The Mavs are better, but ...

Dallas Morning News sports writer Tim Cowlishaw has a column in today's paper that begins: "I don't understand how anyone can watch the Mavericks play their last eight games and think the team was better off before the Jason Kidd trade."

I swear, Tim Cowlishaw just doesn't get it.

Here is the same guy who keeps campaigning for a college football playoff system without ever realizing why there won't ever be one. He thinks because he feels that a playoff is the right thing to do then it should be done without even considering the notion that college presidents and athletic directors are never going to approve a plan that puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

Now he's defending the Jason Kidd trade on the grounds that the trade makes the Mavericks a better team. Sorry, Tim, but again you're on the wrong side of the trade argument.

Sure the trade makes the Mavs a better team right now, but it does not make them good enough to win an NBA championship or even a Western Conference championship. In fact, I question whether the Mavs can make it out of the first round of the playoffs again this year. That's not so much a criticism of the Mavericks as it is a comment on how the other teams in the conference have improved over last year or, as in the case of the Lakers, over the course of this season.

So my question still is -- why surrender your future in a trade that still doesn't make you competitive for a title? We gave up a point guard in Devin Harris that, admittedly, will never achieve Kidd's status, especially if was going to continue to be coached by Avery Johnson, but surrounded by the talent that the Mavs had was still going to be on the level of the Spurs' Tony Parker. And what the Spurs have achieved with Tony Parker is certainly more than the Mavericks have achieved. But the main problem is we also gave up draft picks in the Kidd trade that are going to come back to haunt the Mavs.

I remember at the beginning of this season, when Kobe Bryant was grumbling about staying in Los Angeles, that the idea of a trade in which we gave up both Devin Harris and Josh Howard for Kobe was discussed. Then all the pundits were saying "No, both Devin and Josh is too high a price to pay." If you saw that Laker game Sunday afternoon, try to imagine a team with both Kobe and Dirk Nowitzki playing for it. We'd be talking about that Maverick team as being on the same level as Boston and Detroit, right now the two best teams in the NBA. Now that would have been a trade for an NBA title.

The Kidd trade, however, wasn't. So that was why I didn't like it then. That's why I don't like it now. After the Lakers swung their big deal for Pau Gasol the idea that the Mavs had a shot for an NBA title this season went right out the window. But I had to figure that we had a brighter immediate future than either Phoenix or San Antonio, that a couple of solid drafts could move us up a level over Utah and New Orleans and two or three years down the pike we could be contenders. Now, after the Kidd trade, the truth is the Mavs' one shot was against Miami a couple of years ago and we blew that one because Johnson doesn't know how to come up with defenses to shut down players like Dwayne Wade or Kobe Bryant.

The next time anyone will be talking about the Mavs and an NBA title will be long after Nowitzki, Howard et al have retired. That is, unless Mark Cuban pulls some rabbit out of a hat that brings someone like Kevin Durant or even Kansas State's Michael Beasley to the Mavs, but, after the financial beating he took on the Kidd trade, I'm not sure he wants to spend the money it would take.

So, yeah, the Kidd trade made us a little better this season. The problem is it also started us on a rapid ride down the Western Conference, sending us to a lottery position without any draft picks.

I will say this, however. The future of the New Jersey Nets looks pretty good right now, thanks to the Mavericks.