SI: 'If Kidd Doesn't Sign With NY, He's A Bad Dad'

   I generally get a kick out of Jeff Pearlman. He’s a very successful author and we’ve had some fun exchanges over the phone and via email over the last couple of years and he’s a bright guy. But he’s just posted a column on SportsIllustrated.com that argues that if Jason Kidd signs with anybody but the New York Knicks, he’s a crappy father.

   Jeff, my friend … from one dad to another. … you gotta be shittin’ me.

   I said my presence is "almost unnecessary.''

   I could rattle off some jokes here. ("Lemme guess: Pearlman has Knicks season tickets!'' or “If Kidd plays for the Knicks, he’ll certainly spend more time with the children in May and June when they watch the NBA Playoffs together on TV!’’)

   I could take some pointedly logical pokes at Jeff's position. You know, like wondering how much time Jeff spends on the road away from his own New York-based children in order to research and write his books. Or doing the math on how much Kidd would see the little ones regardless of his employer, with five months free during the offseason but 41 road games in-season. And then there is the point that Jeff might be forgetting: Jason and Joumana are not going to be there to tuck their babies into bed together every night, anway.

   Because, by virtue of the fact that they're divorced, both of them living in New York would not mean both of them would live together.

   But no. I’ll keep it serious and I’ll keep it short:

   I am a divorced father of two teenage boys. Their mother and I have “split custody’’ yet I pay a rather large sum in child support and have done so, no matter my financial circumstances, since before the finalization of our divorce a decade ago. I am not with my sons every Wednesday and every first, third and fifth weekends; instead, over the course of the last 10 years, I have been with my boys virtually EVERY DAY of EVERY MONTH of EVERY YEAR. My commitment to them in every way – time, money, patience, guidance, fun, love – is unbending. Those close to us poke good-natured fun at me because I “pay child support twice’’; that is, I write one check to their mother on one day of the month and then on the 29 other days of the month, I pay directly for everything that the boys need in their lives. Their tuition, their car, their health care, their vacations. … that’s all handled between Nate and Tony and myself.

   “You are pretty much their father and their mother,’’ more than one person has said to me, expressing a thought that would certainly offend the boys’ mom. … but one that I am flattered by.

    I have turned down lucrative opportunities to work far from Dallas because, well, I could not leave my sons. After working something like 15 straight Super Bowls, I quit attending the week-long Super Bowl experience a decade ago because I missed them too much. My decade-long work has, for the most part, allowed me to take them to school most every day, to pick them up most every day, to coach them in every sport, to attend every play, to know all their teachers by their first names, to have relationships with their friends, to be there to celebrate their successes and to hug through their failures.

   And for them to celebrate and hug through mine.

   It runs in my family, by the way. I have five siblings, four of them men. All five are amazingly involved parents. One of them just decided against tripling his income by moving to Wyoming because it would rob him of the situation he has with his kids.  

   All that (if you cannot tell, I am a very proud dad) and I still cannot bring myself to judge. All of that, and I still cannot bring myself to tell another dad how much time is enough time, how much devotion is enough devotion, how much love is enough love. All of that, and I still wouldn’t dare tell Jason Kidd that if he chooses to make a living for his New York-based children by working a job that takes him on the road – as is the case with a million truck drivers, a million salesmen and, yes, a million journalists – he is a crummy dad.

   I have a lot of what it takes to be a good dad. But being the one who decides that Jason Kidd wanting to play for the Mavericks makes him a bad dad? I have a lot of what it takes. … but on that one, I just don’t have the gall.