<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>NEW ORLEANS -- While listening to the question, Avery Johnson broke into one of those big smiles that is really not a smile because if he answered in coachspeak, he knew no one would believe him. The subject was about control and Johnson's ability to relinquish some of it to newly acquired Jason Kidd. "I was wondering how long it was going to take you guys to ask that," Johnson said, grinning and fidgeting at the same time. The answer lasted 88 seconds. It turned out to be the sports equivalent of asking a presidential candidate about healthcare. The partial stump speech went like this: "Within the team concept, the point guard and the coach must have a relationship," Johnson said, "and we have to figure out how we're going to work together. I don't think I'm going to sit down the whole game, and I think I'm going to have to try and help him get through this period. But I don't think I'll be screaming at him every play telling him what to do, either. "The reason why we got him is he knows what to do. Maybe when I'm about to yell something, that's a point where I can just be quiet. But I don't think I'm going to go into some kind of cocoon and just not be available to coach. "And hopefully down the road there's going to be a day or a week or a month, there's going to be a period where we hope to play like Phoenix plays in terms of the way they allow their guard to just run the team, or even now with Chris Paul -- the way Byron [Scott] allows him to run the game and Detroit allows their point guard to run it. "We hope to get to that point." Johnson knows, however, that the Mavericks absolutely have to get to the point where he hands the reins to Kidd and the sooner the better. Otherwise, why disrupt a team that averaged more than 60 victories a season for the last three years with one appearance in the NBA Finals?</div> Source
