Kidd Rocks
Excerpt
hey
say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Anyone who saw Jason Kidd run
the point for the New Jersey Nets in 2001–02 would have a hard time disagreeing.
The 29-year-old point guard, bestowed upon the formerly hapless franchise
by the Phoenix Suns, took the long-anticipated final step in his basketball
career and elevated his game to a championship level. And as Jason ascended,
so too did the Nets. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
After fashioning
the best record in the East, the Nets gained experience and confidence in
victories over the Indiana Pacers and Charlotte Hornets in the playoffs. In
the conference finals, Jason played the Celtic defense like a Stradivarius,
and stepped up time and again when Net fans feared the team was about to quit.
At this unlikely place, on this unlikely team, in this unlikely uniform, Jason
Kidd grasped that which had eluded him for nearly a decade: unquestioning
respect...and a shot at basketball’s brass ring.
The road from the Oakland ‘burbs to the NBA Finals had once seemed preordained
for California’s most famous child hoops prodigy. There were articles
penned about Jason’s prowess while he was still in grade school. He had
the thing you can’t teach, people said; he knew what his teammates were
going to do and where they were going to be, often before they knew themselves.
And he was totally unselfish.
That rarest of combinations earned Jason a unique status on the asphalt of Oakland’s parks and playgrounds. He was from Alameda, the “right” side of the tracks, which meant he was an automatic outsider. Seriously, the Kidds owned horses. But the playas recognized Jason’s genius, knew he could make them better, and brought him into their world. There he encountered a bruising mentor named Gary Payton—class of the Class of ’86 at Skyline High and star of the Oregon Ducks.
Payton, on track for an All-NBA career of his own, knew Jason could run an offense, but was he willing to play mad D? The lessons were doled out in elbows and measured in pain. “I used to beat up on him to make him tough,” Payton laughs. “He used to go home and tell his mother. But he’d come back every day and do something different to stop me from what I was doing to him.”
“I learned from
the best,” Jason likes to say.
The first recruiting letter arrived when the boy was 14, before he even got
his feet wet as a freshman at St. Joseph of Notre Dame. “Already?”
Jason thought. He knew he was good, but this was stupid. Fast forward a couple
of seasons and the recruiters look pretty smart. With Jason at the helm, the
Pilots are practically unbeatable. Two state championships—not bad for
school with only 600 kids. Coach Frank LaPorte has to build in time for his
point guard’s pre-game and post-game autograph sessions. Other kids are
wearing Jason Kidd t-shirts. Outside of Joe Montana and the Bash Brothers,
he’s the biggest thing in the Bay Area.
By the start of his senior year, Jason narrowed his “official” list of college choices to five. Cal was not on the list. Jason never “officially” visited Cal. Jason had zero contact with Cal coach Lou Campanelli. So what did he do? Jason chose Cal. In the soul-crushing world of college basketball recruiting, it was the ultimate no-look pass.
Jason picked the Golden Bears because they were close to home—close enough, in fact, that he had been hanging around their gym and working out with their varsity players. He liked how the college guys turned his passes into buckets. Jason did not like how Campanelli abused his teammates, and stood up to him. Out went Campanelli, in came assistant Todd Bozeman, five years removed from a gig as a FedEx driver. Now that’s power. A few weeks later, Jason carried Cal into the 1993 NCAA Tournament and hit a couple of amazing game-winners. The first came in a forest of seven-footers wearing LSU jerseys. The second derailed the Duke Blue Devils on their way to a three-peat, and earned Jason the cover of Sports Illustrated.
After a sensational sophomore season that saw him lead the nation in assists, Jason decided to go pro.
