Wake Up With An NBA Countdown: Jason Kidd
Good morning everybody, happy Thursday! For today’s countdown I wanted to get back to highlighting the dominance of a certain player, and I figured why not get back into it with one of the best point guards of all time. If you’re around my age of 31, you remember Jason Kidd for a variety of reasons, not all great, but the fact is he was one of the point guards that had a huge impact on my basketball fandom growing up. He was so good, he joined fellow point guard beast Steve Nash as a 2018 NBA Hall OF Fame inductee.
What I loved about watching Jason Kidd was that despite not really being able to shoot (career 40/34% shooter) he was still super effective. They don’t call him Mr. Triple Double for nothing, and his all around game stood out at a time when people weren’t really snagging triple doubles as consistently as Russell Westbrook does nowadays. I always found it funny that for a guy that was never really considered an outside threat, Kidd took the 6th most 3PA in league history, and made 1,988 which is good for 9th all time. Granted part of that most likely has to do with the fact that he basically played for 20 years, but that’s still impressive no matter how you slice it. Kidd won the 1994 ROY, was a 10x All Star, made 5 All NBA First teams, 1 All NBA Second team, and when it came to defense was an absolute stud. I’m talking 4 All Defensive First teams and 5 All Defensive Second teams. Thankfully he got his ring with the 2011 Mavericks, where he played 35 minutes a night as a 37 year old (9.3/4.5/7.3) with 39/37% splits, and did you know he made the playoffs every year of his career from ages 23 through 39? That feels good. He even made it as a Knick in his last year!
By far, when it comes to Jason Kidd, my favorite part about his game was clearly his vision and his passing. I remember first seeing him play as a pre-teen and I had never seen anyone pass like him before. I remember on school vacation when I was younger in the late 90s we as a family would always go to Arizona and finding a way to hit up a Suns game was always the play. Seeing as how he had legit stints with the Suns, Nets, and Mavericks, his game evolved with each destination. Coming in as a Maverick he showed that he belonged right away. A starter from Day 1, this was where we saw Kidd show that scoring potential, but the passing was real as hell. The problem was he just wasn’t that efficient. Then once he became a Sun, his passing went to another level. He led the league in assists in 3 of his 5 seasons as a Sun. As the league progressed and he ended up on the Nets, this was where we started to see Kidd improve his outside shot. It was also in New Jersey that we saw his rebounding take a bit of a leap, seeing as how he averaged his most rebounds per game as a Net. Then once he came back to DAL, he was the savvy veteran who didn’t really score all that much but had his fingerprints all over the game anyway.
One of the few NBA players of my lifetime that was still super effective into his late 30s, watching Jason Kidd play the game of basketball was truly something awesome. That’s why we’re going to look at his 45 best assists today. As always if there’s a player or type of play you want to wake up with every day just list it in the comments below. Otherwise, enjoy the nice long video to start your day, and have yourself a great Thursday!