LOVE OF THE GAME

Jason Kidd’s story is a lesson in patience, proof that good things truly do come to those who wait.

Jason embodied the qualities of a Hall of Fame player throughout the course of his NBA career. He was fiercely competitive; he was devoted to playing perfect team basketball; he was a tireless worker and student of the game, meticulously professional in everything he did on the court. Every team he ever played for was dramatically more successful after his arrival, and dramatically less so after his departure.

But for 16 years on the court, J-Kidd’s work went without the ultimate prize: a NBA title. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Jason had led his team to the postseason in 14 of those 16 years. He twice took a Nets team that was considered an also-ran before his arrival to the NBA Finals, coming up just games short of a ring.

In his life, J-Kidd learned many things from his father, Steve Kidd, but paramount among them was to stay the course and remain patient, as Jason told the San Jose Mercury News:

“With my dad, [winning a championship] was the No. 1 thing. Talking with him when I was younger, or seeing him on the road while playing in the NBA, I always told him we were going to win a championship here soon. I think he agreed. I also think he was willing to be honest about the fact that there are some better teams out there than you.

“But to take this long, I think he would probably tell me, ‘The thing I’ve always told you was you have to be patient. It doesn’t always happen when you think it will.’ He always told me it doesn’t happen when you want it to happen, but it will.”

In 2011, it finally happened for Jason Kidd. No. 2 and the Mavericks put together one of the more memorable runs in NBA playoff history. Dallas dug deep to beat the Blazers, then swept the defending champion Lakers. They battled at the OK corral and finally fanned the flames of the Heat to become the last team standing. All Jason’s hard work paid off when on June 12, 2011 he hoisted the Larry O’Brien NBA championship trophy, the ultimate piece of excellence in a Hall-of-Fame career.

Certainly Jason’s 19-year NBA journey is a example of the value of patience and hard work, of leadership and dignity. But beyond all his attributes, beyond the intangibles that Jason Kidd has exhibited for thousands of hardwood days, he is simply a uniquely talented athlete, blessed with once-in-a-generation court vision that borders on extrasensory perception.

From his youth to the present, Jason has left coaches, teammates, and onlookers awestruck, making the on-court impossible possible, all the while evolving into one of the statesmen and leaders of today’s professional game.

On September 7, 2018 in Springfield, Massachusetts, J-Kidd recieved the highest honor in the sport, induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as part of one of the greatest classes of all-time with Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Maurice Cheeks and Rod Thorn.

Gary Payton served as Jason’s presenter, their ties going back to the hard courts of the Bay Area. J-Kidd praised Payton as one of the men that helped show him the way to the top, and thanked Payton for inspiring him to be great.

“I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be here in front of you all without Gary giving me the confidence to play like I have through the years,” he said. “Thanks for bringing this full circle, being with me from when it started and now being here today.”

The night was a great time to reflect on a legendary NBA career, one in which Kidd earned 10 All-Star selections, co-Rookie of the Year honors shared with Hill, two Olympic gold medals and of course that championship achieved in Dallas.

With all that Jason has achieved on a basketball court, it seems improbable that he could have accomplished even more off it. He has. One of the most community-oriented players in the NBA, Jason and his foundation have given time and resources generously to support hundreds of causes, literally transforming the lives of thousands of individuals. For Jason – dating back to his rookie season – the ability to give is one of the greatest blessings of his success. As he told CNN then:

“Role model is something that comes with my job description. It’s a given that kids will look up to you.”

However, it wasn’t just kids who looked up to Jason, but players too. So it seemed fitting that just weeks after announcing his retirement from the league after 19 seasons as a player, Jason was back in the game, taking on one of the biggest challenges of his life as a coach.

Now, nearly two decades after he first captured their imagination, the basketball world is still looking on in wonder at 10-time All-Star, NBA superstar, first ballot hall-of famer, Olympic champion, NBA champion and now NBA coach, Jason Kidd.

