Feature

Comeback Kidd

As his father ferried him to youth soccer, basketball, and baseball games, it became apparent that young Jason wasn't an average child. He was one of the best soccer players in the Bay Area, with the reflexes of a dragonfly. Then he started to grow. "During a physical exam, when I was 12 years old," Kidd remembers, "the doctor predicted that I'd be six foot nine. You should have seen the look on my father's face."

When he was in eighth grade, Kidd would travel to St. Joseph of Notre Dame High School in Alameda to play in afternoon scrimmages with the school's varsity players. "He dominated from day one," Stone recalls. As a junior, Kidd took tiny St. Joseph's to the Division I state championship. In the championship game against Fremont of Los Angeles, a state powerhouse, he went only 5 for 25 shooting from the floor, but in the last five minutes, with the game on the line, he got every rebound, stole every ball, and scored every basket. As a senior, he led his team to another state championship and was named USA Today and Parade magazine High School Player of the Year.

Then, after two years running the offense at the University of California at Berkeley, Kidd placed his name in the NBA draft and was selected second overall by the Dallas Mavericks. In his first season, he took the sorry Mavericks from 8 wins the previous year to 36 wins and was named co-Rookie of the Year with Grant Hill. He didn't have the personal skills to lead a team, however, and things quickly went sour in Dallas. The star of the team had been shooting guard Jimmy Jackson, who felt he needed to control the ball, and a feud quickly developed between the stars. Kidd now calls his trade to Phoenix a "Christmas present."

There were other incidents that damaged Kidd's reputation, including a paternity suit and two late-night car accidents. But then Kidd starting seeing Joumana Samaha, a Bay Area promotional representative for a beer company. When he first asked her out, she was skeptical. "I knew what I wanted, and Jason was not it," she says. But on their first date, she recalls, "we talked for hours and hours. He wasn't anything like I thought he was. Something clicked." Remembering when they met, Kidd and his wife turn in their booth at the Aquagrill, look into each other's eyes, and kiss.

When he was traded to Phoenix, Jason implored Joumana to move in with him and even handed over his little black book. She accepted, and set about reworking his image, changing his agent and sending some of his buddies packing. She knew from her own experience that Jason's quietness was being misinterpreted by the media as aloofness, so she coached him on how to handle interviewers.

Joumana even helped Jason with his jump shot, chasing down rebounds while he took hundreds of shots a day. After the two were married in 1997, Jason's shooting percentage rose above 40 percent for the first time.

Nets general manager Rod Thorn had been watching Kidd for years. "I spent six weeks with him in Puerto Rico and Hawaii qualifying for the Olympics," he recalls. "The best players in the world were there, and they all wanted to be on his team." Thorn has also stuck by coach Byron Scott, who was shell-shocked by a rookie coaching season notable for poisonous team chemistry and only 26 wins.

But these days, Scott is smiling the way he did when he was converting Magic Johnson's passes into easy baskets as a Los Angeles Laker. "I have been blessed with two of the best passers who ever lived," Scott says. But Scott deserves the credit for quickly installing a motion offense that maximizes Kidd's passing skills. Instead of isolating star players for spectacular one-on-one moves, the Nets' "Princeton offense" keeps all five offensive players in motion. When the defense tries to anticipate movement toward the ball, the Nets reverse to the basket. When the defense tries to protect the basket, Kidd finds Van Horn on the perimeter for a three-pointer. It's almost Zen: To score points, players give up the coveted ball, at times actually running away from it.

So far, the Kidds seem to be enjoying their well-publicized life in the media center of the world. "It's so different from Phoenix," Joumana says. "There, fans treated him like Michael Jackson, but here, it's like they appreciate his basketball." But their perfect picture has cracked before, and it wouldn't take much for the Nets to return to their losing ways. Kenyon Martin, the team's muscular energy source and defensive stopper, sometimes loses control. Already this season, he's leveled both Karl Malone and Tracy McGrady, receiving two suspensions for the flagrant fouls. But neither Scott nor Kidd is eager to make Martin acknowledge the difference between youthful exuberance and sheer malice. Kidd even believes a little mayhem can help a team. "Every great team has had its enforcer," he says, "someone who the opponent fears."

In the playoffs, defenses are stiffer and more disruptive than in the regular season. When offenses fail, the ball often ends up in the hands of players who have to make great individual moves. That's when the Suns' deal for the dazzling Marbury might start making more sense.

Then there's the matter of money. It will take truckloads of cash and a long-term contract to keep Jason Kidd in New Jersey beyond next year. Nets CEO Lou Lamoriello, also the chief executive of the super-successful New Jersey Devils franchise, is so tight-fisted that people joke that he once fired an employee for leaving the lights on in his office at night.

But don't count on the Nets' letting Jason Kidd go. He isn't just a great player. He's a great player who has arrived at a time when New York-area fans are ready to savor his rare gift.

As Jason and Joumana head out of the restaurant hand in hand, some fans who've noticed his presence edge closer. Jason keeps his head down, but Dan Honeker, an investment banker and die-hard Knicks fan, edges close. "Hey, Jason," Honeker whispers. "Great job. We love you."