But suddenly  – not coincidentally with the arrival of Jason Kidd – The General’s multi-tasking ways have been reduced. In fact, at this moment, he has one job. Job One. Or better, Job Five.

     Fix Josh Howard.

     Not to oversimplify;  as the overseer of a franchise yearning to win its first championship, the young coach’s responsibilities are immense. But before the arrival of Kidd, there were many undefined and undetermined facets of Avery’s team.

     To wit, we've assembled a short list of the issues that the control-freaky "Lil' General'' has in this first half-plus season taken on, broadcast as problems and invented as concerns in order to fill his coaching day:

·         The coach had stripped his young point guard of play-calling duties and taken to calling plays himself.

·         The coach had urged Dirk to become a “leader’’ in Avery’s own playing-days image.

·         The coach had urged Dirk to become a Duncan-like player.

·         The coach was flip-floppy regarding whether Dampier or his backup should be the starting center.

·         The coach took to experimenting as to who should be his starting 2 guard.

·         The coach was undecided as to whether George, Jones or Hassell deserved burn.

·         The coach tried to juggle the egos and desires of his “6^th-Man A’’ and “6^th-Man B.’’

·         The coach was demanding that his centers become better offensive weapons.

·         The coach was trying to invent a backup point guard.

·         The coach was attempting to find time for 11 guys.

·         The coach was busy with corny slogans and theme (“Stay Stronger Longer’’).

·         The coach was saddling his players and himself with the thickest playbook in the NBA.

     In Miami this week, Pat Riley had a funny quote about supervising a bad team. "I'm like a mosquito in a nudist colony,'' Riles said. "I know what to do. I just don't know where to start.''

     Life for Avery is nothing like that. Peruse the above list, and ask yourself. ... what's left to do now? Quickly and respectively: Kidd calls his own plays, Dirk is suddenly a Dirk-like leader, Dirk’s learning curve is complete (for this year), Jason Terry is entrenched as the starting 2, Hassell is gone and Jones is buried and George is an emergency backup, Stackhouse is the 6^th man and his ego is ecstatic, the center(s) now simply catch Kidd’s perfect feeds and dunk the ball, Kidd eats up most of the PG minutes, the eight- or nine-man rotation is all-but cemented in, the corny slogans and nicknames are now the sole responsibility of smart-alecks like me, and that playbook? Kidd OWNS the playbook.

     So what’s left for Avery – having laid the groundwork to this point and now watching Kidd execute the rest -- to do? Play “team trainer’’ and “equipment manager’’?

     Nah.

     Go coach the living hell out of Josh Howard.

     Of all the Mavs, J-Ho is the only guy who hasn’t yet greatly benefited from the Kiddification of the Mavs. He’s a 46-percent shooter for the year but in the four games with Kidd, he’s at 29 percent (an absurd 22-of-75). He’s a 34-percent shooter from the arc for the year but in these four games he’s at 18 percent (3-of-16). Rebounds? Only six times all season has he recorded three or fewer. But two of those games have occurred in the Kidd Era, as J-Ho has 20 rebounds in the four outings, a rate of 6.0 per – 1.3 below his average. He’s averaging 2.0 assists for the year, but in the four games Howard has had 1, 1, 2 and 1.

     Is some of this an emotional reaction to the trade? No doubt.  Josh had admitted as much.

     Is some of this related to the back problem that caused him to miss a couple of games before the All-Star Break? You bet, and in fact, maybe Howard deserves credit for gutting it out here.

     Is some of this an adjustment to the new Kidd-related style of play?

   Bingo.

   Under the previous system, Howard was clearly the No. 2 guy on the offensive totem pole, and had plays called for him in Avery’s “iso’’ system. And – this is more of a psychological thing – Josh was obviously the Robin, the second-best player on the team, the second-most-likely Mav to be an All-Star. (And a big enough deal to maybe be “cheesin’ like he won some candy’’ with some starlet from BET named Rocsi. Whatever that means.)

     Now, while the playbook still remains, everything goes through Kidd. And “Kiddirk’’ is the star. … er, two stars. Jason Terry is getting the ball in his pet spots. So is Erick Dampier. Jerry Stackhouse will benefit from the same. Production must come in the flow of the offense – not from J-Ho launching 27 shots as he did in Memphis. (Dallas attempted 76 FGs in that game. And Josh took more than a third of them?!)

       We all know that Howard can go off from anywhere on the floor; on Dec. 8 against Utah, he was a wrecking ball, with 47 points on 15-of-17 shooting, and with 14 rebounds. We all also know that as spectacular as that night was, most scorers grow less effective as they drift away from the basket, and that Josh has in three years gone from a guy who was getting 52 percent of his buckets inside the half-circle in the paint to a guy who is getting 27 percent of his buckets inside.  Kidd has wasted no time in forging a relationship with Dirk. We noted on Jason’s first day of practice that he was spending a notable amount of time with Dampier. And we’re told Kidd has spent a great deal of time with the coaching staff, almost becoming one of them, in a sense. So maybe one of Kidd’s next projects will be to befriend J-Ho. In there time in the schedule for them to go bowling? Or maybe shoipping for baseball caps with unbendable bills? Or, maybe, this can be on Avery. Avery Johnson – “team trainer, equipment manager, father-figure, big brother, friend, strategist and psychologist’’ – is a classic control freak.  Now that so much of what the Mavs do is fixed and controlled, he is free to go be a coach again.

Josh Howard’s coach.

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