Everyone on planet Earth has one thing in common today, as we do every day: We are all getting older by the moment.
Jason Kidd’s retirement makes that truism hit home a little more, because I have become friendly with Kidd over the years through covering him since he came out of Cal as the kind of freakish point guard the likes of whom had rarely been seen before. When players you have covered for years upon years announce retirements, it makes you feel old. I am old enough (48) that I can tell you stories of working the late night shift at AP and watching Kidd mesmerize the Pac-10 with his uncanny floor vision and passing abilities, but I spare you that comparatively boring tale and tell you a few others.
Team USA, 2008: When training camp began for the U.S. Olympic team in Las Vegas, there was no gold medal for the United States to defend.
The reigning Olympic champion was Argentina, and the reigning World Champion was Spain. Kidd had been brought aboard by Jerry Colangelo to provide veteran leadership and a calming locker room presence, and he stood up on the team bus on the first day of practice and proclaimed “I am undefeated as a member of Team USA, and I plan to keep it that way.”
Kidd had been a member of the U.S. Olympic team in 2000, and I clearly recall the day we were in Melbourne, Australia, with the team trapped in its hotel because of a demonstration that had isolated them in their resort complex, and the news coming out of the States was that the New York Knicks were preparing to trade Patrick Ewing. Kidd was aghast at the move, saying there is no loyalty in sports if the Knicks would be willing to trade a franchise icon. (Charles Barkley later opined that the Knicks should suffer a 20-year curse for making that move, which netted them Luc Longley, Glen Rice, Travis Knicks, Vernon Maxwell, Vladimir Stepania, Lazaro Burrell, a first-round pick and two second-round picks.) The other Team USA members were similarly aghast, especially Gary Payton. My buddy Mike Wise, then of the New York Times, wrote a great lede a couple weeks later: “Greetings from Sydney, where the Knicks’ new center, Luc Longley, just got dominated by Frederic Weis.”
But back to 2008, and Kidd’s role with Team USA.
He was the starting point guard ahead of Chris Paul and Deron Williams, and he attempted only one shot during the entire tournament before tripling that total in the gold medal match against Spain, won by Team USA by the ridiculously high score of 118-107 in a game that was up for grabs with 3 minutes left before the Spaniards imploded and Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant made a pair of huge buckets.
That was Kidd’s final game with Team USA, and he retired from international play with a 56-0 record.
On the day prior to the gold medal game, I had a talk with Kidd at practice about what he believed the Spanish team’s tactics would be. Without hesitation, he answered that Spain would try to get under the skin of Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard, the team’s two most emotionally volatile players. Kidd made that fact known to ‘Melo and Howard, too, and both kept their cool in the heated situations that Kidd had warned them about.
That’s the type of leader he was for that team — good enough to be a starter, smart enough to get inside the heads of the opposition.
I also covered Kidd for a long time when he was with the New Jersey Nets during their glory days that began almost a decade ago, when he was married to Joumana (who was given a job by NBA Entertainment and often worked the locker room as a reporter. One time, Latrell Sprewell called out to her: “I remember you, Budweiser, right? Spree was poking fun at Joumana’s past job as a “Bud Girl” when she was single and trying to scratch out a living while simultaneously befriending several NBA players.
Kidd had the name “Joumana” tattooed on his ring finger — a tattoo that has since been removed with some of the most impressive laser surgery imaginable.
When the Kidd’s marriage was falling apart, there was an infamous night at the Meadowlands in a Nets-Rockets game when every member of the Houston bench kept looking across the court to the courtside seats in the southwest corner of the building.
Joumana was sitting there, and she was scrolling through Kidd’s cellphone and screaming at him — as the game was going on — about the names she was discovering. Joumana had sent the couple’s son, T.J., into the Nets’ locker room just prior to tipoff and told him to retrieve daddy’s phone.
The couple split shortly thereafter.
T.J. Kidd was a fixture around the Nets at the time, and the team even assigned him a locker stall in the corner. Chatting the kid up one night, the subject turned to Halloween and candy (I have a son of a similar age, and I spoke the language of 6-year-olds back them.)
I asked T.J. who he had dressed up as for Halloween, and his answer was a classic: “Brian Scalabrine.”
(I ran into T.J. at the Garden earlier this season. He was taller than me. See what I mean about how time flies?)
Kidd retires as one of the favorite players I have ever covered. He could be difficult and distant on occasions, but he always took the time to speak to me if I needed him alone — a byproduct of the time we spent together with Team USA in 2000 and 2008.
At the 2008 Olympics, he told me he had promised to give his Olympic gold medal to Elaine Wynn of the Wynn Resort and Casino in exchange for lifetime employment. I am not sure if that deal was ever consummated, but if it was, I wish him the best of luck in a future that should be filled with plenty of gambling and golf.
And if I could offer one suggestion to the folks at USA Basketball, it would be this: Now that Nate McMillan and Mike D’Antoni have jumped ship as assistant coaches, give some serious consideration to hiring Kidd as an assistant. Because at some point in 2016 in Rio, Kyrie Irving is going to need a pep talk and a strategy session. If he gets it from Kidd, the Americans’ chances of winning another gold medal will have improved.
Few people admired Kidd as much as Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski did, and I hope Kidd comes along for another Team USA voyage. They were always more fun with him present rather than absent, and maybe he can make one more speech on the team bus — “I don’t want my perfect record ruined, so I am not here to lose.”
Good luck, J.Kidd.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.