Random Jkiddo thread

[dude1394]

Well, I couldn't find a jkiddo thread so...this little bit on Westbrook...

https://twitter.com/dmn_mavericks/st...41928192884736

The consensus is that Kidd caught a break in the first two rounds. Portland’s Andre Miller and LA’s Derek Fisher were nearly as old and slow as he is. Westbrook is cut out of the same mold as Chris Paul and Tony Parker, two players to torment Kidd in recent playoff losses.
Kidd’s take?
“Well, everybody is going to be quicker than I am and younger,” he said. “That’s a given.”

So is this. Kidd is smarter than anyone he has or will go against in these playoffs. He sees the floor like no one else. He keeps it simple yet puts his teammates in position to succeed.
Kidd is a basketball savant. That is the phrase Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle uses to describe his point guard.

Dirk Nowitzki calls Kidd a warrior and the ultimate competitor, a quiet leader who does things that don’t always show up on the stat sheet.
“For 38, he moves great and still has great hands,” Nowitzki said. “And he makes the right basketball play every single time.”

Kidd opened the series with 11 assists. It’s taken Westbrook three games to equal that number. Kidd has nine more steals and nine fewer turnovers than Westbrook in the series.
He also has 16 years on Westbrook. Age has forced some concessions, but Kidd doesn’t like to acknowledge that fact.

“I believe I still have that athletic ability,” Kidd said. “I’ve probably lied to myself that I could still do the things I did at 25, 26, but sometimes I’m brought back down to understand that I’m not as fast as I once was.”
Kidd and Westbrook haven’t gone head-to-head all that often in the series. But it has happened. And both have the same charge to run their team and make those around them better.
Mavericks guard Jason Terry said no one can understand how good Kidd truly is until they face him in a playoff series.

“You can’t watch a game, you can’t read about it in a newspaper,” Terry said. “You’ve got to line up in front of him. Once you do, then you understand.”
Westbrook is staring to understand.
So is everyone else.

On point
Here is the comparison of Jason Kidd’s and Russell Westbrook’s averages for the three games:

Kidd

Statistic

Westbrook

9.7

Points

22.7

8.7

Assists

3.7

4.7

Rebounds

2.7

4

Steals

1

2

Turnovers

5

9-23

FGM-A

18-50

39.1

FG%

36

[Rick41]

Westbrooks IQ doesn't come close to half of Kidd's.

So that's that.

[ajk822]

I know it's cliche at this point, but JKidd really does bring more than his numbers show. While on offense it's obvious, I think defense is where he has truly shined this postseason. While he doesn't (and can't) play great 1 on 1 defense all game, those last two minutes he's excellent. Every time the other team is going to isolate in an important spot he makes a great play purely on his guile. He did it to Kobe, Westbrook, and Durant. He's the guy I want on an island because of the intangibles...plus Tyson is waiting by the rim should that person try to drive

[bernardos70]

Subscriber's only page. Makes me a sad panda.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by bernardos70

Subscriber's only page. Makes me a sad panda.

fixed

[monty55555]

Mavs conduct Saturday school vs. Thunder in Game 3

OKLAHOMA CITY -- They call this Saturday School in education circles.

Mavericks point guard Jason Kidd has been teaching it to the legions of point guards following in his Hall of Fame footsteps for years.

What he and the Mavericks did to the young Oklahoma City Thunder here Saturday night, however, is give instruction in the art of the measured comeback. The Mavericks owned Game 3 of these Western Conference finals, winning 93-87 before a sellout Oklahoma City Arena crowd of 18,203 and snatching a 2-1 lead while also making up for that Game 2 loss on their home floor Thursday night.

What made this one so startling is the ease with which the Mavericks were able to seize control on the Thunder's home floor after losing for the first time on their own floor. They led by as many as 23 points early and delivered a defensive display Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle called "championship level."

The fearless Thunder, collectively a decade younger than their teachers on this day, were taken to the woodshed by the Mavericks and their unsung leader, the 38-year-old Kidd, who did everything but diagram plays on the whiteboard in the Thunder timeout huddles.

Faced with the fury of 22-year-old Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook, a second-team All-NBA pick still smarting from a fourth quarter benching in Game 2, Kidd did what any master would do. He taught a lesson without anything more than the occasional, and minimal, show of emotion.

"Jason Kidd ran their team," said Thunder center Kendrick Perkins. "Every time they got down or something, he made a big play or a great pass."

Not only did he direct for the Mavericks on offense, he put on a defensive clinic as well, guarding both Westbrook and Thunder star Kevin Durant at times during the Mavericks' runaway portions of the game.

What he lacks in glitz and highlight reel plays, things he did on the regular at the height of his physical powers, when Westbrook was probably in grade school and maybe junior high, he makes up for in veteran moxie.

