Jason Kidd

It's hard to describe why he was so good

Transcript

00:00 It's kind of hard to describe to people who've never seen him, why Jason Kidd was so good.

00:05 He wasn't a big scorer.

00:08 As a sophomore, he averaged 16.7 points a game, which is nice, but not absolutely incredible.

00:14 But still was a first team All-America.

00:18 And in the pros, he never averaged more than 18.7 points, which is real nice, but it doesn't

00:24 put you in the Hall of Fame automatically.

00:27 He just had a way of creating situations in which the team was able to win.

00:32 Great assist guy, led the country in assists one year.

00:38 What he did best, though, was create game-winning plays at the absolute most important time,

00:45 at crunch time.

00:46 And usually it was him scoring by himself.

00:49 Even though he wasn't a great scorer, he scored at the very most important times.

00:54 In the first round, before the win over Duke in the '93 NCAA tournament, they played LSU,

00:59 and he came up with a remarkable twisting pretzel shot for the winning bucket in the

01:06 last couple of seconds.

01:08 And then in the game against Duke, he was really the prime player in that game, the

01:14 one who sort of controlled things from the start to the end.

01:18 And it's really, unless you've seen him play, I remember the first time I saw him play when

01:23 he was in high school at St. Joseph's.

01:25 I said, "This guy doesn't look any fantastic," but he just sort of overwhelmed people with

01:32 his abilities.

01:33 He just sort of took charge of a game the way that you really can't describe with words.

01:39 You just sort of have to see it over time.

01:42 You really appreciate him over time.

01:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]