Off, Off, Off Broadway

From the swamp they came and to the swamp they always return.

Unfortunately for the New Jersey Nets, while this might not turn out to be true figuratively, because they have overcome their wretched tradition to become a power in the NBA’s Eastern Conference -- and the only one in their metropolitan area -- it is true, literally.

Their arena, named appropriately after a low-end airline, sits amid the marsh grass of an otherwise thinly developed tract of northern New Jersey, near the Jersey Turnpike, if nothing else.

There are no towns nearby, or malls, or festivities of any kind. Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, asked what he thought on his first visit, said they should at least turn on the lights outside to get away from that forlorn, middle-of-nowhere feeling.

The NFL’s New York Giants and Jets fill the adjacent football stadium on Sundays, but on weeknights, even high-level NBA ball is a hard sell, with Jason Kidd and his athletic teammates often performing their high-rising feats before half-empty houses.

When Kidd arrived last season to turn the Nets around, on the court, at least, he knew little about the area. Told the New York Knicks had always owned the market, he replied brashly:

“That won’t last long.”

No longer than forever. These days, Kidd is more cautious about forecasting marketing trends. Because he’ll be a free agent next summer, and the Nets are having problems integrating their new hopes, Dikembe Mutombo, Rodney Rogers and Chris Childs, team officials have no shortage of worries.

Kidd is actually soft-spoken for an NBA star, masking the cockiness that’s so evident on the floor, saying they’re building something, etc., declining to speculate on his situation. Otherwise, Net officials might be sending out their own resumes by now.

Nevertheless, the question never goes away: What are Jason and Joumana Kidd, both from the Bay Area, really thinking when they look at all those empty seats?

It can’t be good.

The Nets claim an average of 13,000, although insiders think the real number is closer to 10,000. In any case, they’re still second fiddle, and might be third if there was another team in Madison Square Garden.

Even in the Knicks’ present moribund/hopeless stage, with their nine-year sellout streak over, they’re still drawing an average of 18,766 fans, who regard the Garden as a shrine.

Humbled in every other way, the Knicks missed the NBA playoffs for the first time since 1987, finished 22 games behind the Nets and were swept in the season series -- by 18 points a game -- but still aren’t shy about reminding the Nets who is who:

As Latrell Sprewell put it bluntly, before Tuesday’s first meeting of the season:

“No matter what they say, we play in the Garden.”

If the Nets didn’t understand the implications, the august New York Times, based 10 blocks up 7th Avenue from the Garden, made it clear in a headline:

“Nets Will Always Be the Guys From Jersey.”

Ironically, a lot of Manhattan sportswriters, who keep reminding the Nets of their low estate, are guys and gals from Jersey too, such as the New York Daily News’ Mitch Lawrence, who lives in Essex Fells.

Not that that changes anything.

“People where I live don’t say anything about the Nets,” Lawrence says. “They just want to know how the Knicks are going to get better. And, ‘Can the Knicks get Jason Kidd?’ And, ‘He is leaving, right?’ ”

No, $50 million over the salary cap, the Knicks have no chance to get Kidd.

Nobody knows if Jason will leave, but he turned down a $100-million extension last summer and refuses to commit himself, leaving the organization jumpy -- reporters are often asked not to bother Kidd with questions about it -- and all the skeptics surrounding them predicting the worst.

Actually, the downtown writers do appreciate the Nets. However, with the fans, the way it was is the way it remains.

The New York Times’ Mike Wise recently wrote a column, telling the fans to “embrace the Nets,” and was kidded about it by peers, who came up and embraced him.

It’s not easy to change an entire culture and some cultures, more than others.

Lost in the Wilds of Jersey

Of course, before last season, when General Manager Rod Thorn landed Kidd for Stephon Marbury in the bargain of the new century, New Yorkers barely knew the Nets existed, or cared.

With Kidd, it was a new deal. The Nets started the 2001-02 season 38-17 and never looked back, until the Lakers and Shaquille O’Neal flattened them in the NBA Finals.

So the Nets went looking for a Shaq-stopper, or, at least, a Vlade Divac-stopper.

“Our feeling at the end of last year was, there were five or six teams, counting both conferences, that we would have a hard time beating,” Thorn says.

“Indiana, we beat by the skin of our teeth to get into the second round. Charlotte didn’t have [Jamal] Mashburn, when we played them [in the second round]. And, obviously, nobody can deal with Shaq....

“Our feeling was, we needed to get better defensively around the basket. The teams that we thought were equal to us or better, either had a four [power forward] or a five [center] who we were hard-pressed to deal with.”

In what looked like another slick deal, Thorn unloaded his oft-criticized $11-million-a-year forward, Keith Van Horn, on the Philadelphia 76ers for Mutombo, who was 36 and under contract for three more seasons at $53 million but was still a defensive presence.

In other moves that seemed like good ideas at the time, the Nets signed Rogers and Childs.

Rogers turned up heavy, as usual. Childs was so overweight, they suspended him and sent him to a fat farm. Mutombo was a problem for the offense, which he learned slowly and messed up with his bad hands; he was averaging only 25 minutes a game, before breaking his right wrist and leaving until springtime.

Richard Jefferson, promoted to the starting lineup, has looked young and inconsistent, not quite the 18-point-a-night scorer they hoped for.

Kenyon Martin, who looked as though he was set to bust out when he scored 26 and 35 points in the final games of the Finals, is back to only 13 shots a night again.

Oh, and Van Horn has revived his career in Philadelphia, averaging 16 points and eight rebounds. As the Nets’ fellow finalists, the Lakers, have been learning daily, it’s a whole new season.

With a real run in the Finals, the Nets might have begun carving out a new niche for themselves, but that was a lot to ask. Off to a solid 16-9 start this season under third-year Coach Byron Scott, they’re back to trying to build a following the hard way, incrementally, which requires excellence over a long period of time and, in their case, against great odds.

