NBA Rumors: Jason Kidd's Recruitment Won't Land Deron Williams in Dallas

Jason Kidd continues to talk about Deron Williams' upcoming free agency as if he's D-Will's agent.

After his Dallas Mavericks were swept out of the first round of the postseason, Kidd said that he definitely wouldn't be retiring and planned to continue his career next season.

"I'll land somewhere early, I would think," Kidd told Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News.

It's nice that Kidd, who averaged career-low marks in minutes, points, rebounds and assists, thinks that he'll be in such high demand.

It's also refreshing that Kidd, at 39 years old, reportedly has no interest in playing for the veteran's minimum salary and will retire if teams don't present him with a bloated offer, according to Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated.

If that's not for the love of the game, I don't know what is.

In all seriousness, Kidd is a shell of his former self and it's baffling as to why money would be the motivational factor to continue his playing career.

Kidd has made just shy of $200 million during the course of his career and has never made less than $2 million in a single season. It's not hard to see why he may not like the idea of taking such a drastic pay cut.

But if he truly has visions of playing alongside D-Will, he simply won't have another choice.

"We'll spend some time golfing and we got the same agent, so that makes it easy.'' Kidd said when prompted about how he planned to recruit Williams to Dallas.

But does it really make it easy, or was Kidd just trying to appease the media masses?

It's fairly simple to rattle off a line that makes one look like a salesman, and an effective one at that, but we're talking about a 39-year-old point guard who would be Williams' clear backup with the Mavericks.

And I'm supposed to believe that is what is going to convince Williams to sign a long-term deal in Dallas? Please.

This isn't a salary issue, either.

The Mavericks have cap space to play around with, and will have even more if the team decides to buy out Lamar Odom's contract as well as use its amnesty clause on Brendan Haywood's bloated contract.

The larger problem is that the Mavericks just aren't all that good right now.

Yes, Dirk Nowitzki is still fantastic, and yes, Shawn Marion showed us all that he's still got a ton of great defense left to play in his career. But what else is there to be really excited about here?

Dwight Howard is not walking through that door.

It's amusing that Kidd feels like he has such an impact on Williams' free agency.

For the first time in his career, Williams will have the opportunity to pick where he wants to spend the next several seasons of his career.

That's a decision Williams will make independently, with or without Kidd's blessing.

In a season where far too many in the Mavericks' organization felt as if they had Williams' arrival to look forward to, ESPN's Marc Stein offered up this piece of information on the heels of Dallas getting swept.

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One source well-acquainted with Williams' thinking told ESPN.com this weekend that the Mavericks, in their current state, have no better than a "50-50 shot" of getting D-Will's signature in July.

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If Williams doesn't land in Dallas, we're all going to be questioning exactly what Mark Cuban was aiming for when he put together this supporting cast around Nowitzki coming off of a championship season.

When Kidd and Williams are sharing time on the golf course this summer, let's all remember that each is at a very different juncture in their respective careers.

Sharing agents, or Kidd's desire to recruit Williams to Dallas, isn't going to be what determines where D-Will signs.

It's going to be about far more than the arbitrary.