Jason Kidd is on the defensive for doing what he always did in forging a surefire Hall of Fame bound career for himself.
The same attributes that made Kidd such a terror and perennial All-Star over the course of his 19-year playing career aren’t serving him nearly as well in his second NBA life as a coach and apparently aspiring front office exec.
Word is the league’s No. 2 all-time assist leader tried to fast-break his way into greater power with the Brooklyn Nets by having the title of president of basketball operations added to his job description, only to be soundly rejected by equally hard-edged Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov.
With all that testosterone in the arena, you knew things were bound to come to this between the two alpha males sooner rather than later. Add to that, the 41-year-old Kidd has been further set off as of late by the five-year, $25 million deals Steve Kerr and Derek Fisher got from the Warriors and Knicks respectively, compared to the relatively meager $10.5 million Prokhorov hard-balled him into accepting a year ago and here we are.
Things were always so much simpler for Jason Kidd the player, his will and grit alone often times enough to propel him and his teammates to heights no one foresaw for them. Who can forget how Kidd willed his then New Jersey Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances beginning in 2001 with a team where Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, and Keith Van Horn were the other top players?
But there are no front office superstars, or at least very few of them, and you certainly don’t rise to that status after just one season in the game. Even Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, and Gregg Popovich still have their critics.
But Jason Kidd apparently only knows one way to play. Sources say he directly approached Prokhorov about his envisioned promotion, only to be essentially shown the door.
The competitor in Kidd then sent him scurrying for other options, and apparently he’s found one with the Milwaukee Bucks, where one-time financial advisor Marc Lasry and the team is desperate to extend the bulging publicity born of the team landing Jabari Parker in last week’s NBA draft. To now add Kidd only figures to add to the long struggling franchise’s Q score.
In short, after just one season Jason Kidd wants to go where few in the game have gone. Currently, only Popovich, the Clippers’ Doc Rivers, Detroit’s Stan Van Gundy, and Minnesota’s Flip Saunders own the kind of dual president/coach power Kidd is apparently seeking.
Now that’s fast-breaking, but then he wouldn’t be Jason Kidd without pushing the envelope.
