In a story for Bleacher Report, Howard Beck provides an in-depth look at Jason Kidd‘s coaching career.
Kidd was fired from the Milwaukee Bucks in January and has been away from basketball ever since.
Sources gave Beck a deeper understanding of why that move was made, highlighting Kidd’s “demanding style”:
Team officials had also grown concerned that Kidd’s demanding, old-school style had worn thin. Players were tuning Kidd out—or already had last season, according to one source with close ties to the team.
Kidd was “putting in massive hours,” a Bucks source says, “and he expected the players” to do the same. “Jason was driving the team a bit hard. And that would have been fine if there was really good results.”
Kidd reportedly once called a two-hour practice after a back-to-back. When Beck asked about it, the former coach denied it, maintaining that “as a player, it’s the golden rule: You never practice on a back-to-back.”
The article also addresses Kidd’s up-and-down relationships with his players and his unpopular tendency to criticize guys, which eventually rubbed superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo the wrong way:
“It was constantly, ‘Hey, it was the players’ fault—they’re not doing this, they’re not doing that, they’re too young,'” a Bucks source says.
Sources both inside and outside the organization say Kidd had a tendency to fall in and out of love with players—e.g., demanding a trade for Michael Carter-Williams one day, burying him the next.
…
That relationship [with Giannis] was one of the stronger ones Kidd had, although sources say Antetokounmpo, too, grew weary of Kidd’s relentless critiques.
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