YOUTH

Born in San Francisco, California, on March 23, 1973, to parents Steve and Anne, Jason Frederick Kidd played soccer – not basketball – until he was in the second grade. Shortly after he began playing competitive basketball, however, Jason was mesmerizing anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of him on the court.

His high school basketball coach, Frank LaPorte, saw Jason for the first time at a summer youth basketball tournament. As LaPorte told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1991:

”He did some things out there even that amazed (college) coaches,” LaPorte said. ”One approached me and wondered if he was a junior (in high school). I said, ‘No he’s a freshman.’ Everybody knew. As an eighth-grader, Jason Kidd was the talk of the town.”

Another of Jason’s admirers was none other than Gary Payton. Five years Jason’s senior, Payton hailed from the same Oakland neighborhood, and took the young prodigy under his wing.

“Jason grew up just playing on the basketball courts,” Payton recalled yesterday. “But he didn’t know nothing about going to playgrounds, where a lot of guys are going to talk trash to him, challenge his manhood and things like that.”

“We started going to places where people are really rough and play physical basketball and talk a lot of smack. He didn’t ever know nothing about that. He was always in a gym where the guys didn’t come from streets or anything like that.”

“As soon as he started playing that way and starting changing his game, he started getting a lot of heart and a lot of courage.”

Emulating Payton and Magic Johnson – his childhood idol – Jason’s legend grew. By the time Jason reached his junior year at St. Joseph High School in Alameda, California, he was a national sensation. He took St. Joseph to two straight state championships and accumulated a host of honors in his senior year: the Naismith Award as nation’s top high school player as a senior, averaging 25.0 points, 10.0 assists, 7.0 rebounds and 7.0 steals, and Parade and USA Today High School Player of the Year.

COLLEGE BOUND

Every major college basketball program in America wanted Jason, who by the end of high school was 6’4” and 200 pounds. The decision came down to two schools: Kansas and the University of California, Berkeley. Jason chose Cal for a simple reason: “It was a life decision…It came down to staying home and letting my parents see me play like they did in high school.”

Cal basketball fans could not have been happier. The year before Jason arrived, the Bears finished 10-18, ninth in the Pacific-10 Conference. At the end of his freshman season, the National Freshman of the Year led California to a 21-9 record – second in the Pac-10 – and the NCAA tournament for only the second time in 30 years. The Bears reached the Sweet Sixteen thanks to two game-winning shots by Jason – the first in Cal’s opening round game against LSU, the second against two-time defending champion Duke.

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote:

Someone dubbed his twisting, last-second layup to beat LSU the “Pretzel Shot.”

What about the scrambling layup off his own deflected pass to beat Duke?

“It wasn’t the Pretzel Shot,” Kidd said. “This one won’t have a name.”

A year later, in his second and last collegiate season, Jason led Cal back to the NCAA tournament – at that point, the first back-to-back trips since the 1958-59 seasons. He became the first sophomore in the history of the Pac-10 to be named its Player of the Year, and broke Kevin Johnson’s records for assists and steals – which he accumulated in four years at California – in only two seasons.

The current California media guide sums up Jason’s college legacy:

“Although his Cal career spanned just two seasons, Kidd had perhaps the greatest impact ever on the Cal basketball program.”

WELCOME TO THE NBA

Jason was the second overall pick in the 1994 NBA draft, chosen after Purdue’s Glenn Robinson and before Duke’s Grant Hill by the Dallas Mavericks. His impact was immediate. Dallas was 13-69 in the season before Jason arrived; a year later, the Mavericks finished 36-46. The league, fans and media took notice. At the end of the season, Jason and Hill shared Rookie of the Year honors.

As the Dallas Morning News wrote:

Hill had TV commercials before he ever played an NBA game.

Unlike Kidd, he was born into a wealthy family. And, with two months left in the season, he seemed headed toward a runaway Rookie of the Year victory based on popularity alone.

But voters noted Kidd’s late-season surge, as he led Dallas to a 23-game turnaround from last season. Kidd and Hill each received 43 first-place votes. Milwaukee forward Glenn Robinson finished third with 15 first-place votes.

