On Friday, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Grant Hill and Ray Allen will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. SPOX can therefore look back on the career of a very unusual point guard, who only found satisfaction when it seemed too late.
If you’re looking for the defining action in Jason Kidd’s career, there’s a lot to choose from – a behind-the-back pass, for example, or his regularly perfect execution of fastbreaks. A good possibility, however, would be a scene that took place in 2011, when Kidd was already 38 years old and not quite as far from the end of his career.
We are at the end of Game 5 of the NBA Finals, Kidds Mavericks are leading with 102:100 and have the chance to make the preliminary round in Game 5 and in the series against the Heat 1:30 minutes before the end. Of course Dirk Nowitzki is wanted, but Udonis Haslem does not allow a passport. The clock is ticking down, Jason Terry is penetrating and has to make a decision. The Zone is closed, that’s what Kidd stands for outside. Three seconds on the clock when Kidd catches the ball.
Kidd was long known as “Ason” because he couldn’t throw. During his first 13 seasons he had hit an average of 33 percent from outside. Things got better later – from 2007 Kidd increased enormously, even though he had only hit 34 percent in the 2010/11 season.
However, this was not just any throw, but the potentially most important one of his career – and perhaps the last chance for Kidd to win the long awaited title that had been denied him for so long. Some players would have doubted this, but Kidd would not.
He catches the ball in rhythm, pulls the trigger – and hits. It was supposed to be the penultimate coffin nail for the Heat, about a minute later Terry from downtown made the decision. In Game 6, the Mavericks completed one of the larger final upsets in NBA history soon after – and Kidd completed a career that had long since been hall-of-fame-material.
Without a doubt, Kidd’s passing is the quality that most people will remember – only John Stockton has distributed more assists than he has and almost nobody has shown such precision, but also creativity and flair as a playmaker. Almost more than about his court vision, however, Kidd defined himself as the winner type, which is why his throw in Game 5 should not have surprised anyone in the end.
In his opinion at least. “My attitude has always been, if I have to decide the game with one roll, I can do that. I always thought I could do whatever the team needed from me,” Kidd later said on The Undefeated. “But I wanted to focus primarily on my strengths.”
This may be a bit crude logic, especially since Kidd was actually one of the worst Guard scorers in terms of effectiveness for many years. But even this fits somehow to the gifted point guard: His entire CV is marked by contradictions.
Kidd was the definition of selfless on the court, his teammates loved him because – like Steve Nash – he always put them in perfect positions and served a whole host of average NBA professionals high million contracts on the tray. At the same time, he was anything but easy behind the scenes.
Over the years Kidd had a fight with almost every coach, initially also with Rick Carlisle in Dallas, he was traded three times, once even in the middle of his heyday. At the beginning of his career, the promising Mavs trio of him, Jimmy Jackson and Jamal Mashburn, allegedly imploded because of R&B singer Toni Braxton (although Kidd recently denied this rumor).
Kidd was also a walking contradiction on the court. He was a superstar and mastered almost everything – as a great point guard he was an excellent rebounder and defender, along with Nash for years the world’s best playmaker, a monster in fastbreak, a true genius in game intelligence.
At the same time he was incredibly bad at graduation – his odds (career: 40 percent FG) reminded of the guards of the 50s and 60s. As one of very few players in NBA history, Kidd had to dominate games without scoring big. It speaks for his brilliance in all other matters that he actually managed this over many years.
One thing was never doubted in the course of his career: Kidd made his teams better. This was the case in Phoenix, especially with the Nets, after he was traded to New Jersey for Stephon Marbury in the summer of 2001. The example of Starbury shows quite clearly why Kidd was so special.
Marbury could do anything. He was athletic and fast, could score from every position, had wit and creativity, physically there were few guards who could control him. However, he lacked the team idea or the will to be a leader. At the beginning of his career, out of envy, he forced a change away from Kevin Garnett, although this could have been the perfect counterpart to his game.
Marbury collected excellent statistics from then on, but he didn’t make his team any better. The Nets won 26 games in 2000/2001 led by Marbury (23.9 points, 7.6 assists) and were among the more hopeless teams in the league. Kidd, on the other hand, had 51 wins with the Suns in the same season, but Phoenix decided to hand him over after five years on charges of domestic violence (to which Kidd pleaded guilty).
This trade changed things on both sides. Phoenix had reached the playoffs five years in a row, the following season they took 36 victories with Marbury. The Nets turned the other way. In the summer Kidd had still amused with the announcement that New Jersey would reach the playoffs – but the Point Guard had meant it seriously.
Kidd was now in his prime and did the almost impossible in 01/02: He led a team from the basement not only to 52 victories, but even to the NBA finals. As in the following year, although New Jersey did not have a realistic chance of winning against both the Lakers and the Spurs. Kidd made his not-so-legendary teammates (Kenyon Martin, Keith van Horn and Richard Jefferson were the best) look better than they really were – he served, he inspired, he led. In 2002 he even finished second after Tim Duncan in the MVP voting.
“He inspired players to have confidence and to follow his example without having to talk all the time,” Nets GM Rod Thorn later explained to nba.com. “Each of them would admit today that he has taken them to a new level, with his style of play and attitude in every training session.”
Page 1: The changing contradiction
Page 2: Satisfaction only in Dallas