He's been there, but Jason Kidd hasn't done that, meaning get a title.
All the years and the assists. All the trades and the troubles. Jason Kidd has endured and achieved. What he hasn't done is play for an NBA Champion.
Twice his team, then the New Jersey Nets, made it to the Finals and lost. Now it's a third time, with the Dallas Mavericks, against the Miami Heat. A series featuring LeBron, of course, and Dirk. But do not forget Jason Kidd, the survivor.
Kidd and the Mavs were the second best team Tuesday night as the last series of the season of a sport created for winter started on the final day in May. Kidd had 6 assists, sharing the game high with the Heat's Dwyane Wade, and three 3-pointers, but Miami won, 92-84.
Kidd is 38, ancient for his profession, perfect for his profession, a point guard able to get points. Nobody older has started at the position in an NBA Finals.
Perhaps nobody more significant, although it didn't look like it in the opener. Still he had that big basket against Oklahoma City in the conference final. Were you surprised? No one out here on the shores of San Francisco Bay was.
Those who make it to the top, to the majors, to the NFL, to the NBA, to the tennis and golf tours, are identified early. At 8 or 9 or 10 years of age, they are playing with the big boys, outplaying the big boys. So it was with Kidd who when it came to sports never was a kid.
He was born an athlete and merely worked at becoming a star.
Soccer came first, and whether he might have been another Lionel Messi is anyone's guess, but once he found basketball, there was no guessing, only certainty. His games for St. Joseph's High in Alameda, across the Estuary from Oakland, were legend. A replica of his Jersey, "Pilots'' on the front, still is being sold.
He filled little gyms in the East Bay. Watching Kidd drive the floor was like hearing Mozart compose. You understood you were in the presence of greatness.
"Everybody knew,'' the late Frank LaPorte, Kidd's coach agreed. "As an eighth-grader, Jason Kidd was the talk of the town.''
St. Joe's won two California championships. More accurately, even though he had excellent teammates, Kidd won two championships. Kidd was national player of the year as a senior.
He was going to enroll at Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio State ... one of the basketball schools. Instead, in a surprise, Jason Kidd went to Cal, seven miles from his home in the Oakland Hills, maybe 10 miles, at most, from St. Joe's.
Royalty had arrived. Interviews were restricted. Look but don't communicate. He was special. He knew it. Cal knew it. Under coach Lou Campanelli he also was unhappy.
Did Kidd lead the rebellion? He didn't oppose it. Campanelli was removed and replaced by assistant Todd Bozeman, who had recruited Kidd.
It worked. The Golden Bears beat LSU and Duke - Duke, the two-time defending champion - the first two rounds of the 1993 NCAAs in Kidd's freshman season. They got a spread in Sports Illustrated. They got Cal to renovate and rename Harmon Gym, now Haas Pavilion.
Another year and he was gone. The Mavericks made him the second overall pick in the '94 draft, behind Glenn Robinson of Purdue. Fantastic. Except there was a freeway accident, from which Kidd had fled the scene. The image was tarnished, if only slightly.
The franchise player kept going from one franchise to another, Dallas to Phoenix, Phoenix to New Jersey in what New Jersey general manager Rod Thorn called the greatest deal of his career, the Nets back to Dallas when Kidd wanted out. And got out.
"Over the course of time,'' said Thorn when Kidd was sent to the Mavs in 2008, "it became evident his heart wasn't in it. With him, the kind of player he is, if his heart's not in it, then he's not the same type of player.''
His heart's in it this season of 2010-2011. The question is how much longer will Kidd be in it? This is his 17th NBA season. He's had thousands of baskets and passes, maybe almost as many comments about his longevity.
"What part of your career do you think was best,'' Charles Barkley asked Kidd recently, "the Bush One years, the Bush Two Years, the Clinton years or the Obama years?''
Quick with a response and a smile, Kidd answered, "You left out the Carter years.''
Nowitzki, who is 32, called Kidd a "fossil.'' Is that better than listing him as a dinosaur? He's beaten the odds. The issue is whether he can beat the Miami Heat.
