From a record comparison standpoint between the Bucks and Nets this season, as well as the Nets of this year and last, the easy answer would seem to be no. However, the big-picture would say otherwise.

Because to the Nets, Kidd just turned out to be the crazy ex-girlfriend you regret ever giving a second chance. But even though that impossibly frustrating ex appears to be doing great with someone else and it’s difficult to watch, Brooklyn knows that going their separate ways was the decision that needed to be made in the long run.

You see, when faced with having to choose between the authority of General Manager Billy King and Kidd’s obnoxious demands of becoming his superior and assuming control of player personnel, the Nets were really left with no other choice.

Not even the great Phil Jackson, whose 11 championship rings are the most all-time amongst NBA coaches, sought to overthrow the front offices of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers from his coaching seat.

Kidd had simply become tyrannical, and giving such a personality extended power would have only been a recipe for a much bigger disaster. Believe it or not, dealing him to the Midwest was actually the most reserved method in which Brooklyn could handle this childish drama.

After essentially getting former coach Byron Scott canned following two recent appearances to the Finals in 2002 and 2003, as well as watching him eventually force his way out of the organization in New Jersey back in 2008, Kidd would again refuse to quit fighting with the Nets until he had the final say in their decision-making process.

Clearly Kidd had not changed even with a new decade upon us. Once again, he essentially held the franchise that made him a star and a hero as a player, the soon-to-be savior as a coach, at gunpoint and left them with no choice.

So despite things looking much brighter for Milwaukee than Brooklyn in this first season following The Breakup: Part II between Kidd and the Nets, there shouldn’t be any second-guessing concerning the course of action King and owner Mikhail Prokhorov ultimately took.

Even if the Nets are left on the outside looking in and Kidd achieves what seemed as impossible – yet possible – as Drake missing the Grammys over the weekend, and takes the previously disastrous Bucks team he inherited to the postseason a few months from now, there will still be no doubt that the Nets made the right decision.

Especially because they have great faith in Hollins given his track record in this league, which includes taking the Memphis Grizzlies to the Western Conference finals a little less than two years ago.

After all was said and done, this was never a race between Brooklyn and Milwaukee for who could be happier quicker. It was about the Nets finding long-term success without the overly melodramatic Jason Kidd at the helm.