"He does so many things that can not be quantified on the stats sheet," Carlisle said. "Just from having a calming influence when a team is making a run, a knack for hitting big shots and finding the window to deliver the ball at the right time to the right guy. And defensively, he did a great job the whole game of communicating to everybody what was going on, because our coverages were good. But we did change things a lot on the fly, and he's a guy that's directing traffic out there for us."

Things tightened up late, of course. They almost always do. The Thunder were within six late. But when it was time to execute in the game's final three minutes, Westbrook was in attack mode but terribly inefficient while Kidd made sure the Mavericks calmly ran their pick and roll sets, got the ball in Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry's hands and finished what they started.

The ghosts from that Game 4 in Portland might have spooked a younger point guard and a team without the collective experience the Mavericks bring to the party.

Not Kidd, or the Mavericks, at least not this time.

"We're an old team, so if we didn't have any experiences [to draw on] right now then we'd be in trouble," Kidd said. "It's about just understanding the situation, we're not thinking ahead. We're thinking about the moment right now. This is a game about runs, 6-0 runs, 10-0 runs, and we just tried to minimize that. They made a run at us but nobody panicked. We got the ball to the guys that needed the ball and they made plays."

Westbrook finished with 30 points but was just 8-for-20 from the floor, had three more turnovers (7) than he did assists and was unable to turn isolation plays into the sort of comeback from a 23-point hole than Brandon Roy did when he led the Trail Blazers back from an identical deficit in a Game 4 win over the Mavericks in a first round series.

The box score won't be nearly as kind to Kidd in certain categories; he was just 4-for-10 from the floor and finished with 13 points. But he had eight assists, six rebounds four steals and just two turnovers in 37 age-defying and ultra-efficient minutes in what amounts to the Mavericks' biggest game of the season, to date.

And again, when it was winning time, things flowed through him and then on to Nowitzki and Terry, who knocked down the shots to seal the deal.

"Jason, as you all know from the last 17 or 18 years he's been in this league, gives you everything he has," said Thunder coach Scott Brooks, a former teammate of Kidd's at the tail end of his career and when Kidd was in Westbrook's shoes. "He's what you want out of a professional athlete, did everything on the floor for his team. Nothing he does surprises me, other than playing the way he's playing at his age. I mean, I couldn't do it when I was 30, play good basketball. He's doing it late in his 30s. Give him a lot of credit. He keeps his body and mind in ... he's a well conditioned athlete and plays hard every night. He battles and competes against whoever he has in front of him and that's what you want. He's a terrific player."

And perhaps an even better teacher.

http://www.nba.com/2011/news/feature...win/index.html

[monty55555]

Mavs prove smarts can -- and will -- trump superior Thunder

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Dallas can't run with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Dallas can't jump with the Thunder, either. Oklahoma City is quicker, stronger, younger. Physically, across the board, Oklahoma City is superior.

But Dallas is the better basketball team, because this ain't a track meet. Nor is it the NBA Draft Combine. Nobody is using a stopwatch on Jason Kidd's speed or a yardstick on Dirk Nowitzki's vertical, and nobody will ever, ever put Shawn Marion's church-league "jumper" on an instructional video.

But Dallas is beating the Thunder -- led by elite athletes like Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, and even Serge Ibaka and Thabo Sefolosha -- because this game isn't played in a catalog. It's played on the court, and the Mavericks are better because they're smarter.

That's not an IQ comment, because I have no idea how smart most of these guys are. Six of the 10 starters in the Western Conference finals didn't attend college, coming to the NBA out of high school or from overseas, and none of the four who did go to a Division I school stuck around for more than a year or two. So I'm not here to tell you one team is smarter than another, at least not in the classroom. No clue.

But it's obvious that one team is smarter than the other team on the court, and that team is Dallas, and that's why the Mavericks are leading 2-1 entering Game 4 on Monday night in Oklahoma City.

It's more than Jason Kidd vs. Russell Westbrook, although that's the best place to start seeing how those are the point guards, dictating pace, ball movement and defensive strategy. Westbrook is one of the most fabulous athletes in the NBA, a Derrick Rose knockoff who can get anywhere he wants, anytime he wants. The 22-year-old Westbrook is the hare, while Kidd, 38, is the tortoise. Once upon a time he was a physical marvel, but those days are gone. Today, Kidd gets by on guile. He can't get anywhere he wants, anytime he wants. So he lets the ball do the movement for him.

"Jason's the best," says Thunder coach Scott Brooks. "He's one of the best teammates you'll ever have in the NBA. I was looking at the stats the other night [after Game 1], and he's probably the happiest guy in the whole room -- and he only took three shots. Because his team won."

His team won Game 1, and it won Game 3, and his teams have won over the years at a high level -- New Jersey has been to the playoffs just six times in the last 13 years ... the only six years Kidd played there -- because Kidd knows how to play. Westbrook knows how to score, but Kidd knows how to win.

Westbrook is still learning. The Thunder have won just one game, and that's the game Westbrook spent the fourth quarter on the bench. In this series alone, Kidd has 4½ times as many assists (26), and twice as many steals (12), as turnovers (six). Westbrook? He has a ton of points, but also 11 assists and 15 turnovers. And just three steals in three games.

