Horsing Around With Jason Kidd
The Meadowlands, New Jersey
by Thomas Beller
The following article was reported and written in the winter and spring of 2002. A year later the Nets returned to the NBA finals. No one seems interested, as before, in the fact that Jason Kidd's childhood was formed in pq
**
It was a cold winter night, and the Knicks were playing the Nets. I took the bus from Port authority.
"Up, over, and up," said the ticket agent. By now I knew the way, and was in a position to direct a few lost basketball souls wandering around level 2, looking dazed. I'd been out to the Continental arena a number of times, to ha
No sooner does the bus emerge out of the Holland tunnel than you see one of defining elements of life in New Jersey: New York. The skyline haunts the start of the ride, and the looming industrial architecture of the Meadowlands haunts the end of it-- massive and a little grim; Jimmy Hoffa may or may not be buried underneath the end zone of Giant's stadium, but the whole environment has a late cold war feel, and the spotlights on the arena's exterior only highlight the shadows all around. On one of my
visits the bus driver got lost in the huge parking lot. "Left! Left!" the passengers screamed to him as we wound our way this way and that in the direction of the Continental Arena and what was - for those interested in high octane, excOu
The Continental arena itself is a strangely loud but also somewhat neglected place, half full in spite of the team's new found success; whereas Madison Square Garden has a somewhat warm, lamp lit coloring, the Continental Arena feels has that fluorescent light on linoleum and bare concrete grayness to it. But it's also a homey place. The only movie star who made an appearance at the games I went to was Richard Dryfus. Down near the court, there's an usher who, after fifteen years at the arena, now wears
earplugs; they stick part way out of his shaved head as he nods a smiling hello when you walk by. Up a level, there's another usher, an older gentleman whose shoulders are specked with dandruf, who treats his job like one of those jovial cops directing traffic in front of schools. In between checking tickets he roots unabashedly for his team; I stood next to him for a while and on one Nets possession, as the shot clock wound down, he started yelling, "Five, four, three, two... Shoot the ball!" He was
the most animated fan there.
The Usher and I had a little talk about the new Nets. We discussed the return of Kerry Kittles, whose career seemed over after four operations on the same knee, but who was now scampering around draining three point shots; the promising play of rookies Richard Jefferson and Jason Collins, and especially the enormous power and energy of Kenyon Martin, now in his second season. Byron Scott, the team's coach, had openly criticized Martin last year for not playing with enough intensity. This season the
coach-player lectures have been more along the lines of, "please calm down," as Martin has received a number of suspensions for flagrant fouls.
"But mostly it's Kidd," said the usher. "He's made all the difference." He was referring to Jason Kidd, the all-star point guard who arrived from Phoenix in a one for one trade during the off season and who, at that moment, was crouched down in his defensive stance. Kidd's defensive stance always makes me think of a karate black belt about to execute a move-- this may be due to the slightly Confucian aspect to his demeanor (humble, wise) or the slightly fu-manchu quality of his goatee, or maybe because
with Kidd things often happen so quickly you can barely take it in. As Moochie Norris of the Houston Rockets put it, "Always expect the unexpected with Jason Kidd."
For a moment, though, I had thought the usher said, "The Kid," as in Kid Colt, the Cisco Kid, the guy who rides in from nowhere on his horse, and saves the town. As it turns out, this would be pretty accurate, too.
**
The Knicks-Nets game begins and in a short period of time, in front an unusually full crowd that includes quite a few Knick fans (Spike Lee made the trip) as well as James Dolan and a rather stricken looking Scott Layden (the Knicks' owner andOe
Take, for example, a play in the first quarter for which Kidd would be credited for a steal and an assist, two categories in which he is number three and number two in the league, respectively. The play began with Kidd, in that karate defensive stance of his, stealing the ball from the Knicks' Allen Houston. He immediately races down the court with the ball, with Latrell Sprewell trailing him the whole way. Sprewell, in addition to being the Knicks best player, is also the one capable of making the most
ferocious and nasty facial expressions, and his occasional outbursts of intensity were the only thing Knicks fans had to hold on for most of this year. Now he trailed Kidd nearly hip to hip all the way down the court at high speed. It looked like Kidd was going to try and lay the ball in, more around Sprewell than over him. Then, at the last moment, he hoisted the ball up towards the backboard with more force than was necessary for a shot. The ball careened hard off the backboard and flew out?and into
the hands of Kenyon Martin, thundering downcourt a few steps behind, who caught the ball high in the air and slammed it down for a gigantic dunk; Martin's knees came up so high they nearly hit his elbows, his chin was somewhere around the rim, and he looked for a moment like a giant praying mantis about to devour the whole structure of the rim, backboard, and support. The crowd went suitably wild, Martin gave backboard an open handed slap, like he was giving it a high five, and then drifted down to
earth. The Knicks looked suitably despondent.
