Is the situation that J-Kidd, Vince Carter, and the rest of the New Jersey Nets find themselves in following tonight’s 109-101 shellacking of the Washington Wizards. The final score isn’t remotely indicative of just how much the Nets dominated the Wizards, as they sprinted to a 32-13 first quarter lead and led by 28 in the third quarter before current Washington head coach and former Nets Lieutenant Eddie Jordan cried “Uncle” and sent in the subs.

This win, the Nets third in a row and ninth in their last ten, was all about the competitive fire of the best point guard in the NBA — Jason Kidd — and his consuming will to win. Not only did Kidd go off for 35 points, drop 8 dimes, and grab 8 boards, but he also held the Wiz’s high-scoring all-star point guard Gilbert Arenas, who came into the game averaging 25.7 points, to 8 points. It was a signature game from one of the NBA’s true superstars.

There have been two storylines during the Nets surprising sprint towards the playoffs. The first has been what’s been happening on the court — Kidd and Carter learning to play together while Brian Scalabrine and Nenad Krstic lead the pack of unlikely contributors — while the other has been that Kidd’s thinly-veiled critiques of the current state of the Nets means that he wants out of The Swamp. And that’s a story that I just don’t buy.

Kidd may have a deserved rep as a coach killer but what’s driven that is the same exact thing that sparks a performance like tonight’s: the desire to win. Put simply, the dude wants to win an NBA title. He saw a legitimate opportunity to do so with the Nets of the past few seasons and was justifiably upset that his squad was ripped apart for reasons that had nothing to do with basketball.

Like many of us, Kidd daydreams. Instead of whiling away another dreary day in the cube fantasizing about knocking boots with Aisha Tyler, he may daydream about teaming up with the likes of Kevin Garnett or Jermaine O’Neal to win that title. To be honest, who can really blame him? What NBA player doesn’t want to play with Garnett?

Just as cats want to play with Garnett so to do they want to play with the revitalized Vince Carter, who comes to the closest to being an unstoppable offensive force as any player not named Shaq does, and just happens to be Kidd’s current teammate. Another teammate, the 7-0 rookie frontcourt player Krstic, has all the makings of a future all-star. Consider that the emerging star Richard Jefferson will rejoin that trio either in the playoffs or next season and you have a formidable foursome. Throw in the fact that Kidd loves playing for Nets’ head coach Lawrence Frank and, well, it takes a pretty active imagination to conjure up a scenario where Kidd tries to force a trade this off-season.

One of the more challenging and tumultuous Nets seasons in recent memory comes down to tomorrow night’s game in Boston. Beat the Celtics, a time that called it in tonight, losing 86-100 to a Clevo squad that had been playing with all the energy of Pope John Paul II’s corpse, and the Nets have a chance at pulling off a major playoff upset.

No matter what happens tomorrow night, it’s abundantly clear that the Nets are in a much better position than their neighbor’s from across the Hudson, who are left to an off-season of hoping that Big Chief Triangle and Wally Szczerbiak come to their rescue.