Forget about the points -- Kidd is embarrassing Westbrook.

And it's not Westbrook's fault. I'm not blaming him. He is what he is, a tremendous athlete who can score. But he's not a facilitator. He's not a guy who makes everyone around him better, which means he's a lot like the rest of his team. The Thunder have great athletes at four of the five starting slots, and they have above-average athletes like Daequan Cook, James Harden and Eric Maynor coming off the bench, but they don't know how to win at the highest level. Maybe they'll get there eventually, or maybe they'll need to acquire more savvy veterans like Kendrick Perkins -- I'm thinking Shane Battier or Chauncey Billups -- to make it happen.

In the meantime they have the best scorer on the planet, Durant, getting ignored by his teammates down the stretch of Game 3, and they have Ibaka driving the lane like he's Westbrook, shooting a finger roll like he's George Gervin, and throwing up an air ball from two feet. Great athlete. Explosive play. Terrible idea.

The Mavericks have 33-year-old Marion intellectually abusing Durant and Ibaka, pick-and-rolling them to death or getting lost in the lane before emerging on the perimeter, so open that he can get off his god-awful set shot.

The Mavericks have Jose Juan Barea using fakes and screens to create more havoc in the lane than a short, pudgy guy should ever create in an NBA game. The Mavericks have Nowitzki scoring from mid-range, leaving the 3s to Durant (who has missed his last 13) and the dunks to Ibaka (who misses everything else).

The Mavericks have the notion that basketball is a team game, not a collection of televised highlights, and that's why my lasting image of Game 3 was something that happened late in the third quarter during a break in the action. While officials watched a courtside TV monitor to see if Kidd should be shooting two free throws or three, Kidd gathered his team in an impromptu huddle at midcourt. All five Mavericks surrounded him, discussing strategy.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City players formed five islands. They didn't stand together. They didn't talk. They didn't even look at each other. This wasn't about chemistry -- this was about basketball IQ.

Dallas has it. Oklahoma City does not.

Yes, Kevin Durant is coming soon to a poster near you. But the Mavericks are more than likely going to the NBA Finals. Smart can be sexy, too.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/1...perior-thunder

[MascisMan]

"Superior Thunder?" Are they the favorites? Plus if our smarts trump the Thunder...aren't we "superior?"

[Blackspider]

Originally Posted by ajk822

I know it's cliche at this point, but JKidd really does bring more than his numbers show. While on offense it's obvious, I think defense is where he has truly shined this postseason. While he doesn't (and can't) play great 1 on 1 defense all game, those last two minutes he's excellent. Every time the other team is going to isolate in an important spot he makes a great play purely on his guile. He did it to Kobe, Westbrook, and Durant. He's the guy I want on an island because of the intangibles...plus Tyson is waiting by the rim should that person try to drive

Even looking at those numbers, you can tell Kidd brings more. He has more assists, less turnovers and more steals, all what you want out of your PG. Shoots a better percentage. Does not take stupid shots like Westbrook does and runs the offense much better. Of course Westrbook is quicker and can get to the basket better but it's not a PG's main job to score points and try and be the leading scorer. Get your teammates involved, run the offense and score when it opportunity presents itself.

[deamon]

Where is Mavericks Rockets Fan now, who said Kidd is better only in passing ?

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by deamon

Where is Mavericks Rockets Fan now, who said Kidd is better only in passing ?

A valid question.

[Kidd Karma]

When it comes to playoff basketball, every possession counts. With us ahead in the TO department, that's 5 more possessions we have to work with, that's at least 10 points and in a 6 point game, that is huge.

[deamon]

Go Kidd, the real PG, destroy all those combo guards, who aren't real PG or SG.

[markus1234]

I like these articles, BUT IMO the press tries to motivate OKC and deep down all the jounalists want OKC to win this series.

I am pretty sure Durant and Westbrook read all this stuff and want to prove people wrong...tonight.

[MascisMan]

Originally Posted by markus1234

I like these articles, BUT IMO the press tries to motivate OKC and deep down all the jounalists want OKC to win this series.

I am pretty sure Durant and Westbrook read all this stuff and want to prove people wrong...tonight.

Hence Hollinger trying to give coaching advice to Brooks.

[iella]

There were 4 or 5 times tonight where Jason Kidd not only did the right thing, but he did the smartest possible thing that could have been done. The man is a freaking basketball Einstein.

[dalger]

J-Kidd is a basketball artist. Even at 38.

[MascisMan]

[JKiddFTW]

My favorite player since cal!!!

5 to go baby!!!!

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by MascisMan

Beautiful.

[sefant77]

December 26, 1996: Traded by the Dallas Mavericks with Tony Dumas and Loren Meyer to the Phoenix Suns for Sam Cassell, Michael Finley, A.C. Green and a 1998 2nd round draft pick (Greg Buckner)