Before halftime they would look amazed. Kidd, having gotten a rebound, unleashed a peculiar pass downcourt to a streaking Lucious Harris. Again, the statistic would read, "assist," but the pass itself was something they don't teach you at basketball camp. As Sprewell himself put it after the game, "Jason bowled that pass. He rolled the thing, it bounced three times, he put a curve on it, and it spun right to the guy and they got a lay-up out of it. I was just looking at guys like, 'Wow, did you see
that?'"
The rather painful irony for any Knicks fan is that if the Patrick Ewing had played with a point guard half as talented in his prime, the Knicks would have been a lock for the championship that Ewing spent a ridiculous amount of energy promising and Om
At halftime, I got in line for a beer, and stood in front of guy named John, who was wearing a Nets sweatshirt, Nets sweatpants, and a Nets baseball cap. He was shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot. He said he has been a Nets fan for eight years
"It's just, it's just..." he said, and nibbled on a finger nail. "It's just that you don't go from nothing to everything in one season. It just doesn't happen."
**
In basketball, as opposed to Tolstoy, it is the unhappy teams that are all alike, whereas each happy team is happy in its own unique way. On the unhappy teams, everyone is upset about the minutes they're not getting, the money they're not getting, the ball they'reOm
Happy teams, on the other hand, have undergone a kind of ego crystallization in which each player has a place and is content with their role. Like a snowflake, each crystallization is a bit different. The crystal (though given that NBA players are probably the most diamond encrusted men on the planet, maybe a gem metaphor would be better) forms around the leading player, or the leading tandem of players. Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, Shaq and Kobe, Stockton and Malone. On the Nets it's a little
different: Everything crystallizes around Kidd, even though he is not the prime scorer. He is the distribution hub, and also, almost secondarily a scorer, which is a little awkward, since the franchise player is usually the go to guy at the end of games. On the Nets, the scoring is widely and fairly evenly distributed with the top four scorers, Van Horn, Kidd, Martin, Kittles, and MacCulloch, averaging between 15.2 points a game (Van Horn) and 13.7 (Kittles).
**
Jason Kidd's presence here in the New York Metropolitan area (a phrase a Knick fan might want to employ to duck the simple fact that he plays in New Jersey), is due to not one but two unhappy situations. The first concerns Stephan Marbury, Kidd's predecessor at the point guard/savior position on the Nets. Marbury is a New York native, a prodigy who grew up in the projects in Coney Island, spent a brief year at Georgia tech, and, with much fanfare, turned pro. He is a fiercely quick and aggressive
player, a shooter and scorer, and he possesses and overtly in your face glare of someone who knows no fear, and wants you to know it. The shots he creates are usually the ones he takes himself. He also signed a sponsorship deal with Hugo Boss and, other than being traded for Kidd, his most lasting legacy may be on the Nets appearance off the court. In the Nets locker room, once the players have showered and the tattoos are covered with clothes (Kenyon martin's says, "Flesh of my flesh, blood of my
blood;" Kerry Kittles has a gigantic Jesus on the cross taking up most of his upper back; Kidd has no tattoos) the Nets locker room looks like a gathering of exceptionally tall investment bankers.
Marbury spent several seasons teamed up with Kevin Garnett on the Minnesota Timberwolves. Most elite NBA teams are as good as their two best players, and Garnett and Marbury seemed likely to go places. But either because they weren't going places fast enough, or because, as he suggested, he was simply bored to death in Minnesota (and maybe he was cold too; NBA players share with the newly retired a desire for warm climates; given the size of their guaranteed contracts, playing in the league may well
feel like they arrived in the golden years and hard part is done with) Marbury demanded a trade, and landed relatively near home, in New Jersey.
But New Jersey is not New York. And for Marbury and the Nets, the whole thing was a bit of fiasco. In fairness to Marbury, the Nets had their usual run of misfortune and injuries - Kittles out for over a year, Kenyon Martin taking a whole year to play make to full force from a broken leg, Jason William's early retirement, Jamie Feick's early retirement, the list goes on) but the chemistry. "There were guys on the team last year that absolutely hated Marbury," said the enthusiastic usher, not exactly an
inside source, Ou
In Phoenix, Kidd and the Suns were having problems as well, only some of which had to do with basketball. The Suns had underachieved during Kids 5 year tenure, having been bumped from the playoffs in each of the four years he was there. Kidd's forte is not scoring, and there was a growing chorus of complaint about his shooting percentage which is fairly low for a franchise player.
And then came what Joumanna Kidd, Jason's wife, calls "The incident."
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.csie.ntu.edu.tw)
◆ From: 61.216.42.232