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They will be playing What If in various corners of the SBC Center on Wednesday night. Jason Kidd will inevitably wonder what it would be like to be triple-doubling for the home team. So, too, will Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio fans that will instead be booing Kidd lustily. Tony Parker will undoubtedly wonder whether he'd even be in the building had Kidd chosen to sign with the Spurs.

Us?

Asking an entirely different What If.

As in: What would have happened to Kidd's free-throw percentage if he had joined the Spurs?

The Sacramento Kings are remembered for bricking away a certain championship with all of their missed free throws in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference finals against the Lakers. L.A.'s Shaquille O'Neal will always be known as a liability at the line. Yet it's San Antonio, twice the champions in the past five years, that now stands unchallenged as the elite team most synonymous with free-throw woes.

As a group, San Antonio sits 29th in the league at 66.8 percent from the line, the only team in the league below 70 percent. Duncan is shooting a career-worst 60.4 percent from the stripe. Rasho Nesterovic was a .642 free-thrower in Minnesota last season, then relocated to the Alamo City to replace David Robinson. Rasho is a .467 free-thrower today.

For all the cracks about his perimeter prowess, Kidd is shooting better than 80 percent from the line (.814) for the fifth successive season ... after shooting below 70 percent in his first three pro seasons. You can imagine what direction those numbers would have headed if he made the move so many folks expected him to make.

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You can also guarantee that, with some voters, Duncan's hard-to-believe struggles will deny him a third successive MVP. With this voter, he's going to have to be spectacular in every other category to make me pardon him. Just can't understand how he can smooch a bank shot from anywhere inside the 3-point arc and then let doubts creep in and take over on uncontested 15-footers.

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Kidd reiterated Tuesday that the Spurs and Mavericks were the two teams he considered leaving New Jersey for. He predictably insists that he no longer gives the decision much thought, even with the two-time defending East champs destined to have home-court advantage for only one round in this spring's playoffs because Indiana and Detroit are so far ahead of them.

Uh-huh.

"They were great," Kidd said of the Spurs' attempt to woo him away. "It was just ... unfortunately the timing wasn't good in the sense (that the decision had to be made so soon after) we had to play them in the Finals.

"I felt that we could achieve something here in New Jersey. So they've moved on and I've moved on."

Again, color us skeptical. Pete Rose wouldn't hesitate to wager that all parties -- J-Kidd, Pop, TD, etc. -- are all still wondering what might have been. You know they're all still playing What If.

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Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has never fired a coach. He will someday, of course, but we're here to alert Rose to another more than safe bet: Pat Riley won't be the guy Cuban hires, even if Miami is willing to let Riles go.

It is widely assumed that Cuban's attention to detail and the Mavericks' clear need for a defensive upgrade will lead him to replace Don Nelson with Riley, as early as this summer. This assumption overlooks the fact that: A) Cuban never does what everyone thinks he's going to do and surely has other ideas; B) Cuban still wants to reacquire Avery Johnson to groom him for the job if possible; C) Cuban has a roster full of Nellie Ball specialists and would need to change the personnel first before Riley could do anything with it; and D) Cuban and Riley, most importantly, are not any kind of sensible match.

You can tell me all about how Bill Parcells came to Dallas and put Jerry Jones in his place ... but we hate American football and don't believe for a second that the comparison applies. Sitting near the bench and being involved in every single aspect of the organization is why the hoops-obsessed Cuban bought the Mavericks. He certainly didn't buy them for the business benefits, because basketball is the only venture in his life where he has actually lost money.

So ...

There is no chance Riley could come to Dallas and tell Cuban to step away and take a low profile. And there is no chance Riley could coach with the owner so close to the action. One of the reasons Nelson and Cuban have had so much success together, in spite of a relationship that has deteriorated so publicly, is because Nelson is so good at rolling with whatever happens in Mavsland.

Nelson shouldn't even be subjected to this kind of baseless speculation anyway. Definitely not at midseason. If the Mavericks fall short of 50 wins or, worse, lose in the first round of the playoffs, then Nelson will certainly be held accountable for not making the new mix mesh ... even though, truth be told, he's third in command on the personnel front these days behind Cuban and son Donnie Nelson. In the present, though, it's just too convenient to throw it out there that Riley is next in line. As stated above, Cuban doesn't do "convenient."

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Have to speak up for one of our favorites: Gheorghe Muresan. It was bad enough seeing Men's Fitness magazine put its cover jinx on Karl Malone, sticking the Mailman with a freak knee injury after naming him the NBA's Fittest Man, but now People magazine is hailing this Matthew McGrory as the actor "who towers above them all" after starring in "Big Fish." Excuse me? Our man Ghitza, who carried Billy Crystal in "My Giant," is an inch taller.

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Very distressing news out of the league office Wednesday. Confirmation was dispatched in a press release that the dunk contest -- the Sprite Rising Stars Slam Dunk, officially -- will be a four-man event restricted to players in their rookie, second or third seasons. Which pretty much rules out Vince Carter, even if they were healthy, if our math is right.

Another year, another letdown for dunk fans. Not that I would complain about seeing LeBron James (fingers crossed) and Jason Richardson, but I think we all long for the day that all the big names come back.

Maybe that's a provision that the league and union needs to hash out in forthcoming labor negotiations. Forget the luxury tax for five minutes and let's make dunk-contest participation mandatory for the dunkers the people want.

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here. Also, click here to send a question for possible use on ESPNEWS.