BoomShakaLuka wrote:I remember Jason Kidd did go on a torrid scoring run in the month of March back in 2001. He was putting up over 30 points in consecutive games at one point during a seven game win streak.
Yes, he did. That streak seemed to come in response to the frustration and internal criticism regarding how little Kidd had been scoring and shooting. In early March, he had failed to score in double figures for five straight games, during which time the Suns went 2-3, and in eight of his last ten contests. He had also failed to attempt more than 8 field goals in three consecutive games and in four of his last six contests.
Then, over a thirteen-game stretch from March 11, 2001, through April 4, Kidd averaged 20.0 field goal attempts per game (plus 6.3 free throw attempts) and averaged 26.2 points, 9.3 assists, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.8 steals—Russell Westbrook numbers. He shot .485 from the field, including .378 on threes (3.5 FGA), and .878 from the free throw line for a .576 True Shooting Percentage. The Suns went 10-3 during Kidd's scoring splurge. During one game, at Houston, he scored 43 points and attempted 34 field goals—five more field goals than Kevin Johnson ever attempted in a regular season game (three more than Johnson ever attempted in a playoff game) and seven more than Steve Nash ever attempted in a regular season game (six more than Nash ever attempted in a playoff game). In that game, Kidd attempted thirty more field goals than he passed for assists (4), and behind his aggression, the Suns won narrowly.
Over his final eight regular season games thereafter, through the end of the season, Kidd averaged 16.0 field goal attempts per game yet shot just .359 from the field, including .265 on threes in 4.3 attempts, averaging 14.9 points. Then in Phoenix’s four-game playoff loss to Sacramento in the (best-of-five) First Round, Kidd averaged 17.3 field goal attempts per game and shot .319 from the field, including .235 on threes in 4.3 attempts, averaging 14.3 points (14.3 points on 17.3 field goal attempts). His True Shooting Percentage for the series was .384.
For the third time in five postseasons with Phoenix, Kidd shot below .400 from the field (.400 or lower in four of five postseasons with the Suns and .419 or lower in all five postseasons) and .250 or lower on threes (in a significant number of attempts, 1.8 or more, each time). For the fourth time in five postseasons with Phoenix, Kidd posted a True Shooting Percentage below .500—and never above .500. (You would like a player to be at .530 or higher.)
All of which leads me to my next point …
BoomShakaLuka wrote:I certainly think Kidd had the ability to score when he wanted to.
Kidd possessed the ability to score more when he wanted to, but he lacked the ability to score efficiently on a sustained or consistent basis. His memorable splurge in the early spring of 2001 obviously proved to be a short-lived aberration. Therefore, even when he became more aggressive, his value as a scorer proved spotty and marginal at best.
Moreover, while Kidd may have been able to score more when he wanted to, the issue was whether he would score when the team needed him to. I might draw an analogy to how Kobe Bryant would "prove" that he could be unselfish and move the ball when he wanted to—which was not always the same as doing so when the team needed him to.
BoomShakaLuka wrote:That 2000-2001 Suns team had no low-post threat at all and a weak bench. Tsakalidis had butter fingers. Gugliotta and Hardaway were making big money and their careers were finished.
Clifford Robinson and Rodney Rogers could score in the post. Granted, neither player was nearly as good as he had been in ’99-’00 (Robinson turned thirty-four early in the season and was probably showing his age, while Rogers lacked the same motivation and was not in the same kind of shape), but they could sometimes score in the post and they certainly constituted legitimate options in the pick-and-pop/roll. And with Rogers and guard Tony Delk, either of whom could heat up at any time, the bench—while suspect—was not terrible.
