To watch Jason Kidd firing virtuoso passes against the Celtics Monday night and playing with the same relentlessness he always does was to wish Kidd would just end the mystery already. Why hasn't he just said, once and for all, "I'm staying with the Nets if they offer me the maximum contract that they can. End of story. Now let's go win a championship"?

That should stop the rumors about all the butt-kissing - real and imagined - that he's supposedly getting from a franchise that quivers at the thought of life without him. That should help stop the sort of sideshows and speculation about motives that mushroom into regrettable things such as the dustup yesterday over some indefensible remarks by a longtime Boston Globe sports columnist about Kidd's wife, Joumana.

For the Nets, the drama of what Kidd will do when he becomes an unrestricted free agent this July is the topic that never dies. With Kidd, the Nets are instant contenders. Without him, they're also-rans.

Yet for months, Kidd has refused to kill speculation that he wants to join Tim Duncan in San Antonio, that he's down on the Nets' swampland location, lack of sellout crowds, second-class status in New York, etc.

Kidd also refuses to quash or even distance himself from remarks by friends such as free-agent guard Gary Payton, who recently said he and Kidd talk often about going to where they can win a championship.