Thursday is a special night in the NBA. It's a night to look to the stars, like one of those meteor showers that only come along occasionally, streaks of bright light flashing across the NBA universe.

It's the best player in the NBA, this season anyway, against the best team in the NBA, this season certainly.

It's Jason Kidd against the Sacramento Kings.

	Jason Kidd is doing more than just passing the ball these days.

Finals preview? Perhaps, though such things, like Finals appearances, get settled often fortuitously, with a lucky bounce or an Horry. Both have a long way to go to get there. This is one of those delicious moments to enjoy in an NBA regular season schedule that is mostly endured. It doesn't happen often. Usually, the best player is on the best team. Michael with the Bulls, Hakeem with the Rockets, Shaq with the Lakers.

It was supposed to be Shaquille O'Neal again, especially after that 3-9 Lakers start without him. Media members were sending in their MVP ballots five months early. That start, and last season's finish, was proof enough that we all were sorry for voting for Tim Duncan last season. Not that Duncan isn't terrific. But in the end, there was Shaq dancing again, though thoughtfully not rapping, and there was that awful start.

But Shaq returned, and it didn't get much better for the Lakers, and when it did Kobe Bryant seemed to be doing most of the work. So let's check our hanging chads here.

There's really just one MVP candidate this season: Kidd.

Some felt he was robbed last season, the way he got the New Jersey Nets to the NBA Finals. After all, the only time that was in the same sentence was when the team sold Julius Erving to earn admission from the ABA and secret minutes read: "Well, at least we know the Nets will never be in the NBA Finals."

But there they were last season thanks to Kidd. But MVP? After all, he made all those reporters travel to New Jersey. It's not like he's going to get rewarded for that. Seriously, the NBA is about numbers. Wins, sure. Rings, yeah. Money, undoubtedly. And numbers. Kidd averaged 14.7 points. MVPs usually average double that. He shot 39.1 percent. Geez, that's Iversonesque. He led the NBA in turnovers. Triple doubles and steals, too. But it just seems an MVP ought to be doing more. Basketball experts understood his unselfish play, his manic rebounding and team sacrifice. But, hey, it's the media who vote. We're not talking Jerry West here.

So the Nets have this great plan. It was so great I agreed with it. Get a defensive presence. Someone to rebound and block shots. Move Keith Van Horn out to accommodate Richard Jefferson (a better defender), pick up veteran reserves like Rodney Rogers and Chris Childs, let Kenyon Martin bite the head off a live chicken. It sounded like a plan.

But then Dikembe Mutombo showed up not with limbs the size of redwoods, but with a body as old as one. He eventually got injured, though reports could not be confirmed his cane slipped on the ice. It seemed Rogers and Childs worked out in the summer with Oliver Miller and Stanley Roberts, and Martin decided he'd become Patrick Ewing and not Alonzo Mourning.

Martin, a product of the U. of Cincinnati high school equivalency program, was like Ewing was at Georgetown. He was a ferocious defender, a shot blocker whom some NBA scouts said would eventually lead the league. But then he came into the NBA and decided, like Ewing, to be a jump shooter. OK, maybe dunk a few and scream, but you get the idea. Ewing was supposed to be Bill Russell, but he seemed enamored of Alvan Adams. Martin is averaging less than one blocked shot per game, behind the likes of Malik Allen and Mark Blount, whoever they are, and fewer than eight rebounds per game. He's hardly a defensive force at power forward. The tougher Jefferson isn't the scorer Van Horn was, and raise your hand if you know who plays center for the Nets.

This is when Jason Kidd became Magic Johnson. Or Isiah Thomas, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird.

Kidd looked around and said, "Uh oh" -- just like Johnson did when he heard Kareem Abdul-Jabbar creaking when Abdul-Jabbar raised his arm to shoot.

	He's a great player and faster with the basketball than most Olympic sprinters are without -- a guard who rebounds like Wilt Chamberlain and passes like Pete Maravich. But after realizing hardly anyone around him was doing what they were supposed to, Kidd just figured he'd do it all.