“For me, I just went out there and let my talent and my game speak for itself,” Kidd said. “Some people want to do TV commercials and be seen that way, but I thought if I could play well, the writers would vote on talent and not on who’s seen.”

Now, though, by winning the most prestigious post-season award ever won by a Maverick, Kidd is about to become the most nationally visible Maverick ever.

Jason would remain in Dallas for only one and a half more seasons, however. On December 26, 1996, in a shocking move, the Mavericks traded Jason, Tony Dumas and Loren Meyer to the Phoenix Suns for Sam Cassell, Michael Finley, and A.C. Green.

Dick Motta, Jason’s coach for his first two NBA seasons, voiced what many thought at the time:

“I don’t know who got the best of it…But usually, when a star is traded, the team that gets the star comes out on top…I had him for two years and I still think he’s going to be a star. There are some things he still has to work on, but I do believe he will be a star in this league.”

Dallas finished that season 24-58. Phoenix finished 40-42 and reached the postseason.

PHOENIX DAYS

A year after joining the Phoenix Suns, Jason was doing what he had done for every other team he had played for – revitalizing it.

In December of 1997, Phoenix was 47-31, while Dallas was 20-63. Suns coach Danny Ainge told the Fort-Worth Star Telegram that acquiring Jason still one of the most surprising and welcome things to happen to him and his team:

“I’m not saying it was a steal because we hated to give up Michael Finley,” Ainge said. “But gosh, any time you can get your hands on a player like Jason Kidd, it’s a gift. We unwrap him 82 times a year, and it’s just as energetic, exciting and pleasurable every time. “

Phoenix finished the season 56-26, its best record in three years. The Suns would make the playoffs in every one of Jason’s five seasons with the franchise, reaching the conference semifinals in 1999-2000, where they fell 4-1 to the eventual league champions, the Los Angeles Lakers.

That season – during which Jason led the NBA in assists – was Jason’s best-to-date, and it came on the heels of personal tragedy. As he explained to Sports Illustrated in December of 2000:

His determination to make the most of what he has is also a result of what he has lost. In May 1999, three days after he had hugged his father, Steve, goodbye at the end of a visit to Phoenix, Kidd got a late-night call from his parents’ home in Oakland. Steve Kidd, 61, had died of a heart attack. It is no coincidence that Jason has played with a renewed vigor since the loss of his father, that he has stayed even longer after practice… He realizes that it’s not the heavy minutes that eventually wear a man down but the wasted ones. “My dad’s death made me value things more,” Kidd says, “knowing God can take things away from you, just like that.”

At the same time, Jason continued to accumulate individual honors, making the NBA All-Star team for the second and third time (1998, 2000) and being named to the NBA All-Defensive team every season. In every year with Phoenix, he ranked in the league’s top 10 players in steals.

During the summer of 2000, Jason also enjoyed playing with Team USA in Sydney, helping to bring America its last Olympic gold medal in basketball. One of three team captains, Jason averaged six points and five rebounds, shot 51.6% from the field and 50% from three-point range, and led the squad in assists (4.4) and steals (1.1) per game.

 A HOME IN JERSEY

Despite all his success both in the NBA and as an Olympian, for the second time in his career, Jason was the center of another sudden blockbuster trade. During the summer of 2001, Jason was sent to the New Jersey Nets for Stephon Marbury.

Even in print, New Jersey president Rod Thorn’s enthusiasm was evident. As he told the New York Times:

“He’s a four-time All-Star, all-N.B.A. first team. Stephon is a terrific player. Kidd is a passer, defender, rebounder, and the type of player that I think the places he’s been, he tends to make other players better.”

Shortly after joining the Nets, Jason made a bold prediction: New Jersey, winners of 26 games in 2000-01, would win at least 40 games.

“Hopefully, I haven’t put too much pressure on Rod Thorn and Byron Scott,” he said.

Jason’s prediction fell woefully short of what New Jersey would actually accomplish in the coming year. The basketball world saw precisely how misguided the Kidd-Marbury trade was when Phoenix played New Jersey on December 6, 2001. The Nets won, 106-87, and they did it on the back of 13 assists from their new point guard.

