Cal Sports Report

The Cal 100: No. 5 -- Jason Kidd

Kidd made an immeasurable impact on Cal basketball and is the only former Golden Bears player in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame

Jake Curtis

We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.

No. 5: Jason Kidd

Cal Sports Connection: Jason Kidd played basketball at Cal for two seasons, 1992-93 and 1993-94, and was a first-team All-America selection in 1994.

Claim to Fame: Kidd created excitement about the Cal basketball program and led the Bears to an upset of two-time defending national champion Duke in the 1993 NCAA tournament. He was a 10-time NBA all-star and finished second in the MVP voting in 2002. He won two Olympic gold medals as a member of the U.S. team and won an NBA title as a member of the Dallas Mavericks. Kidd has been a head coach of three NBA teams, and finished third in the coach of the year voting in 2015 with Milwaukee. He is the only former Cal player who is a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.

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No athlete has had a bigger impact on Cal sports than Jason Kidd.

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Six months after Cal went 4-14 in Pac-12 games in 1991-92, more than 5,000 people showed up at Cal's Harmon Gym for Night Court, an informal preseason introduction of the 1992-93 players with a brief intrasquad scrimmage, just to see a freshman named Jason Kidd.

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The Bears’ 1992-93 season-opener against Sacramento State (hardly a big drawing card) had to be moved to the Oakland Coliseum Arena to accommodate the 12,700 people who attended the game to see Kidd’s college debut.

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Freshman Jason Kidd landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated after the Bears upset two-time defending national champion Duke in the second round of the 1993 NCAA tournament. The story inside was titled “Changing of the Guard” with a photo of Kidd driving past Bobby Hurley.

SI Kidd

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Cal began the 1993-94 season ranked No. 6 in the country, primarily because Kidd decided to return to Cal for his sophomore season. The Bears ended the regular season ranked 16th, the first time in 34 years they finished in the top 20.

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On Jan. 30, 1994, a crowd of 15,033 were at the Oakland Coliseum Arena to watch Kidd record his fourth triple-double of the season, helping Cal hand No. 1-ranked UCLA its first loss of the season by a score of 85-70.

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Every game at 6,578-seat Harmon Gym was a sellout during Kidd’s time at Cal, and a handful of games were moved to the Oakland Coliseum Arena to accommodate the growing Kidd following. The demand for tickets initiated plans to expand Harmon Gym to 11,877-seat Haas Pavilion. If Yankee Stadium is the house that Ruth built, then Haas Pavilion is the house that Kidd built.

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Before Kidd had played a single college game, Cal assistant coach Jeff Wilbrun made this comment regarding the buzz created in Berkeley by the presence of Kidd, an Oakland product ranked as the No. 1 high school recruit in the country:

"But the truth is, except for Joe Montana, Jason has been the biggest name in the Bay Area the last two years."

No one can adequately articulate why the 6-foot-4 Kidd had such an impact on the court. It was his combination of physical strength, creativity, court vision, basketball intelligence, fearlessness, instincts, leadership and a knack for making big plays at pivotal moments that made him the national freshman of the year in 1993 and a consensus first-team All-America selection in 1994. He did it despite being a mediocre shooter in college, averaging 16.7 points as a sophomore.

He led the nation in steals as a freshman with 3.8 per game, and was sixth in assists that year, averaging 7.7. As a sophomore, he led the country in assists, averaging 9.1 per contest, and was third in steals, at 3.1 per game. 

Only one person in Division I history (BYU's Kyle Collinsworth) had more triple-doubles in one season than the four Kidd had in 1993-94.

Kidd set Cal records for career assists and career steals, and his record for career steals still stands even though he played just two college seasons before being the No. 2 overall pick in the 1994 NBA draft.

And Kidd’s time at Cal was merely a launching pad for a pro career that eventually made him the only former Cal player to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He also earned a place among the 75 best players in NBA history on the NBA 75th Anniversary Team announced in 2021. In December 2021, The Athletic ranked Kidd as the 36th greatest NBA player ever.

Kidd was a 10-time All-Star selection, a five-time first-team All-NBA pick and a nine-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team. He led the Nets to the NBA Finals in consecutive seasons (2002 and 2003), and, at the age of 37, he won an NBA championship in 2011 as the starting point guard for the Dallas Mavericks. 

He led the NBA in assists five times, including 2002-03, when he averaged a career-high 18.7 points, and he finished second in the MVP voting in 2001-02 while with the Phoenix Suns, barely losing out to Tim Duncan in a close vote.

He ranks second in NBA history in both career assists and career steals, behind only John Stockton in both. He also ranks 15th alltime in three-point shots made, an indication of how much his shooting improved after leaving Cal. Kidd’s 107 career triple-doubles are the fourth most in history (tied with LeBron James), and ESPN called him "one of the best passing and rebounding point guards in NBA history.”

He was a co-captain of the U.S. team that won a gold medal in the 2000 Olympics, leading that team in assists. He was also on the American team that captured Olympic gold in 2008.

Since retiring as a player, Kidd has been a head coach for three NBA teams, and is currently the head coach of the Mavericks. He has reached the postseason in four of his seven seasons as a head coach, and finished third in the 2015 coach-of-the-year voting when he led the Bucks to a 26-win improvement over the previous season.

Cal had Kidd’s jersey No. 5 retired in 2004, and in 2016 Kidd made a seven-figure financial contribution to Cal to start the Jason Kidd Scholarship for men's basketball at Cal.

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In 2018, Cal had a Jason Kidd Bobblehead Night, with fans getting a bobblehead of Kidd, which was modeled after his shot over Hurley in the 1993 NCAA tournament.

The Cal 100: No. 6 -- Andy Smith

Cover photo of Jason Kidd by Scott Wachter, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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