Kidd Returns to Nets Bench Sunday in Orlando

The over-hyped Brooklyn Nets are 1-1 without Jason Kidd so far this year.

 If I told you that the Nets one win would be against the Heat, you probably would have thought I was nuts, but that is the case. Brooklyn narrowly escaped the Heat 101-100, Friday night to get back to .500 before their head coach returns to the sidelines.

Kidd served a two game suspension to start the year due to a DUI he had last season while still playing for the New York Knicks. Now the Nets and their fans finally get a chance to see Kidd in action from the bench as head coach.

This is going to get interesting. What kind of respect Kidd garners from his players over the course of 80 games is going to be fascinating. There will be ebbs and flows throughout the season, and already we got a glimpse of Kidd butting heads with one of his stars when he took on Kevin Garnett in a back-n-forth on playing time.

Will Kidd be able to take losing? Can he handle a 3-4 game losing streak when it pops up? Can he manage a group of players who are mostly his peers? These are questions that are going to get answered, especially in the first half of the season. Right now the Nets are 1-1, way too early to tell what this team will be in 2013-14.

Through two games we saw the good Nets against Miami, a team that has enough weapons to match those of the Heat, and we saw the bad Nets that resembled the Nets of last year, where Deron Williams misses a million shots, as he did against Cleveland on Opening Night.

This will be fun, and all of the attention will be on Kidd and how he coaches on Sunday night in Orlando. For Kidd, maybe the best thing for him -- in his coaching debut -- is to coach on a Sunday evening in Orlando when the majority of the country will be fixated on football. In short he can sneak under the radar for a few days.

But soon enough, whatever the Nets record is, whether it be well over .500 or trickling under .500, the lights will find Jason Kidd -- and then we will know what kind of coach Coach Kidd really is.

Comments