What makes point guard Jason Kidd so unique is a bit mystical, or musical, depending on your perspective.
"I can't explain it to you," forward LeBron James says. "I don't know what Jason does, I don't know how he does it."
"He sees things," guard Dwyane Wade says of Kidd's sixth sense. "When you're on the court and you see him do some of the things he does it just doesn't make sense."
Last month at a practice in Las Vegas, U.S. Olympic men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski compared Kidd to a jazz pianist who makes the rhythm section around him better. "It's his mind, his instincts, and his feel," Krzyzewski says.
It may surprise some NBA fans that Kidd, at 35 is the oldest member of the 12-man Olympic team, but being the best isn't necessarily about stats, quickness, age or outside perception. What makes Kidd so important to success in Beijing is "crazy, deeper stuff," Krzyzewski says.
"Being the best means that you have the ability to have the biggest impact in the creation of an environment to win, and Jason has that," Krzyzewski says. "With the experience of that many years in the NBA and internationally, coupled with the passion to continue to do it, teamed up with talent around him, I don't think anyone on our team has a better equation."
HIGH BASKETBALL IQ
Inside Kidd's head, there must be algorithms of passing angles and variables of equations burned into his synapses. "His mind is his best talent," Krzyzewski says. "And his ability to instinctively react to situations on the court is at the highest level, as high as anyone who has ever played the game."
Kidd defines instinct as "being able to be creative in a spilt second." When an opponent takes a shot and Kidd's team gets the rebound, he already has analyzed the situation and processed where his teammates will be as well as the defenders before they even know where they will be.
"When somebody shoots, I take a picture of where everyone is out on the court and then go from there with my whole thought process," Kidd says. "There's maybe 100 things I'm going through, a checklist that all happens in two seconds. First is to get the ball, second is, where is the defender? Where are my teammates? Is my teammate tired? If I throw it too far will he quit on me? What type of pass is called for? Is it a bounce pass? Is it a chest pass? If all that isn't there, then what play are we going to run?
"That answer comes where you're probing and trying to find something and that's where your creativity and daring come in because maybe you're going to do something that most people would never think about doing. It becomes a chess match, not with the opponent but with yourself because you're trying to figure out what's the right thing to do in that split second."
Playing with Kidd has been an adjustment, in a good way, for the U.S. stars. "We don't play with point guards like him," Wade says. "I've never played with point guards like him."
"He just sees the game differently," Bryant says. "He grew up being a passer, understanding the angles. He makes very quick reads, very quick decisions. It's a different role for me and makes the game easier. Some of the shots you get you tend to be uncomfortable with because they're so damn easy. You're used to having guys on your arm all the time. With Jason, you get wide-open looks. He puts the ball right on the money."
During shooting drills last summer, Kidd turned to Carmelo Anthony and asked, "Where do you want the ball?"
Anthony, not quite sure what Kidd meant, gave him a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"
Kidd smiled and answered, "when I pass it to, so you can shoot it in rythm." Kidd thinks about things and sees things that other players don't.
THE TEAM LEADER
Though the "crazy, deeper stuff" defines Kidd's game, so too does this: 44-0, his record competing at the senior international level. At the 2000 Olympics, he helped the USA win gold.
During Olympic qualifying last summer, he took only 10 shots in 10 games but was named USA Basketball's Male Athlete of the Year, leading the team to a 39.5 average margin of victory.
"What's fabulous for our team is if you put Kobe, Carmelo and LeBron in the game, you need a point guard who's really just looking to facilitate and that's what Jason does," says assistant coach Jim Boeheim. "Other great point guards have a scoring portion of their game, some of them have it as a large portion of their game, whereas Jason never needs to take a shot to dominate a game."
This approach fits the team-oriented aspect of the international game, with the emphasis on passing and selfless play. "The next level is for them to get on me to shoot the ball because they've become passers and it becomes contagious and that's the fun part," Kidd says.
Because of the respect that teammates have for Kidd, he is accepted as their leader. "Players today as good as they are and as much publicity as they get and the egos they obviously have because they're LeBron, Kobe, Carmelo, it's important that they have someone they can look up to. Those guys don't look up to too many people, but they look up to Jason" Boeheim says.