As Scott told New York Newsday:

“It was a great, great win for our guys. We love having Jason here. He’s turned our team around.”

Jason completed resurrected the wayward Nets, taking the same team from a season earlier, leading it to a 52-30 record, and propelling it inconceivably into the NBA Finals. Then teammate Kenyon Martin said that all praise was due to Jason’s leadership. As he told Newsday:

“Jason is the one who gave us the confidence to know

[the end of the game] belongs to us…Good teams play their best when they need to. When we are in a tough position, we don’t panic.”

Thorn spoke glowingly of his superstar’s abilities.

“Jason’s not a real loud guy,” Nets president Rod Thorn said. “He doesn’t stand up and give speeches. It’s more about how he plays and conducts himself. What he does do is play extremely hard on both ends of the court, which is a tremendous thing for other players to see. When your best player is unselfish and carries himself professionally, then most of your other players will, too.”

Individually, it was one of the most phenomenal seasons of Jason’s career. He finished with a league-high 171 steals, ranked an NBA fourth-best in assists per game, and finished second to Tim Duncan in the MVP race.

Still, even Jason was amazed by what New Jersey had accomplished.

“If somebody was to tell me after I got traded that I was going to be in the Finals, I would have thought they were just as crazy as when they traded me…We kind of pushed the envelope farther than anybody would have expected.”

On the eve of New Jersey’s Finals showdown against the Los Angeles Lakers, David Steele of the San Francisco Chronicle did a thorough job assessing Jason’s impact on the Nets that inaugural season, and placing his career in context:

Kidd’s departure from the Suns last summer made no basketball sense…the basketball world’s response to the deal, which was repeated by [Kobe] Bryant on Tuesday: “What in the world is Phoenix doing?”

What the Suns were doing with Kidd, in their defense, was losing in the first round, four times in five years. The top-heavy Western Conference deserves more of the blame for that than Kidd does. Still, not even the comparative weakness of the East can dilute the feat of overcoming the Nets’ wretched legacy. Any doubts about whether Kidd could translate his gifts into a championship, or anything close, are gone. This has been a transformation and a validation.

New Jersey would lose to Los Angeles in five games, but Jason status as one the greatest point guards and floor leaders in NBA history was firmly established – particularly when he led the Nets back to the NBA Finals a year later. Unfortunately, Jason and New Jersey fell again, 4-2, to the San Antonio Spurs.

Jason would lead New Jersey to the playoffs in every year that followed, reaching the conference semi-finals three more times. He would also be named to the NBA’s All-Defensive First or Second Team for six straight seasons.

COMING FULL CIRCLE

In February of 2008, Jason and Malik Allen were traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Devin Harris, Trenton Hassell, Keith Van Horn, DeSagana Diop and Maurice Ager. Unlike the departure from his previous two franchises, Jason left New Jersey on amicable terms, with both parties ready for a change.

The return to Dallas marked another opportunity for Jason to win a championship, and to end his career where it began. As the Dallas Morning News reported:

Kidd has been handed the quarterback role by a franchise that blew a 2-0 lead in the 2006 NBA Finals then suffered a historic first-round ouster after winning 67 games last season. This franchise’s expectation level and Kidd’s charge could not be clearer.

“In Jersey, I tried to help show those guys how to win. Once they believed, that was it.”

In Dallas, they believed from the start. Jason joined perennial All-Star Dirk Nowitzki on a loaded Mavericks roster and expectations were sky high from the jump. So high, that they seemed almost unattainable. The Mavs consistently won 50 games per year, but when the playoffs came along, things went awry.

Three years into Jason’s return to Big D, the Mavs had advanced out of the first round of the postseason just once. Even in that season, 2008-2009 when they reached the Western semifinals, they fell in just five games to Denver. But Dallas stayed the course and owner Mark Cuban remained committed to the cause adding pieces to make the team more complete.

