« Quinn calls for task force to address housing crisis | Main | Forest City in the News »
February 14, 2008
Goodbye (?), J-Kidd, you helped sell Atlantic Yards
Atlantic Yards Report
Since it's likely that Jason Kidd won't be here "for the longevity," Norman Oder looks back on the legacy of the Nets star guard in the Atlantic Yards fight.
First Jim Stuckey, now Jason Kidd. Assuming that the Nets' announced trade yesterday of point guard Kidd to the Dallas Mavericks will go through after a stall, the two most public faces of the Atlantic Yards project--the executive who shepherded the project, and the star used to sell the team/arena--will have left the scene.
...
In developer Forest City Ratner's "Atlantic Yards permanent campaign," a Kidd trade is a reminder that the players, as in sports, are ultimately fungible. Kidd was deployed to mouth bromides at an 8/23/06 press conference (at right, with teammate Vince Carter, principal owner Bruce Ratner, and Borough President Marty Markowitz) before the public hearing on the AY Draft Environmental Statement and similarly at the 1/18/07 Barclays naming rights extravaganza.Kidd's much-publicized record of spousal abuse has nothing to do with his basketball skills, but still Ratner, in a 6/26/05 New York Times Magazine interview, went out of his way to puff the team:
The players are terrific. They are of good character. They are incredibly charitable. They are family-oriented. They have integrity.
Assuming Kidd departs, we'll see no more stories about his tempestuous divorce, his churchgoing, nor his image rehabilitation via Take a Net to School. No more Kidd posters selling season tickets at Brooklyn street fairs.
Posted by lumi at February 14, 2008 5:55 AM