After Finals experience with Nets, wiser Kidd savors another shot

When he led the Nets to two straight Finals appearance in 2002 and 2003, point guard Jason Kidd was a basketball magician, keeping the NBA alive in the metropolitan area during the start of the Knicks' long collapse.

At age 38, Kidd is different now, not dominant but no less essential to the Mavericks' first Finals appearance since 2006. He has lost a step and the passes aren't as genius, but he is just as cerebral and gritty, a throwback point guard in a league lacking them.

"He has a brilliant mind," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I think his IQ makes up for any lost step."

After those two [with the Nets], I thought we were going to go on a roll in Jersey and make it three or four in a row," said Kidd, who has averaged 9.9 points, 7.7 assists and 4.5 rebounds in the playoffs. "But teams change and the game changes in a sense. So once I got traded to Dallas, I just knew at some point -- I thought it would be a lot sooner -- that I would get back to the Finals."

"[Back] then I was shooting, rebounding, I was trying to do everything," Kidd said of his Nets days. "In the sense if my team was going to win, I had to score, I had to find the open guy, defend and help rebound. Here my workload is a little smaller in the sense of scoring and rebounding. . . . The big thing is just help my teammates understand the moment and stay in the moment. That's my biggest role."

Reflecting on his two Finals trips, Kidd said, "[The first one] was just almost a blur. We were so happy to be there, and we played the Lakers. They were pretty good, so we got swept. It was a great experience of understanding what it took to get there. And for us to continue to be hungry in 2003 to get back there, that's where we really felt we had the opportunity playing the Spurs to win a championship. We came up short in six. That is fulfilling, but you also want to win that trophy, win the whole thing. So hopefully this time around we don't come up short."