Meanwhile, Jason added something to his game as well. Late during his time in New Jersey, J-Kidd began working with a shooting coach to try to attain an effective three-point jump shot. He had noticed teams sagging off him when he had the ball and understood that in order to keep defenses honest, he had to add to his repertoire.

“You’re never too young or too old to always improve your game,” he said. “For me at 38, I’ve always felt that I had to improve my shooting if I want to be on the floor and help my teammates out. As I’ve gotten older, it’s just about timing, and not so much scoring 20 points or having 15 assists or 10 rebounds. It’s just being at the right place at the right time, and feeling that your teammates believe in you.”

In his first half season back in Dallas (29 games), J-Kidd shot 46 percent from deep. He made 40 percent of his treys the following year and then a career high 42.5 in 2009-2010. Jason thanks shooting coach Bob Thate for helping him a new facet to extend his career.

“I think he plays a big reason why I’m still playing,” he told NBA.com. “If I wanted to continue to keep playing, I had to make shots from behind that line,” And so we started working extremely hard on the three-point shot and just shooting in general. But when I was in Jersey, we sat down and talked about it.”

In 2011, Jason passed Dale Ellis and Peja Stojakovic to move into third on the NBA’s all-time list of three-pointers made.

FINALLY

The Mavs pieced together another 50-win season in 2011 and entered the postseason as the three-seed in the West. Many pundits predicted another first round exit, but to Jason, from the start of the year, the aura around the team felt different.

They overcame adversity at every turn, dealing with injuries to top-scorers Dirk Nowitzki and Caron Butler in the regular season and Jason believes that experience prepared them to face more obstacles in the postseason.

“I think just going through the journey of those injuries made us a better team, because we had to do a lineup change…and we didn’t skip a beat. We just kept playing. That just shows the character of this team.”

In the first round of the playoffs, the Mavs took a 2-0 series lead, only to surrender it over the next two in Portland. After Dallas blew a 24-point lead in Game 4, the series was tied at two.

“We have to stay together,” Jason pleaded to his teammates after the Game 4 loss. “Then we just have to finish.”

The Mavs regrouped and won the next two games to advance to the next round and a showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers.

In that series, Jason took on the task of guarding Lakers star Kobe Bryant down the stretch in games and managed to limit the LA scorer’s options.

“All I know is I said, ‘I’ll guard him’ and I wanted to make it tough,” Kidd said. “I’m a competitor. And maybe being old, too, maybe I’m hard-headed and naive enough to think I can slow him down.”

But Jason did slow Kobe and all at once the Lakers’ three-year run came to a halt as J-Kidd and the Mavs swept LA out of the playoffs. Dallas moved on to the West Finals where they would face a young Oklahoma City Thunder team. After splitting the first two games, the Mavs won the next three to advance to the NBA Finals. Jason came up big in games three and four, including a tie-breaking triple in overtime, which sealed a game four win.

“On our team he’s a superstar. That’s how important he is to us,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said of J-Kidd. “He has the ability to process situations at a different and at a higher level than a lot of us. It’s part of his genius as a player and as a leader.”

The Mavericks advanced to the Finals for the first time since 2006 to face LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and the Miami Heat. The series was a slugfest from the outset with Miami taking game one. The Heat seemed well on their way to taking a 2-0 lead in the series when they went up by 15 points in the fourth quarter of Game 2. But the resilient Mavs found another way to comeback and turned the series around.

“When we looked at each other and we found a way to win, being down 15,” No. 2 said. “We were in that same boat in the Oklahoma series. We were in the same boat in the Portland series, where — actually, we were in that same situation in every series we were in. Portland we give up the 23-point lead and lose, and we looked at each other and said that can’t happen again. And so L.A. Game 1 we’re down 16 or 15 and we find a way to win that. So I think we were a little bit comfortable playing from behind.”