Overall, yes, the offensive talent level on the ’00-’01 Suns proved extremely mediocre at best. The team lacked for three-point shooting and an excellent low-post option. However, as I indicated, the offensive efficiency of the ’00-’01 Suns did not represent an aberration in Kidd’s career. Actually, he led teams—in Dallas (early in his career) and New Jersey—that posted similar (in terms of the actual number) or even lower (in terms of the ranking) Offensive Ratings to the ’00-’01 Suns, and those clubs sometimes possessed talented wing scorers such as a young Jimmy Jackson and Jamal Mashburn or Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson. Often in New Jersey, Kidd’s Nets posted one of the worst Offensive Ratings in the NBA. Even in ’99-’00, when Kidd played in 67 games, Hardaway played in 60 (and could still play on a borderline All-Star level), Gugliotta played in 54 games before suffering his catastrophic knee injury, and Robinson and Rogers were both terrific (Robinson might have actually constituted the club’s most valuable player, while Rogers received the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award), the Suns still ranked in the bottom half of teams in Offensive Rating (sixteenth of twenty-nine). As a knowledgeable basketball observer that I know stated in 2008 about Kidd, “For someone who is supposed to be a great point guard, how come he never seems to run an efficient offense?”
And ironically enough, Phoenix’s Offensive Rating (in terms of both the actual number and the ranking) did improve somewhat during the '01-'02 season with Marbury instead of Kidd, even though Phoenix had also jettisoned Robinson before the season and then traded Rogers and Delk at the trading deadline. (Yes, Hardaway returned that year, but he was far from what he had once been.) That modest improvement held, by the way, in every season that Marbury played in Phoenix. Also, while the Nets' offensive efficiency improved with Kidd in '01-'02 and '02-'03 compared to their '00-'01 figure and placement with Marbury, they remained below-average, whereas New Jersey had actually ranked tenth in Offensive Rating in '99-'00 with Marbury plus a healthy Keith Van Horn and Kerry Kittles.
The point is that throughout his career, Kidd basically proved that he was not going to enhance your half-court offense, at least not in a starring role. In the half-court, on average, he was just a guy who was there—he could pass the ball smoothly, but he created superior looks infrequently. Thus if you were paying Kidd to be a “superstar,” and as the centerpiece that you built your offense around, was he worthwhile at that salary and in that role?
All of which leads me to the next section …
BoomShakaLuka wrote:Even though the Suns did manage to sign Nash later, and got a few decent seasons out of Marbury, I still think trading Kidd away was a foolhardy decision by Colangelo.
In retrospect, I suppose that I might have tried to trade Kidd in a different deal—say, to the Grizzlies for Mike Bibby and Michael Dickerson, or to the Kings for Jason Williams and Hedo Turkoglu. But one could ultimately consider the trade in terms of leverage. Kidd, remember, was going to be a free agent after the 2003 season. Although there was no feud with Colangelo until after the trade, the Suns might have doubted their ability to re-sign Kidd in 2003, and they also may not have been willing to invest an enormous contract in a point guard who by then would have been thirty years old. (Yes, the Suns signed Nash in 2004 when he was thirty, but Kidd would have cost much more—he ended up re-signing with the Nets in 2003 for six years at $103M, compared to the $65M for five years that Phoenix gave to Nash.) And by the end of the 2001 season, the Suns clearly were nowhere near a championship—they would probably need to take a couple of steps back in order to take three steps forward later on, and a twenty-eight-year old Kidd may not have been content with that trajectory.
Either way, trading Kidd for a twenty-four-year old Marbury gave the Suns leverage. In ’02-’03, Phoenix probably would not have fared much better with Kidd instead of Marbury—the Suns reached the playoffs in the stacked West with 44 wins as an eighth seed and then seriously pushed eventual champion San Antonio in the First Round before falling in six games. Then, when Phoenix chose to try and move Marbury in January 2004, he was still just twenty-seven, thus rendering him an attractive enough commodity where the Suns could not only dump his contract (he had inked a large new extension with Phoenix in the fall of 2003) but also Anfernee Hardaway’s contract, all in the same deal. In effect, youth created leverage and thus financial flexibility, which the Suns then used to sign Nash (plus Quentin Richardson) the following summer.
