From the floor to the sidelines, Milwaukee Bucks Head Coach Jason Kidd simply knows what it takes to win in the game of basketball.
At every level, Jason has been able to help turn a previously unsuccessful squad into a winner, and he’s done so rather quickly at each stop along the way. That trend continued in his first year in Milwaukee, where J-Kidd has already instilled that winning attitude in the Young Bucks.
Jason’s run of basketball brilliance begins in the Bay Area, where he led St. Joseph High School in his hometown of Alameda to consecutive state titles while receiving national recognition as the nation’s top high school player his senior year. From there, J-Kidd stayed closed to home, accepting a scholarship from the University of California-Berkeley while turning down some of the nation’s most elite college basketball programs. His decision was a boon for the California Golden Bears, who were coming off consecutive losing seasons and parted ways with their coach midway through his first year.
Despite being just a freshman, J-Kidd emerged as the team’s starting point guard and helped to orchestrate a tremendous second-half resurgence. Behind the play and leadership of No. 5 Cal used the late season surge to gain just the school’s second NCAA tournament berth since 1960. It was there that Jason first emerged as the kind of once in a generation talent that can swing the fortunes of a franchise.
The Bears arrived in St. Louis for a first-round matchup against the LSU Tigers, as the sixth-seed and took care of business against No. 11 seed LSU, 66-64. J-Kidd then watched as No. 3 Duke ousted 14-seed Southern Illinois, 105-70. Setting up a showdown between Kidd’s Bears and the two-time defending national champion Blue Devils.
With that contest looming, very few gave Kidd’s crew a chance.
“We beat LSU in a very close game during the first round to set up a matchup with Duke, the two-time defending national champions,” Jason recalled. “I remember after the game, LSU’s coach said of our chances against the Blue Devils, ‘I don’t think they have a prayer.’”
However, J-Kidd and his Cal teammates reveled in the underdog role and upset Duke, ending their run at a third straight national championship. Jason tallied 11 points and 14 dimes in the win, which was also highlighted by the play of teammates Lamond Murray (28 points) and Jerod Haase (5-6 shooting), to help the Bears pull off a miracle.
Cal was ousted by Kansas in the next round, but Jason went on to lead them to the NCAA tourney in his sophomore season as well, before heading to the NBA. The University of California-Berkeley has been to the big dance 10 times since—more than the entire 44 years combined before J-Kidd arrived.
NET GAINS
As a player at the professional level, Jason has made a powerful impact on franchises from coast to coast. His first stop was Dallas, where he made a big impact as a rookie, he followed that with a spectacular stint with the Suns.
But the most drastic effect came after Jason was traded to New Jersey. Prior to Jason’s arrival, the Nets were a league laughingstock, having lost nearly two-third of their games from 1998-2001. Their best mark over that span was still 20 games under .500 and in the season before trading for Kidd they were 30 under. But just as he did in college at Cal, J-Kidd immediately turned New Jersey from an also-ran into a perennial NBA title contender.
The 2001-02 Nets put together the franchise’s best season since the NBA/ABA merger. J-Kidd and a starting five that also featured Kerry Kittles, Richard Jefferson, Keith Van Horn and Kenyon Martin pushed New Jersey to a 52-20 in the regular season, which remains a Nets NBA franchise record. Then, the group, which had missed the playoffs for three straight years before Jason arrived, cruised through the Eastern Conference on their way to the NBA Finals.
There they ran into a buzz saw in the Los Angeles Lakers and Phil Jackson-led squad that featured Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal swept the Nets in four games. But while Shaq bruised the Nets frontcourt in the series, Jason and his colleagues played tough and lost three games in the series by six points or less. Though it ultimately didn’t end with a title, New Jersey’s success in the 2002 postseason gave new hope to the thousands of people packing Continental Airlines Arena.