Their problem is that excellence isn’t the issue here, as much as accessibility.

The normal human impulse for Manhattan residents -- all 1.5 million of them, packed with media biggies, CEOs and other opinion leaders -- to switch to a winner, is checked by the perception of the Meadowlands as not merely an inhospitable place that is hard to get to, but an outpost on another world.

With a parking space in a garage going for $400 a month and up, most people in Manhattan don’t own cars. With parking going for $20 at Knick games, and few spaces available, most fans at Knick games come by subway, train and bus to the arena, which was built, in a stroke of genius, atop Penn Station.

So the Knicks have a following in New Jersey, but the Nets can’t draw from Manhattan.

Then there’s the Nets’ media situation, also problematic.

Manhattan is now being fought over by two sets of media conglomerates and their allies.

On one hand is Madison Square Garden, owned by Cablevision, the cable company that has Manhattan locked up, and the Garden’s MSG cable networks, which show the Knicks, Rangers and Mets.

On the other is Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, who took his team off MSG, formed his own cable company, Yankee Entertainment Sports, and went into partnership with the Nets and Devils.

The problem, while the sides fight it out in court, is that YES can’t get on cable TV in Manhattan, which means that the Yankees, who are in the midst of another of their dynasties, can’t be seen by millions of their fans.

In a related development, the crowd-pleasing Nets, who need the exposure, aren’t shown in Manhattan, either.

And the Nets’ arena project, for a $350-million building in downtown Newark (accessible by train) is stalled. Negotiations with state officials are going nowhere, with New Jersey, which is being asked to put up $190 million, projecting a $5-billion shortfall.

In other words, they’d better get used to that swamp, because it looks as though they’ll be in it for a while longer.

California Kidds, Jersey Address

Just the other day, Sun assistant coach Robin Pound laughed when Joumana said she genuinely liked living in N.J.

“Save that for the media,” Pound said. “You’re West Coast people.”

ESPN Magazine

January 2001

No, seriously, Joumana says she really likes it here.

“When you’re with your family and people you love, you kind of make the most out of any place that you are,” she says, waiting with her NBA Entertainment crew (she is also on “Extra!”) outside the Nets’ dressing room after Tuesday’s loss to the Knicks.

“But it sort of adds to it that we’re in New York and it’s beautiful. We live 20 minutes away and we can get into the city so fast. Yet we’re in a nice suburb-type area that is nice and quiet.”

Joumana Kidd isn’t your typical wife in the background. She and Jason have been through a very public domestic-disturbance situation in Phoenix, and they’re in this together for the long haul.

Does that part about “kind of make the best of any place that you are” sound like this isn’t her dream location?

On the other hand, how can it be, not knowing what you want -- because they don’t know which teams will actually bid when July 1 comes -- and having everything you say examined for its hidden meaning?

That’s where the Kidds are, in a mansion in leafy Upper Saddle River, and limbo, all at once.

All sort of opportunities may present themselves ... and may not.

Jason loves the idea of playing in San Antonio with his friend Tim Duncan. When the Spurs were in recently, Kidd talked animatedly about the possibility, as did Duncan.

However, San Antonio insiders say the Spurs’ Plan A is for rookie Manu Ginobili to establish himself, and Tony Parker to solidify his hold on the point guard position, so they can try to replace the retiring David Robinson with Clipper free agent Michael Olowokandi.

However, to date, Ginobili has been slowed by an ankle injury, leaving the situation fluid.

Then there’s Seattle, where owner Howard Schultz, the Starbucks magnate, courted Kidd personally and didn’t extend Gary Payton’s contract, leaving himself the flexibility to pursue Jason.

On the other hand, why should Kidd take Payton’s place and butt his head against all those West superpowers, the Lakers, Kings and Mavericks?

Kidd could find himself in the same position Chris Webber did in Sacramento in the summer of 2001, yearning to go somewhere he liked better but unable to find a basketball situation as good as the one he had.

The one the Kidds are in needs a lot of work. Of course, they have already put in a lot of work.

Used to player-friendly organizations like their last one in Phoenix, Joumana was dismayed to find that Net wives had no parking reserved for them, among various other non-thoughtful touches. Whenever she complained, she was told it came from Lou Lamoriello, the crusty Devil general manager, who had just been put in overall charge of the new YankeeNets operation.

So she invited Lamoriello to a lunch, which lasted four hours, bringing a neatly printed list titled, positively and assertively, “Room for Opportunity.”

She asked for better parking and better promotion for Jason, another novelty for Lamoriello, who preached a team-first concept and didn’t play up to his stars or the media.

Because the Nets were already opening eyes, and Jason, as well as Joumana, had made it clear that the status quo wouldn’t do, the man nicknamed “Tal-Lou-Ban” by the local press corps turned marshmallow and said yes to everything.

Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?

It could all work out, really.

If the Nets stay up there, attendance should pick up, as it did last season, when they had drawn 3,000 fewer people per game at this point.

But then, there’s so much to see between now and summer, isn’t there?

“It’s actually funny more than anything,” Joumana says. “We know that we have as much of an idea where we’re going to be as anyone else does. It’s almost funny when people keep asking and asking. I wish I knew....

“Teams can’t talk to you yet, you know what I mean? So you have no idea and in this business -- I would have never thought we’d get traded, so you never know. Anything could happen....

“I try not to think about it, just kind of take it day by day, enjoy the moment, I live for today. People come around and see my house and see my new mural and they’ll go, ‘Oh, guess you’re staying.’

“It’s like, no, but I don’t make those [decorator] decisions based on that.”

The moment is all you really have, isn’t it? At least, until July 1.