BoomShakaLuka wrote: A Kidd led Suns team with Marion and Stoudemire would've gotten past the Spurs in 2005 IMO.
I am skeptical. Kidd could not run the pick-and-roll like Nash, in part because he could not shoot like Nash. Kidd could push the ball and pass on the break like Nash, but even on fast breaks, he was probably less valuable because he could not shoot the pull-up jumper like Nash. D’Antoni’s system would have helped Kidd, but the offensive results would not have been the same or even close, necessarily.
Now, Phoenix would have constituted a better rebounding unit and defensive squad with Kidd instead of Nash. By the same token, however, I noted that Kidd proved mediocre in terms of on-ball defense, especially versus quick guards. In the middle of the 2003 NBA Finals, the Nets actually switched Kidd off Tony Parker and placed Kerry Kittles on him instead.
Funny, isn't it? It's not at all the way the Finals were supposed to play out. Kidd and Parker were supposed to go head-to-head, right until one of the two was posing with the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Only the battle between possible future Spur and the present-day Spur turned out to be one-sided, in Parker's favor, to the surprise of all those who didn't know how vulnerable Kidd has always been against smaller, quicker points. So with the series tied at 2-2 at the Meadowlands, here is Kidd, second-team All-Defense and considered one of the premier players in the league, being asked to guard Bruce Bowen or Stephen Jackson. Someone far less explosive than Parker, in, perhaps, his last home game as a Net.
But he also had to be much more effective. The best way to accomplish that was to switch to another Spur, none of whom was able to make two jumps shots in succession when the Nets tied the series. "That doesn't irk 'J' because we're trying to win a championship," said Kidd's backup, Anthony Johnson.
"The move allows 'J' to do what he does best." Play the passing lanes for steals. Hit the defensive glass. Start the fast break. It also keeps Kidd away from the wear-and-tear of colliding with big men when he has to guard the pick-and roll. The less contact, the more energy he has to direct the offense.
"This allows 'J' to be a "help' defender, where he's able to roam," Johnson said. "And we all know that's his greatest asset.http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/parker-not-kidd-stuff-switching-tony-spurs-nets-star-article-1.660209
(Give Mitch Lawrence credit for doing something rare among basketball [especially] sportswriters and analysts: actually studying what takes place rather than regurgitating the assumptions and clichés that usually pass for analysis and assessment in the media.)
So Kidd would not necessarily have fared any better against Parker in 2005 than Nash, especially since by the 2005 playoffs, he was thirty-two years old and had undergone Microfracture knee surgery after the 2004 season. To be sure Kidd, would have still constituted a defensive upgrade over Nash. Phoenix could have used his defensive rebounding, and Kidd’s steals would have played wonderfully in D’Antoni’s “Seven Seconds or Less” system. You know, that system worked so well with Nash even though he rarely forced a live-ball turnover. Nash drew some charges, yes, but when you draw a charge, you have to take the ball out of bounds and the opposing team can still set up its defense. Hence a charge is actually less valuable, on average, than a mere defensive rebound, let alone a steal. But ball pressure and steals could have ignited “Seven Seconds or Less” even more, and during his eight-year second stint with Phoenix, Nash applied little ball pressure—he mainly backed up or floated around to try and play protective positional defense, somewhat justifiably given the unreliable defense behind him and given his need to conserve energy for offense—and he always recorded fewer steals than games played. (In Nash’s original stint with Phoenix, when he was a young player playing in shorter stints, he actually did pressure the basketball, although his lack of physical strength meant that it was kind of a finesse pressure rather than power pressure, and his steals were still minimal.)
