Harris' game has grown since leaving Dallas

Looking back now, Devin Harris says he shouldn’t have been surprised. These were the Dallas Mavericks. Mark Cuban’s Mavericks. Steve Nash wasn’t re-signed. Michael Finley was waived. Nick Van Exel was traded. Even Harris himself landed in Big D because the Mavericks shipped out Antawn Jamison.

Cuban ran one of the best franchises in the NBA, and, unlike many of his fellow owners, he wasn’t afraid to gamble. He had given Harris the security of a five-year, $42 million contract extension, but, really, what did that mean?

“If you look at the history of the Mavericks, cores don’t last very long,” Harris said. “I think we were pretty much the longest core that lasted. It was bound to come to an end at some point.”

Harris didn’t sound the least bit remorseful. Yes, he and the Mavericks had something special, falling just two wins shy of winning the championship in 2006. But his career has flourished since the Mavericks traded him to the New Jersey Nets for Jason Kidd in February. Nets coach Lawrence Frank has given Harris freedom and he looks ready to run with it to the All-Star Game, averaging 25.3 points and 6.4 assists. In consecutive days, he hung 34 points on the Utah Jazz and their Olympic point guard, Deron Williams, then lit up Nash and the Phoenix Suns for a career-high 47.

Thanks largely to Harris’ contributions, the Nets have been the surprise of the season. Even after Tuesday's letdown loss to the Washington Wizards, they own a 9-8 record in what was widely expected to be a rebuilding campaign. Harris’ former team also is 9-8.

For the Mavericks, this season began as a referendum on Avery Johnson’s coaching. Now it may forever be judged on the play of Harris and Kidd.

“Obviously they got what they wanted and I’m happy here in New Jersey,” Harris says. “We’ll just move forward from here.”

Cuban, like Harris, thinks the trade has the potential to be “win-win” for both teams. And he says he’d still make it now. If that sounds stubborn, it is. The Mavericks gave up a truckload for Kidd, not to mention the additional $11 million in payroll and luxury tax Cuban had to shoulder once the deal was complete. Even then, surrendering the two first-round draft picks seemed overly generous.

The Mavericks’ biggest mistake wasn’t overestimating Kidd. It was overestimating themselves. They traded for Kidd because they thought he was the missing piece to their championship puzzle. “If you have a chance to get Jason Kidd, and you think he’s going to put you over the top,” one scout said, “you have to get him.”

In truth, though, the Mavericks weren’t going to win a title last season with or without Kidd. Not with the Boston Celtics loaded and hungry. And not with Pau Gasol having instantly transformed the Los Angeles Lakers into the Western Conference’s most intimidating power.

Andrew Bynum and Trevor Ariza have since added to the Lakers’ talent and depth, making a title chase by anyone else in the West seem even more futile this season. Still, David Stern insists on scheduling 82 games for his teams and injuries can always happen. So the Mavericks will plug ahead, and if there’s a reason why they remain hesitant to label this trade a failure, it’s Kidd himself. This season, he’s given them just about everything they could have hoped.

Kidd never seemed comfortable playing under Johnson, and that was evident three games after his arrival when he spent more time looking toward the sideline than running the break. Johnson was a controlling coach and without the benefit of a training camp, he wasn’t going to completely hand the reins to his offense to a new point guard, even if that point guard is headed for the Hall of Fame.

“Avery had good stuff,” said Mario Elie, an assistant under Johnson who has remained on the staff of new Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle. “It took him to the Finals, got him Coach of the Year and got him into the All-Star Game. So why change something?”

Elie admits Kidd is in a “good place” now with Carlisle, who has given him greater freedom, which raises another question: Why make the trade last season if Johnson wasn’t going to change?

Johnson publicly applauded Kidd’s arrival and Mavericks sources insist he was on board with the deal. Johnson, however, has since privately told friends he didn’t want to do the trade. Before losing Harris to a left ankle injury late in January, the Mavericks had a 30-13 record. Johnson, according to one source close to him, had already expressed enough reservations about an earlier proposal for Kidd that some members of his staff were surprised to see the trade talks rekindle the week before the All-Star break.

Still, it seems unlikely, even for Cuban, that the Mavericks would take on a player that their head coach was adamantly opposed to adding. Maybe Johnson had to be talked into the trade. Maybe he thought the Mavericks gave up too much for him. Call it revisionist history. What matters is that Johnson and Kidd never struck a balance that allowed them to succeed.

“It was tough,” said Dirk Nowitzki, who supported the trade. “[Kidd] was never comfortable. He came in on the fly and we had our sets and sometimes you saw him thinking out there. In a game-time situation you don’t want to think, you want to rely on your instincts and just go out there and play.

“I think that’s what he’s getting back to doing, getting the ball on the break and running, making teammates better. He’s fun to play with.”

The Mavericks have opened the floor under Carlisle. Kidd also has benefited from a full training camp with his teammates. He’s been a triple-double threat on most nights, averaging 10.2 points, 8.6 assists and 7.3 rebounds, while also serving as the team’s most accurate 3-point threat.

“His endless supply of energy is amazing to me,” Carlisle said. “At the stage of his career that he’s able to have the motor going the way it goes is phenomenal.”

How long the motor runs remains to be seen. Kidd turns 36 before the end of the season, and he spent the summer playing for the Olympic team. Even before the start of last season, scouts say Kidd was getting exposed defensively by quicker point guards. His performance against Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets didn’t change that perception. Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs even celebrated Kidd’s arrival in Dallas because it meant Harris, always a tough matchup, was moving to the Eastern Conference.

When the Mavericks landed Kidd last February, Johnson publicly trumpeted the trade, saying the team needed someone who “knows how to finish games.” In the irony of ironies, Harris is averaging 9.2 points in the fourth quarter this season, second only to Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat.

“He’s a guy who is outperforming his contract,” one Western Conference GM said of the 25-year-old Harris. “And these days, it’s hard to find guys like that.”

Mavericks officials insist they needed more of a pure point guard like Kidd than a scorer, and there's evidence to support that. A month into last season, Johnson had already taken back the play-calling duties from Harris, who averaged barely 30 minutes a game.

After a tough start, the Mavericks have won seven of their past eight games with the lone loss coming when they wasted an 11-point lead in the second half against the Lakers. They hope to build on that momentum after beginning a seven-game homestand Tuesday with a dramatic comeback over the Los Angeles Clippers. Josh Howard should return soon and, in this season’s muddled West, all you need is a two-game winning streak to surge into second place.

The problem is the Mavericks didn’t trade part of their future for second place. They’ve already done second. Kidd is supposed to take them to the top.

And if he doesn’t?

There’s a good chance he’ll be gone, too. Take it from Harris or Nash. Perhaps these Mavericks are forever cursed to chase their point guards past.