The Mavs won two of the next three games and entered Game 6 in Miami with a two chances to close. But all J-Kidd and company needed was one, as they finished the Heat in six to claim the NBA crown. Jason told ESPN Radio New York’s Mike Lupica that the journey was well worth it:

“This is what I put the uniform on for is to try to win a championship. You start in October and the journey will take you up-and-down and sometimes it’ll make yourself question what I am still doing playing? Cause I don’t think it’s going to happen, but that’s the time you have to dig deeper and work harder and that’s what I did this season.”

Following the championship run, Jason made it clear that he has no plans to hang up his sneakers and the Mavericks were happy to have him back in the chase for another championship.

“Jason Kidd’s DNA is all over this thing,” coach Carlisle said of the title. “You don’t see some of the gaudy statistics in terms of points scored or things like that, but the way he has facilitated our team on the court with his leadership ability, his knowledge of our team, the example he sets by playing with a certain level of intensity…on the other hand he’s extremely cool under pressure.

“He is one of the all-time greats. There is absolutely no question about it. For Jason Kidd, this moment completely validates his career as being one of those super-super-super-superstars.”

A BITE FROM THE BIG APPLE

Jason spent the following year in Dallas, where a run at back-to-back titles ended abruptly in a four-game first-round sweep at the hands of the same Oklahoma City team the Mavs had beaten in five in the Western Conference Finals one-year earlier.

After the season, J-Kidd had to decide where to continue his long, illustrious NBA career. While Jason mulled a contract offer from Dallas to return to the Mavs, he received an offer from the New York Knicks he just couldn’t pass up.

Jason’s decision to sign with the Knicks came as a surprise to the sports world, but Jason joined New York because he believed they offered the best chance for him to add another NBA championship to his legacy.

“This is a great opportunity for me to help the Knicks win. Our goal is to try and win a championship.” he said. “Looking at the roster, it’s a no brainer that they have multiple pieces and the right coach. The history here is so deep and when you talk about the best place to play in the world – it’s the Garden.”

In Jason’s lone year with the Knicks, he helped the franchise reach new heights while instilling some of his leadership principles in his teammates. With J-Kidd running the point as both a starter and a reserve, New York won 50 games for the first time since the 1999-2000 season and their first Atlantic Division crown since the 1993-94 season.

Perhaps Jason’s most memorable moment of his only season with the Knicks came at the arena he will be calling home as a coach. In a tightly contested crosstown battle between the Knicks and Nets, Jason, who had missed the first meeting between two teams — a Nets win — due to injury, hit a three-pointer with 24 seconds left to break a 97-97 tie and lead his Knicks to a huge win just over a month into the season.

However, as coach Mike Woodson noted, the most valuable thing Jason brought to the Knicks was not something that could be quantified statistically.

“Veteran leadership on and off the court was a huge factor for our team that recorded 54 victories and an Atlantic Division crown,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “Jason provided an incredible voice inside our locker room and I considered it an honor to say I coached him.

In the postseason, the Knicks got over another hurdle that had long haunted the franchise, win New York’s first playoff series win since 2000, a four games to two victory over the Boston Celtics.

The Knicks fell short of their goal of a championship in the next round, losing the Eastern Conference Semifinals in six games to the Indiana Pacers. Jason took a few weeks after that loss to think and decided that after 19 years and 1,549 games in the NBA, it was time to hang it up.

“My time in professional basketball has been an incredible journey, but one that must come to an end after 19 years,” he said. “As I reflect on my time with the four teams I represented in the NBA, I look back fondly at every season and thank each and every one of my teammates and coaches that joined me on the court.”

He ended his career sixth all-time in regular season games played at 1,391, second all-time in assists and steals at 12,091 and 2,684 respectively, and third all-time in three-pointers made at 1,988. And despite scoring being secondary among his tasks, he’s well into the Top 100 in all-time NBA scorers at 71st with 17,529 points. Among the accolades he earned, Jason was a 10-time NBA All-Star, a five-time First Team All-NBA selection and a four-time First Team All-Defense selection.

HALL OF FAME

In 2018, Jason was elected on the first ballot to the Basketball Hall of Fame along with Steve Nash, Maurice Cheeks and his longtime rival and friend, Grant Hill.