If you watched the second half of the Dallas Mavericks' regular season, one thing was readily apparent. The Jason Kidd trade was a disaster of epic proportions.

In retrospect, it was even worse than the Phoenix deal. Phoenix gave up a disgruntled star who wasn't going to be returning to the team anyway and a never used bench player. Dallas, on the other hand, gave away a 25-year-old point guard, a shot-blocking center, and two draft picks for a 35-year-old washed up vet. Even worse, Harris was a bargain at just over $9 million a year, while Kidd is locked in for $20 million per. In other words, the Mavericks completely mortgaged their future on the Kidd deal.

The question is who's to blame? When Avery was fired, I speculated that he had nothing to do with the Kidd deal. Avery's too smart of a guy to swap a young player like Harris for Kidd. Also, Avery was a point guard himself, so he knows Kidd is at the end of the line.

I said it was likely Cuban who pulled the trigger on this one, and guess what, it sounds like that's what happened.

Johnson gave his final thoughts on the deal after being fired to NBA.com, and it's pretty damning.

I said I’ve got to get this boy to a point where he can be a scorer first and pass some. We got him to a point, like I told you guys before, we were knocking on the door with this young man making the All-Star team. He was going to be an 18-and-8 player. I invested a significant amount of time with him and, again, he was injured and a lot of things were happening around the NBA, and like I said, if we can just hold on a little while, we’ve got the best record against the West.

I think we were second or third in the Western Conference at that point and we were going to play the Western Conference quite a bit after the All-Star break. The team was changed and we never really got back on track.

So, in other words, Johnson didn't agree with the deal at all.

As I've said before, I blame Cuban entirely for this. He ignored Johnson's objections to the deal and gave up the Mavericks future in the process. So in that sense, it isn't all that shocking that Johnson was fired anymore. He clearly didn't agree with Cuban, and even though he was right, it's not Cuban is going to fire himself. He's too damn arrogant to do that, let alone even admit he messed up big time.

What's amazing is that Cuban is now totally responsible, in my mind, for not only killing the future of the Mavericks, but also for firing one of the better coaches in the league. If the Mavericks were the New York Yankees, we'd never here the end of how stupid those two decisions were.

Cuban really is officially the George Steinbrenner of the NBA now. Except for one small difference. He has no championships.

And you know what, he won't be winning one anytime soon either.


[HT: Fanhouse]