The New Kidd On The Block : He’s a Bit of Magic for Mavericks

The 1980s meet the 21st Century:

Magic Johnson sits in the stands at the All-Star game in a blue suit, wife Cookie beside him, watching as electrifying Jason Kidd whistles a look-away bullet to Clyde Drexler under the basket. Drexler, recognizing a challenge, doesn’t catch the ball, just redirects it one-handed to Charles Barkley on the other side of the lane for a layup.

It’s the good old days all over again. Johnson wants to tear off his jacket, run down the aisle and join in: Here I come, Jason, wait for me!

“It was nice!” says Johnson, laughing. “I was like, oh, yeah! I wanted to be out there then!”

It was brief too. Kidd had five assists in the first nine minutes, even if some of his teammates weren’t as excited about being there as he was. He had to ask Barkley--politely, he notes, for he’s a respectful young man--to keep his head up.

“I was afraid to throw it and hit him in the head,” Kidd says.

Barkley said it was all right, adding a player’s highest compliment, the one Kidd hears from so many stars these days: “I’d pay to see him play.”

Kidd plays only 13 minutes the rest of the afternoon, and the game sags when he’s on the bench. Great artists, which is what he is, don’t come in bunches, even when one assembles the best players. Afterward, Kidd says he was “on Cloud 9.”

And the best is yet to come.

*

It’s a special time for Jason Kidd, the finest young playmaker to come into the NBA since Johnson, according to Johnson, and a nice, soft-spoken young man, which makes him welcome as rain in a drought.

As a role model, however, Kidd is Grant Hill with legal proceedings. Kidd is young, single and prone to mingle with East Bay friends, such as Gary Payton, as high-spirited as he is. Lessons are learned the hard way.

Kidd left the scene of a traffic accident in Oakland, was charged with assault in Dallas--the charge later was withdrawn--and says he was sleeping in the car at a restaurant in Florida when Payton got into a loud argument inside.

So who asked to become a role model at 22?

“I mean,” Kidd says, “my mom told me when I made the decision to become a professional basketball player, ‘Your career’s going to be scrutinized and off the court.’

“I lived with that and my parents have lived with that and they understand it, so anything I do that’s right will be publicized and anything I do wrong will be publicized. And that’s the way life is.”

Of those to whom much is given, much is demanded and Kidd is a once-a-generation playmaker. This might be a scoop in the NBA, but Kidd has been hearing that for years, since he started playing point guard as a freshman at St. Joseph’s High of Notre Dame in Oakland and everybody went bug-eyed.

“People kept telling me that you stand out above everybody else,” he says. “People still tell me that and I still don’t believe ‘em. And it’s kind of hard because I’m my own worst critic. Right now, at this point, I’ve got too many turnovers. I do things that other people can’t do and sometimes I amaze myself.”

OK, so sometimes he does believe them.

By the time he left St. Joseph’s, it was clear. But fame had revealed itself to be double-edged, even before he got to college. When he didn’t get the necessary SAT score on his first try, it made all the local papers.

Two years later, when Kidd left California, his genius was obvious. Less than two years into his NBA career, he’s marked for greatness.

In the age of the shooter, playmaking had become a dying art. Johnson was retired. There was John Stockton, a by-the-numbers guy, and a bunch of guys named Joe until suddenly there was a special one named Jason.

“John is a play maker,” says Johnson. “He’s a total type playmaker. He’s not going to turn it over. He’ll always make the right decisions.

“But Jason is a creator. He creates people’s shots, where, OK, the defense is back, it’s four on four, now Jason’s going to make you do something, commit, and then he’s going to get the guy a shot.

“See, that’s the difference. You’ve got a lot of guys who can run offenses and run ‘em well, but you don’t have guys who can create a shot for different people and Jason can create shots.

“Anfernee Hardaway is really a true scorer. I would move him to two [shooting guard] because he can flat-out score. He’s going to be the next Michael [Jordan], dominant. He could be just a scoring machine, as we saw when Shaq [O’Neal] was out. And I think he’s more comfortable in that situation because, again, he’s not a creator, either.”

In Kidd’s first season with the Dallas Mavericks, he averaged 7.7 assists per game, 10th in the NBA. The team improved by 23 victories and he was co-rookie of the year with Hill. Kidd had a problem shooting--he couldn’t hit the water from a boat--but that improved too. Before the All-Star break, he was shooting 37%. After it, he was at 41%. His three-point percentage went from 21% to 32%.

He hit the break at 39% this season, a respectable 35% on three-point shots, so he’s headed in the right direction. And his assists have increased, to 10 a game, second in the NBA only to Stockton’s 11.2.

Off the floor, he has been embarrassed several times but someone told him fame wasn’t free and he understands the process, which puts him ahead of schedule. If he’s known as a nice young man who tries hard, even if he messes up sometimes, that will be all right.

“I think so,” Kidd says, “because if anybody said any differently, if they said that they didn’t make a mistake, then they’re lying to themselves.

“For me, I’m somebody who plays extremely hard on the basketball court and tries to have fun off the floor. I mean, I’m not going to let anybody tell me that I can’t do something that I want to do. I mean, I’m trying to make myself happy. I can’t go and let people deter me from going to the movies.

“I’m never going to be bigger than life. If I can’t go to the movies with other people, then there’s a problem. If I can’t go to the mall with other people, then there’s really something wrong. I mean, that’s not being human and that’s not going to make you feel good inside if you want to separate yourself from other people.

“People know they can see me and talk to me and shake my hand and not worry about having a whole entourage around me telling them, ‘No, he’s not talking to you.’ We all put on our pants the same way.”

No one else can do what he can with a basketball, a floor and four teammates, though. If this works out the way he intends, little kids will be pretending they’re Kidd, and he will do all those interviews the way Magic did.

“That’s no problem,” Kidd says. “I think there’s no problem with having Grant Hill as the ambassador, once Michael Jordan and Magic decide to retire. I wouldn’t mind to be the vice president, or be his secretary.”

And the Kidd will be the Man and everyone will live happily ever after.