Grantland Exclusive: The Jason Kidd Mess Has a $144 Million Price Tag

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That’s a valid concern. The basketball side of the Nets’ business is projected to have lost $144 million over the 2013-14 season, according to a confidential memo the league sent to all 30 teams in early June. (Grantland has reviewed and verified the memo with a half-dozen sources.) If that strikes you as out of whack, that’s because it is.

The NBA expects nine teams will end up having lost money once luxury-tax distribution and revenue-sharing payments are finalized. The Nets, with that monster $144 million figure, are the biggest losers. Next in line? The Wizards, with projected losses of about $13 million. That’s right: The Nets lost $131 million more than any other NBA team last season. This is what happens when you pay $90 million in luxury tax for an aging roster and play in a market so large you are ineligible to receive any revenue-sharing help.

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The Thunder are indeed paying into the revenue-sharing system, rare for such a tiny market, but they’re slated to make nearly $29 million in profit when everything is netted out. That’s the fifth-best projection in the league, trailing only the Lakers ($100.1 million), Bulls ($61 million), Rockets ($40.7 million), and Celtics ($33.1 million).

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Holy cow, the Lakers! They end up with that huge profit despite contributing a league-high $49 million to revenue sharing. The league’s revenue sharing is complex, with payouts and contributions tied to all sorts of variables — market size, profitability, earnings benchmarks, and other stuff. A few teams, including the Lakers and Knicks, play in markets so large they are disqualified from ever receiving revenue-sharing payouts

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Kidd allegedly struck like a cobra, demanding a job title that would have put him above Billy King, the team’s general manager — an insane power grab for a guy barely a year removed from bricking 3-pointer after 3-pointer for the Knicks. Kidd had undermined others before — Byron Scott, Lawrence Frank (twice), his coach at Cal. He demanded trades, (allegedly) faked an illness, and more. He has a touch of the Machiavellian in him.

But Machiavelli was rational. Kidd would seem to lack any understanding of his place in the world if he truly believes himself worthy of the kind of dual role Doc Rivers, Stan Van Gundy, and (to a degree) Gregg Popovich worked their whole lives to get. This was the equivalent of Jordan Crawford saying he might be better than Michael Jordan.

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