Payton Shows Rookie It’s Not A Kidd’s Game
The way Jason Kidd looks at it, he’s getting force-fed NBA basketball in helpings he’d never imagined.
He was schooled by 10-year veteran Derek Harper Friday night. Saturday, it was six-year veteran Gary Payton. Today it will be perennial all-star John Stockton.
These are schoolmasters teaching him lessons he wouldn’t have gotten while playing roughly one-fourth as much basketball in what would have been his junior season at California.
“I’m learning every night,” he said. “I figure by the end of the year, I’ll be a veteran.”
If he lasts that long.
The 21-year-old Kidd continues to be one of the most active point guards in the NBA, and it’s beginning to wear on him. Owing to the Mavericks’ lack of depth and coach Dick Motta’s commitment to building the team’s future with young players, Kidd is playing even more minutes than Payton.
And 46 games remain: the equivalent of two college basketball seasons compressed into three months.
“I’ve got to climb over this wall,” Kidd said, smiling. “It’s a beast.”
As a whole the Mavericks seem to be running on fumes. After a 12-8 start, they have lost 12 of their past 16 games.
“This isn’t like college,” Kidd said. “If anybody asks me how to get ready for the NBA, I’d tell ‘em to play four college seasons in one season. Then you might have a little bit of the feel of what it’s like.”
Motta, who started his NBA career four years before Kidd was born, notes that he isn’t hearing complaints from Kidd, Jamal Mashburn and Jim Jackson, the youngsters he considers the present and future of the team.
“They have strong hearts,” Motta said, “and I don’t think there’s any problem of me killing them by playing them too much.”
Saturday night against the Sonics, Motta got an unusual opportunity to rest “The Three Js.” The Mavs were being blown out so badly by the Sonics in Seattle’s 117-91 victory, that he saw no reason to play them in the fourth quarter.
“This is a real gut-check for us,” Kidd said. “We’ve got 10 games in 14 nights. We’ll just play through it and learn. We can learn how to get our legs back quicker next time, and how to play better tired - all the stuff that you learn as you get experience.”
A shooting hostage
Payton and Kidd, longtime pals from the East Bay of San Francisco, met each other with a hug at midcourt, and then Payton promptly outscored him, 22-3.
“He’s listening to too many people,” Payton said. “He’s got to take his shots when he has them. He took four shots tonight. That won’t do it.”
A 35-percent shooter, Kidd is absorbing precisely the same type of criticism that Payton heard during his first couple of years in the league. Payton overcame his own deficiencies with intense off-season workouts, often with Kidd.
“When he gets the MVP award, he’d better thank me during his speech, right after his parents and his teammates,” Kidd said. “We worked out all the time in any gym we could find.”
Payton said he will reciprocate: “I’m going to take him hostage in the gym this summer.”
Schrempf cools
On his 32nd birthday, Detlef Schrempf’s shooting touch finally cooled off. Although he grabbed nine rebounds Saturday, he was 3 for 9 from the field and scored only 13 points.