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The Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday completed a trade to get point guard Jason Kidd from the New Jersey Nets. After Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns revamped themselves with Pau Gasol and Shaquille O’neal respectively it was obvious the Mavericks had to do something just to keep pace, but if Mavericks fans are thinking that this move puts their team above the Lakers, Suns, or even defending champion San Antonio Spurs they are going to be disappointed.

Here’s the deal: in exchange for the 35-year-old Kidd Dallas sent to the the Nets point guard Devin Harris, center DeSagana Diop, swingman Maurice Ager, forward Trenton Hassell, retired forward Keith Van Horn, $three million in cash and the first-round draft picks this June and in 2010. As part of the trade the Nets also sent forward Malik Allen and swingman Antoine Wright to Dallas.
Now does this trade helps the Dallas Mavericks in the short term by making them a better team? Of course. But will this trade bring them the NBA championship they so badly want? Not likely, and if that is the case, Dallas will find out in just a few years that they ended giving way too much just to “inch a little closer” to their goal.

Dallas may be better suited to survive the Western Conference playoffs a little longer, but they will not reach the NBAFinals for one key reason: The true problem the Mavs have is on defense and this trade did nothing to address that issue. This trade didn’t eliminate their post troubles. It is a fact that Dirk Nowitzki and Eric Dampier are overmatched down low and by removing the big presence of Diop from their roster this becomes a bigger problem. Furthermore Dallas fan should remember that Dampier is not the most durable guy out there, so who will replace him in case he goes down with an injury?

Even if Kidd excels and improves the scoring of the Mavericks, this team is still going to face some of the best big men on the planet in Gasol, O’Neal and the Spurs’ Tim Duncan and this trade has not done anything to solve that dilemma. Dampier may have to guard Shaq and it’s unlikely he will succeed at that even if this is an older and slower version of the Diesel. Even if Dampier plays on Fabricio Oberto when going against the Spurs instead of guarding Duncan that is not good enough. Why? because it means that whenever Nowitzki is on the bench taking a breather probably Allen or Brandon Bass will have to deal with Duncan and that simply won’t work.

In fact I think that now that they lack a solid backup center Dallas has just made it easier for Duncan and other big men like him to do what they want in the post without having Diop to contend with and that can’t be good for the Mavs championship aspirations.

I have heard endless arguments in favor of this trade but all of them are regarding the Mavericks offense. I do recognize that the Dallas helped its offense by getting Kidd but offense wasn’t this team’s most pressing problem.

Offensively Dallas won’t be outmatched anymore at the point guard position now that they have a point guard that is among the best in the league and can contend with those like Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Baron Davis, and Deron Williams, however defensively Kidd struggles against smaller, faster guards like Tony Parker.

It is true that Harris hasn’t played since injuring his left ankle against Denver on Jan. 27 and will probably miss two more weeks so Kidd becomes an answer to a problem they have right now but he is not a long term solution nor a defensive one. Kidd will bring mental toughness, confidence and floor leadership to a team that needed it, but he will not bring home a championship.

Granted, now the Mavericks may become a faster team and their key players can concentrate on scoring, but scoring has never been that big of an issue for the Mavs. Even though Josh Howard and Dirk Nowitzki won’t have to worry too much about creating plays, just finishing the ones that Kidd creates for them, a faster and high-scoring game is not particularly effective in the West, if you don’t believe me just ask the Suns who recently gave that formula up.

In Harris Dallas has given up a promising point-guard and much of the depth that has been a hallmark of its winning formula. The Nets also have gotten a legitimate defensive big-man in Diop who had been contributing steadily to a successful Western conference powerhouse.

The Mavs have mortgaged their long-term success hoping that they can become a championship team in the short term. Needless to say anything less than an NBA title in the next two years can be considered a failure. Sad thing is: due to their unsolved defensive problems and to the depth that the West has right now I don’t think they can make it to the NBA Finals even with Jason Kidd.

And the worst of it all is that if they fail to win a title in the next two or three years with Kidd in their lineup (not much longer left on Kidd’s NBA career) their future looks quite bleak without their point guard of the future in Devin Harris and without those two first-round draft picks.