An email arrived in my in-box Monday afternoon with the news that Devin Harris of the New Jersey Nets is now featured on an 80 by 60 foot billboard above the ESPN Zone on 42d Street and Broadway. That was preceded by another announcing Harris as the NBA’s Player of the Week. If Harris continues on the scoring binge (he dropped 47 Sunday night on the Suns in Phoenix) he’s been on, he will be an all-star by February. And Mark Cuban will have more insider trading explaining to do, of the basketball variety.

Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks fell in love with the legend of Jason Kidd last winter. They had to have the aging maestro for a title run that didn’t survive the first round of the playoffs. As a magnanimous gesture, Cuban’s negotiating team threw two first-round draft choices into a deal the Nets’ President Rod Thorn later said he would have made straight-up. With one of the picks, Thorn drafted a 6-10 forward out of California, Ryan Anderson, who has already ably demonstrated that he has an NBA future. Next year’s Dallas pick does not happen to be lottery protected – the Mavericks barely made the playoffs last season and have started this season as a .500 team.

That leaves the Nets with Harris, 25, a rising star, Anderson and a potential lottery pick for Kidd, who is still capable of a triple-double on any given night, is still a visionary ball distributor, but who too often looks 35 going on 50 when matched against the likes of Tony Parker and Chris Paul. Cuban has denied regretting this deal but that is the pride of a billionaire getting in the way of the plain, hard truth. He knows the Mavericks got fleeced.

And suddenly, the Nets, winners of 3 ofń on their annual Thanksgiving swing west, have staffed the two most difficult-to-fill positions – Harris at the point and the promising rookie center from Stanford, Brook Lopez. Add to that Yi Jianlian, Anderson, Josh Boone and another rookie, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and you have a nucleus of young talent that has energized Vince Carter and added up to a 9-7 start for a team that was supposed to be in teardown mode.

Once again, we see what Thorn, now assisted by General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe, is capable of when given the chance to retool, or build. Early this decade, Thorn turned the Nets from NBA flophouse to two-time finalists in basically a year. Everywhere but above the ESPN Zone, the Knicks get all the attention as a result of their mid-town address. The Nets were supposed to become more competitive in the battle for hearts and minds – and in the potential free agent pursuit of LeBron James – with a move to downtown Brooklyn that doesn’t appear to happening anytime soon, if ever. So Thorn will continue to operate on the perimeter of the market, or eventually in Newark, with obvious handicaps. Don’t bet against him still outdoing Team Dolan across the river. If Bruce Ratner had put Thorn in charge of building in Brooklyn, the Nets would already be there.

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Source: The New York Times; by HARVEY ARATON

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company