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Everyone whoops: It's over. Kidd spends the next few minutes as the perfect host, making contact with all the people in the room, asking what flights they're taking, their plans for the night. One cameraman, a Nets fan, puts out his hand. "Thank you for saving our franchise," he says. But Kidd turns that around too.
"Thanks, guys," he says again and again. "Sorry you had to put up with me."
It began the way it always begins. She was beautiful, and he had to have her. He saw her, and it all became clear: They would get together, and one thing would lead to another. Soon he lost his head a bit and saw the two of them together forever, the ballplayer and the Bud girl. That was what she was then, something she calls a "promotional model," which meant she would show up at Bay Area events wearing less than most other people and push beer in that friendly-but-not-too-friendly way that promotional
models learn. He was a 19-year-old and thinking like one, not getting much beyond the fact that, as his best friend, Andre Cornwell, puts it, in the Bay Area in 1992 "she was just it. She was known as the hot thing."
So was he, and that's what made it all so perfect. Jason Kidd was only a freshman at Cal, but he'd been a legend for years. He was the reason that tiny St. Joseph of Notre Dame had won two straight California high school championships, and its crowds had outgrown its gym, and the team had been forced to play in the Oakland Coliseum. He was the reason that Cal basketball suddenly had students camping out overnight for tickets. He'd grown up worshiping Magic Johnson, sitting mesmerized before the TV
during Los Angeles Lakers games and then hitting the court to make himself in Magic's image. Now his time was finally coming; he'd be going pro soon, and then he could live what he'd been watching all his life. He would be the game, and she'd be what happened when the game stopped -- the beer commercial come to life -- and that would be that, right?
She hated him. She hated the mention of his name, she hated seeing posters of him in bars, she hated what he represented. At 23, Joumana Samaha had met her share of athletes and had no interest in becoming a cliche. "I didn't want a husband who sleeps around, who thinks the world revolves around him, who's dumb, has no education -- all the stereotypes in one," she says. She hated that Jason sent Andre to talk to her for him, that he invited her to a "party" that ended up being only three other people;
she lasted there about five minutes. He was arrogant. "I couldn't get far enough from him," she says.
He won her over. Never was a verb more apt: Kidd, his old friends will tell you, is the most competitive person they've ever met. He made every walk to the street corner a race he had to win. For four years he came at Joumana, even after her suspicions were confirmed by the news, during his rookie year with the Dallas Mavericks, that he had fathered a son out of wedlock; by reports that he had fled the scene of an accident, leaving behind two acquaintances and a wrecked car (he would plead no contest to
hit-and-run and speeding charges); by allegations that he had drunkenly hit a woman at a party (due to lack of evidence, no charges were filed). For four years Joumana said no. Finally, in 1996, bored, she agreed to go out with Jason and some friends.
This was his shot. Kidd fashioned himself a winning personality. "He laid it on so thick, just so intelligent and sensitive and meek," Joumana says. "We talked about marriage that night, and he said, 'My goal in life is to be married and have a family.' I ate it up like candy, and then I thought, 'He's laying it on. There's no way.' Every time after, I thought, 'Today I'm going to see his true colors.'"
She didn't. That's because there's no one sweeter than Kidd when he wants to be. He's famous for his acquiescence to the barrage of demands an NBA star faces from fans, autograph hounds, reporters and charities -- and it never comes off as fraudulent, because at that moment of bestowing kindness, no one is more sincere than Kidd. Joumana didn't stand a chance. For their second date he picked the gooiest chick flick he could find, How to Make an American Quilt, and even watched it a few days before so
that nothing would take him by surprise. He didn't just notice her shoes; he bought her a pair of boots she liked. He asked if he could hold her hand. "He even took me to Barnes & Noble," she says.
Kidd hears this and laughs. "You don't like to read?" he asks.
"Have we been back since?"
What clinched it for her was meeting his parents, Steve and Anne, middle-class and strong as steel. The father was black and the mom white, but neither carried the bitter defensiveness often seen in mixed-race couples. Steve, then a 32-year employee of TWA, was quiet but strikingly solicitous. Anne, a computer analyst at Bank of America, was firm and suspicious of her son's growing fame. Joumana, convinced that she could read Jason's character in his parents' solidity, allowed herself to fall.
What she didn't think about then, of course, was that neither Steve nor Anne played NBA ball. Nor did Joumana know that being one of the league's best players requires a meanness cultivated like a cherished flower. All great athletes carry the seed of cruelty; it's their job and their passion to beat the other guy, undress his weaknesses, reveal him as a loser in public. How could she know? Kidd's peers speak so lavishly about his unselfishness, his need to put everyone else first, that it's easy to
perceive him as the rule's exception, easy to hear his soft voice and see his placidity and miss the fact that, as Nets coach Byron Scott says, "inside he wants to take your heart out." It's not that Joumana didn't see Jason's true colors. He was courting, so she saw only those colors he wanted her to see.
Then, too, there was the flaw that even he didn't know about. How could he? Nearly everyone who matters in the game adores him. Players love how good he makes them look, coaches love how he makes passing contagious and teammates better, general managers love how he instantly turns bad teams into good ones. You've never heard so many macho men speak so openly of love. Kidd is considered the NBA's best point guard, a talent on a par with alltime assists leader John Stockton, as well as a defensive jewel
and a rebound hound who will likely end his career trailing only Magic and Oscar Robertson in triple doubles.
"He plays with passion, he plays with love, he's a winner," says Washington Wizards coach Doug Collins. "He's going to win games for you. He transforms a whole team. If I couldn't vote for Michael, I'd vote for Jason for MVP."
"He's one of my favorite players," says former Phoenix Suns coach Danny Ainge. "You look at Jason's fundamentals, they're not great. You look at his shooting, it's not great. The guy just finds ways to win, defensively and offensively. And his greatest asset to an organization, other than his will to win, is that all the players love playing with him."
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"I don't look at favorites. That's for (reporters) and fans.
I just go out and play."---- Jason Kidd
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