COLLEGE BASKETBALL: 1993-94 SEASON PREVIEW : Just a Flyby? : Kidd Is Starting Only His Second Season at Cal, but Already There’s Talk It May Be His Last at Berkeley

During a pickup basketball game last summer, Jason Kidd, a stunt pilot in high tops, was rolling, banking, gliding, spinning, and yes, flying toward the basket. Ryan Jamison, a 6-foot-11 University of California teammate, couldn’t believe it.

“He was coming down on a (fast) break and threw (the ball) off the backboard to dunk over me,” said Jamison, a junior from Loyola High.

“The only reason he didn’t dunk was because I was too slow to get out of the way.”

Later, Kidd was asked to recall his favorite aerial display.

“Back in high school,” he said. “Jumping over somebody and laying the ball up. When I could jump. Now I just stick around and do layups.”

But for how long?

As Kidd, 20, begins his sophomore season at Cal, the question arises: Will he stay or will he go?

That question will tail him through gymnasiums and arenas

across America this season as he tries to return Cal to the Final Four for the first time since 1960.

It might not be fair, but there it is. Few expect college basketball’s preeminent point guard to be wearing a Golden Bear uniform next season.

Hasn’t it been this way since he starred at St. Joseph of Notre Dame High in the Bay Area city of Alameda?

“They harped on it in his senior year, (saying) that he wouldn’t even be in college,” said his mother, Anne, who lives in Oakland with Jason’s father, Steve, and sisters, Denise and Kim.

Kidd fueled further talk when he evaluated his status in last June’s NBA draft, suggesting he might have been a top-10 pick had he made himself available.

Was he kidding?

No, simply planning. Last season, Kidd was a first-team All-Pacific 10 Conference guard and was selected freshman of the year by some national publications after averaging 13 points, 7.6 assists and 3.8 steals a game.

A bulky 6 feet 4, 215 pounds, Kidd prepared for the 1993-94 season by regularly playing against NBA players. He also played in Europe with a U.S. college all-star team. And he has become close with Chris Webber of the Golden State Warriors. Webber left Michigan after his sophomore season last spring, signing a $74.4-million contract.

“To have a source and comparison of the same age in your own back yard is definitely positive,” Kidd told reporters.

Said Webber: “Whether he’s good enough to play pro, I don’t know. I’m not a guard.”

Mark Jackson of the Clippers, a successful NBA guard, was more emphatic. He, Byron Scott and Brian Shaw were among the pros who played with Kidd this summer.

“There’s no question that he could come in this league and start and do the job for anybody,” Jackson said. “He’s the best in the country. He can flat out play.”

Todd Bozeman, in his first full season as Cal’s coach, has tried to defuse such talk. Bozeman has spent lots of practice time emphasizing the importance of the here and now.

Kidd has mastered his coach’s mantra. After the team’s first game, an 81-74 victory over Santa Clara in the preseason NIT, he said the NBA is not on his mind.

“I haven’t even thought about it,” he said. “I’m just trying to have fun.”

He repeats this sentiment to anyone who asks. His mother, a systems operator at a local bank, echoes it.

Taking a cue from Bozeman, Kidd adds: “We could have this taken away from us at any time if we get injured or something else happens, a death. Basketball is supposed to be fun.”

Still, the question is there.

“It’s a lot of pressure because it is thrown at him every day,” Anne Kidd said.

If it were her decision, Kidd would not leave Cal without a degree.

“But this is Jason’s life, not mine,” she said.

Bozeman, 29, agrees.

“If he leaves, so be it,” he said. “That’s what he’s supposed to do. That’s what you go to college to do, to put yourself in position to be a successful, productive individual.”

In some ways, the subject is uncharted territory for Cal, that bastion of liberal student politics. The Bears, ranked 12th nationally, last won a men’s national championship in 1959, well before the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War protests.

The school is not sure where major college athletics fits in. It is not used to being a farm team for pro franchises and prides itself on keeping athletics in perspective.

Now, at a politically correct, multicultural institution, the intelligentsia has become enamored of a serious student of basketball.

Despite a financial crisis in higher education, there is talk of a new campus arena. Five home games are scheduled for the spacious Oakland Coliseum this season to accommodate the Bears’ following. School officials had to turn away 3,000 who wanted to watch the season-opening practice, an event that began at midnight.

“It could have turned ugly out there,” one official said.

Cal’s inexperience as a major sports power was never more evident than in the handling of the Lou Campanelli situation. After 7 1/2 seasons, Campanelli was fired last February for verbally abusing players. He was replaced by his assistant, Bozeman, whose loyalty was immediately questioned by many in the coaching fraternity.

Last summer, Bob Bockrath, the athletic director who had fired Campanelli, left Cal for Texas Tech, ostensibly for a better job. He has not been replaced.

Perhaps Bockrath knew something. The furor over Campanelli’s firing has never quite faded.

Campanelli has done his part to keep it bubbling. He sued Bockrath and the school, charging that his reputation had been irreparably damaged. A federal judge dismissed the case. Campanelli’s attorney, former San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto, said he would refile a wrongful-termination suit in state court.

Campanelli’s presence lingers around Kidd like cigar smoke. As the country’s most coveted freshman recruit last season, Kidd was embroiled in the controversy over the firing, becoming the symbol of the rebellious athlete. Although he denied it, many thought he helped orchestrate Campanelli’s demise.

“I think (it) helped him grow three years right off the bat,” Anne Kidd said.

Instead of crumbling under the pressure of a stormy national debate, Kidd and the Bears responded with an 11-2 record after the firing, including victories over Louisiana State and Duke in the NCAA tournament.

“After everything that happened, I think we showed a lot of character,” junior forward Alfred Grigsby said.

Perhaps Kidd’s defining moment occurred against Duke and star point guard Bobby Hurley. After Hurley had led a furious rally, Kidd’s off-balance scoop shot sealed Cal’s emotional 82-77 victory, dethroning the two-time defending champions.

Kidd characterized that shot as a turning point for him, but realizes the ghosts of a season past have not been exorcised.

“If we start slow, the question of whether Cal did the right thing will be right out there in bold, black letters,” Kidd was quoted as saying by Long Island Newsday. “Most people think it was wrong for players to go against their coach. . . . But to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.”

Dan Boggan, the vice chancellor who with Bockrath fired Campanelli, said recently the decision was as important as any for the basketball program.

Another decision, one limiting reporters’ access to Kidd and Lamond Murray, has exasperated local media representatives. The players can be interviewed only after selected games. Bay Area reporters say that shielding the Bears’ stars is another example of Cal’s inability to handle big-time athletics.

Bozeman and the team have other concerns. In the season opener, Kidd, looking older with a goatee, was impressive, scoring 27 points to match his career high. In the next game, he had 22 in a loss to Kansas.

But, and there’s always a but, his outside shooting remains suspect.

“I think everyone knows he has to become a better shooter,” the Clippers’ Jackson said.

Addressing the weakness, Kidd spent part of the summer shooting in empty gyms. He also started wearing soft contact lenses.

Although Kidd made seven of 15 shots against Santa Clara, his touch was questioned during a news conference. When asked about one shot that missed the rim completely, Kidd replied: “I thought I was shooting the ball good. It just wasn’t going in.”

The slightest of smiles appeared on Kidd’s round face. The season had started, and for once he did not have to talk about the past . . . or the future.

For once, there was interest in the present.

Times staff writer Chris Baker contributed to this story.