One thing we've always known about Kidd is he can't shoot. He's a great player and faster with the basketball than most Olympic sprinters are without -- a guard who rebounds like Wilt Chamberlain and passes like Pete Maravich. But after realizing hardly anyone around him was doing what they were supposed to, Kidd just figured he'd do it all.

He's shooting about 46 percent, which is so far above his career high you check it twice. Here's a guy who never shot better than 41.6 percent, whose career shooting average is barely above 40 percent. Kidd needs to shoot better. So he does. He's averaging 20.5 points per game, almost four more per game than in his best season, about six points per game better than his career average (14.6). Yet, Kidd still is second in the league in assists and second among point guards in rebounds at 5.9 per game. Kidd is even among the top 10 guards in the NBA in shooting and in the league leader rankings in shooting.

Jason Kidd, one of the best shooters in the NBA? Somebody stop me! The next thing you know they'll be inviting him to the All-Star shooting contest. And why not? Kidd is shooting 38.3 percent on 3-pointers, again among the league leaders. I am not making this up.

Your team needs it, you do it. That's how you become the best player in the NBA.

You become the best team in the NBA by beating the best. Christmas Day doesn't really count, and one believes the Kings will again get their chance against the Lakers somehow this spring, but the Kings look like the best team now.

They don't have the best record, but who really expects to see the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals? With Shawn Bradley and Raef LaFrentz at center? C'mon. Don Nelson is a brilliant coach, and Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Michael Finley are wonderful players and deserving All-Stars. But you know come playoff time when the game slows down and the possessions get more demanding and the grabbing and tugging becomes more accepted, they're not going to be around for long. You can't keep posting up Eduardo Najera against Shaq.

	Throw out the records. Chris Webber's Kings are the NBA's best team.

The Kings should be around for awhile. Last spring, they had the classic disappointment, called in some trailer parks outside Sacramento a choke. But unlike the Portland Trail Blazers in 2000, the Kings came back with all the same players, plus more. Keon Clark and Jim Jackson appear to be wonderful additions. They have the best starting five in the NBA and the best second unit. They're the league's best passing team -- a team that can run with anyone, defends, ranks second to the Spurs in defensive field-goal percentage and can translate trash talk in several languages.

They still need to remove that piece of playoff lodged in their windpipe, but they'll get the chance for redemption later.

Can the will of one very great man overcome the collective will of one terrific group?

Last year about this time, it was the coming-out party for the Nets.

The Kings went into New Jersey just before the All-Star break and were dethroned. Love those bad headline puns. The Nets were 31-14 at the time, but it was the Nets, after all. And when they beat the Kings by 34, well, that was worth some second thoughts. The Nets proved they were for real, at least in the Eastern Conference. However, that was a difficult game for the Kings. It was the second of a back-to-back after a tough win over Minnesota, which was then still streaking and had a better record than the Nets at the time. Perhaps the Kings were thinking that when Spud Webb said "Welcome to Hell" he really meant the Meadowlands.

This time, the Nets are defending conference champions and leading the East again. Flukes don't go on for a year and a half, except for Dennis Rodman. Both teams should be rested. The Nets last played Monday. The Kings were off Wednesday, and only played on the road Tuesday in Milwaukee, which is little more than layup line practice these days with Bucks players mostly in training for the bulls, the ones in Pamplona. Olé.

The road gets tougher for the Kings, who play 10 of their 15 games after the New Jersey visit away from home. But this is a Kings team that hasn't had its full rotation yet this season. Mike Bibby missed much of the first two months, and when he began to get back, Bobby Jackson went out. Chris Webber misses games here and there, Peja Stojakovic has been out with ankle problems, and Vlade Divac takes smoking breaks, although they really don't need his flopping until the spring. And who knows what Scot Pollard looks like now with all this time off? When they all get back, they seem too much for anyone.

The Nets and Kings?

Yes, it wasn't too long ago they were candidates for contraction, located in two of the most desolate places in the NBA and surrounded by ribbons of interstate highway and fields of nightmares. Just over a decade ago, the two teams combined to win 40 games in a season. Thursday they might play one of the most compelling games this season.

Sam Smith, who covers the NBA for the Chicago Tribune, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.