But at the end of the day, without Nash’s pull-up shooting ability and pick-and-roll capability, the offense would not necessarily have been elite (say, top-seven in Offensive Rating, which places you in the top quarter of teams), let alone overwhelming and tops in the NBA. And while the defense would have been better, it probably would not have been elite, either, with Amare Stoudemire at center. In fact, with Stoudemire at center and Kidd not especially effective at containing penetration—even when he was younger, let alone when he was in his thirties and coming off Microfracture surgery—the defense may have still been middling. Remember that the Suns ranked sixth in Defensive Rating (points allowed per possession) in ’97-’98 and then nineteenth in the post-lockout 1999 season. Kidd started every game both years, and Danny Ainge served as Phoenix’s head coach both seasons. The primary reason for the dramatic decline was that the Suns had effectively—not always by choice—swapped out Antonio McDyess, Mark Bryant, and John “Hot Rod” Williams in the front court and replaced them with Tom Gugliotta, Luc Longley, and a thirty-seven-year old Joe Kleine. So as with most any guard in most any season, especially most any point guard in most any season, Kidd’s defense by itself was not going to radically alter a defense’s efficiency. It might have improved matters on the margins, which is usually the most that you can hope for from a point guard.
In the end, I doubt that the defensive and rebounding benefits that Kidd would have provided would have equaled—let alone surpassed—the offensive diminishment that would have resulted with Kidd instead of Nash. I have the
2004-05 Pro Basketball Preview by Harris Publications, which I bought in late 2004. Ironically, the publication’s writers agree with you by stating, “We still think [Bryan] Colangelo is a grade-A moron for dealing Jason Kidd.” But they also write, “Steve Nash is the answer at the point. He’ll be the best point guard the Suns have had since Kevin Johnson.”
Looking back, what intrigues me more is the trade rumor circa February 2007 about the Suns dealing Leandro Barbosa and Boris Diaw for Jason Kidd. Neither Barbosa nor Diaw performed effectively versus San Antonio in that year’s Western Conference Semifinals, whereas Kidd would have given the Suns real experience and quality depth off the bench. He could have played with Nash and Raja Bell as part of a three-guard rotation, with either Nash or Kidd on the court at all times and with them sometimes playing simultaneously, an arrangement that they had experience with from their stint as teammates in Phoenix a decade earlier. The Suns’ rotation would have grown even shorter with basically just seven players—the five starters plus Kidd and either Kurt Thomas or James Jones off the bench—but Phoenix may have possessed a better shot in the end. Obviously, the suspension of Stoudemire and Diaw for Game Five placed the Suns at a major deficit in that contest, but Phoenix still possessed a shot to win that game and that series, especially given that the Spurs were without Robert Horry—an important and underrated player for them—for both Games Five and Six, whereas the Suns were back to full strength for Game Six. But Barbosa and Diaw were not up to the challenge, and Phoenix could have used more experience.
Of course, I do not know if either the Suns or the Nets ever seriously considered this trade, and dealing a twenty-four-year old Barbosa and a twenty-four-year old Diaw for Kidd, who would turn thirty-four in about a month, seemed questionable at best. Even now, I am not sure that the trade would have been the right one—or a responsible one—to make given the difference in age. But despite the shorter rotation, Kidd may well have given the Suns a better chance against the Spurs. Due to their rebounding and defensive deficiencies, the ’06-’07 Suns—for all their firepower, dynamism, and championship potential—still represented a pretty flawed team on paper (and on the floor). In retrospect, they needed more experience and toughness—qualities that Kidd, with two NBA Finals under his belt, would have provided. They also could have used another high-quality ball-handler so that they were less reliant on Nash in that regard, along with a player who could have reduced Nash’s minutes at times (even though Nash never did average heavy minutes for a star of his caliber). Kidd would have also given Phoenix another defensive rebounder, which the team needed, without hindering the fast break. And since Kidd had played with both Nash and Shawn Marion before in Phoenix, integrating him into the team and its scheme may not have been too difficult.
Then again, if the Suns had lost to the Spurs with Kidd in 2007, folks would have been exclaiming, “Phoenix would have won with Barbosa and Diaw!”
