Court Vision: How many players have a case over Jason Kidd?

[Matt15]

In terms of pure court vision how many players have a case over Jason Kidd?

[XTC]

I have Jason Kidd in tier 2 with Nash, and CP3. Magic and Stockton are tier 1 IMO.

[uberhikari]

Definitely Magic, Nash, Bird, Jokic, and LeBron.

Might be missing 1 or 2 but definitely the ones above.

[EmpireFalls]

Not sure anyone has a case over Gheorghe Muresan or Manute Bol. Tacko Fall has made his case recently.

[cupcakesnake]

Hard to quantify court vision.
I have Magic, Nash, Jokic, and Bird as more impactful passers overall but I'm trying to isolate court vision in my head right now, and I'm not positive I can say any of these guys definitely had better vision than Kidd.

Kidd's lack of scoring threat prevented him from creating as many passing opportunities, but making a case that he didn't see all the passing opportunities available in any given situation is hard.

Sometimes when watching games/film and assessing passers, I try to map out the likely passing options and guess who they're going to hit. Really good passers are the ones that surprise me the most. They hit passers I don't see despite having the advantage of an isometric view of the whole court. Kidd would do that a lot, particularly with cutters and in transition.

[Texas Chuck]

cupcake nailed it pretty well. Impossible to totally isolate out vision, but considering his relative lack of threat as a scorer, particularly after his knee injury, its hard to say anyone for sure had better vision. Getting to watch him every single night in Dallas, especially the 2nd stint, I gained huge respect for what he saw and the passes he found. Both the Jokic/Luka/Magic wait what how did he find that pass, but also how he is without question the fastest, most accurate, most correct, ball swinger I have ever seen and there is not a close 2nd. Dirk would kick out to him and the ball would instantly be in the hands of a wide open shooter directly in his pocket, over and over and over again. That never gets focused on, but should. Makes a huge difference in the quality of shot a possession generates.

[tsherkin]

Kidd was very good. Hard for me to look at him relative to a bunch of other playmakers, but as others have said, isolating vision alone is really, really hard.

Kidd was pretty bad as a scorer, and lacked explosive athleticism at the elite tier, which denied him opportunities. He ran a lot and had great transition action. He had solid PnR game, but nothing like the continuity dribble we saw from Nash, and none of really what Magic did generating something from nothing in the halfcourt... but Magic was 4, 5 inches taller. Kidd was smart, technically proficient and had good vision. He managed tempo well and he made the correct pass a lot of the time. If he had been less Ason Kidd and a little more competent as a scorer, we might have very, very different conversations about him. Later in his career, as a roleplayer for Dallas and New York in particular when he was hitting 3s, he was a marvel as a supporting cast kind of dude.

Very good player. You could count on him to move the ball well, no doubt. So, so hard to isolate just vision, though, so this thread is a challenge.

[penbeast0]

I'd like to throw in an argument for Chris Paul and Muggsy Bogues as superior. Court vision isn't just predicting who will cut and get open where though that's certainly part of it; just as important is reading the defenses and seeing what pass will get through. Bogues is a personal favorite but he and Paul are far better than Kidd, or for that matter Magic, Nash, and Stockton, at reading defenses and avoiding the potential turnover while still generating looks for their teammates even if they don't make as many WTF passes.