J-Kidd took the Nets to the NBA Finals for a second consecutive time in 2003, but this time they ran into the San Antonio Spurs, who won their second of four titles in a nine-year span. The Nets failed to make it back to the Finals in 2004, falling to the eventual NBA champion Detroit Pistons. But in those three seasons, Jason set the table for one of the most fantastic runs in franchise history. While they weren’t ever able to capture a ring, the Nets made the postseason six straight times after going just four times in the previous decade-and-a-half.
From New Jersey, Jason landed back in Dallas and three-and-a-half years into his second stint with the Mavs, J-Kidd captained that group to the mountaintop during the 2010-11 season. But this time, they got over the hump with Jason proving to be a vital piece in the team that dismantled the LeBron James-led Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.
Coming at the tail end of J-Kidd’s illustrious playing career, the championship served as a crowning achievement and that it came in Dallas, the first championship in Mavericks franchise history, 16 years after he was drafted by the team was fitting. Jason played two more years in the league before hanging up his sneakers and making a quick and successful move to the bench as a coach, first for the Nets and now the Bucks, where hopes he can bring a banner back to Milwaukee.
STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM
When Coach Kidd arrived in Wisconsin last summer, he inherited the NBA’s worst team. The Bucks finished the 2013-14 season with a 15-67 record, four games worse than any other team in the league. As he took the reins of the franchise, it looked like Jason was in for a long rebuild of the Bucks. But in just one season, he choreographed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in league history.
Mirroring the poise of their coach, Milwaukee was able to weather a storm in the first 30 games of the year that included losing top draft pick Jabari Parker to a season-ending knee injury. By the end of the 2014-15 season the team, appropriately nicknamed the Young Bucks with an average age of 23, finished with a record of 41-41 and claimed the number six seed in the Eastern Conference.
In the postseason, Milwaukee lost the first three games of their first-round series against the Chicago Bulls. But in typical Kidd style, the never-say-die Bucks took the next two games before falling in six. Still the dramatic shift in perception and results in Milwaukee, led by the arrival of Coach Kidd has quickly set the stage for a new era of Bucks basketball with high expectations for the future.
“I’ll honestly say I didn’t expect this kind of turnaround,” said Bucks general manager John Hammond. “There are some very special things that have happened this year. It’s been remarkable for me to watch and see. It’s my 25th year in the league and I’ve seen a lot of things, and I don’t know that I’ve seen anything like this.”
Despite their quick turnaround, the Bucks haven’t rested on their laurels in the least and with input from Coach Kidd they’ve continued to build upon the groundwork laid last season.
The building started late last season when, despite the fact that they were already in the midst of a successful season, the Bucks made a move geared toward the future as much as the present. At the trade deadline, Milwaukee shipped point guard Brandon Knight — a free agent to be — to Phoenix in a three-team trade that netted the Bucks former Syracuse Orangeman standout Michael Carter-Williams, a point guard in the J-Kidd mold that fits his system perfectly.
Then this offseason, Milwaukee made two moves to keep building on that fruitful future. First the Bucks managed to re-sign swingman Khris Middleton. Then, with a need for help in the frontcourt, Milwaukee made their biggest splash of the Kidd era, luring coveted free agent Greg Monroe to Milwaukee from Detroit. At a press conference announcing the moves, the 23-year-old Middleton, who averaged a career-high 13.4 points per game last season and hit countless clutch shots for the Bucks last season lauded Coach Kidd and what he’s meant to the team already in his short time in Milwaukee.
“We have a coach who played the game, who’s going to be a Hall of Famer, who won championships,” Middleton said. “You’ve got to listen to him, got to believe what he says, got to trust him.”
With one strong season and an exciting offseason in the books, the Bucks are now looking forward to taking yet another step forward in 2015-16 and Hammond is happy to have Jason leading the charge.
“This is a special thing, there’s nothing like winning. We had some leadership from some of our veteran guys, but I always say this: the true leadership came from this guy sitting right next to me,” Hammond said of Jason. “He did a great job in putting that team together and making them compete, wanting to compete every night and having the kind of season we had.”
