Jason Kidd will be the first to admit that his previous stints as an NBA head coach in Brooklyn and Milwaukee didn’t go according to plan.
As he hits the playoffs in his second season as an NBA assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers under head coach Frank Vogel, a championship ring in tow and in the midst helping Los Angeles chase another, J-Kidd recently spoke to Marc Spears of The Undefeated about the potential for another head coaching opportunity in his future.
“I would love to have another opportunity at it,” Jason said. “Being here with Frank, understanding his strengths and watching him and how he handles different situations, is a big key that I’ve learned. Patience, communication is really key to understanding where everybody stands. Not just your top players, but the end of the bench.”
Relfecting on his past coaching stops, Jason said that patience, or the lack thereof, may have been what held him back from achieiving special things with his previous teams.
“The biggest thing I would say in Milwaukee or Brooklyn is the way the message is delivered could have been different. Not so hard. Not so rough. A little bit more fun to it. As a competitor, you get lost into, ‘What can I do to help them win?’ And that’s all they can hear, is that, ‘He just wants to win.’ Where’s the fun? Let’s build this thing and enjoy it. You play as a player for a championship and you coach for a championship. But there’s also different parts of different environments that you are trying to build in a culture.”
Asked about how he views his first ring as an assistant coach, he put it on the same level as winning one as a player, and made an interesting argument for doing so.
“I view them the same,” he said. “It’s funny. As a player, you look at the coach and go, well, ‘Coach didn’t shoot. Didn’t sweat.’ The sweating part is not true. The coaches are always sweating. You are part of the team. The beauty of a player-coach relationship is that the player trusts that the game plan is right, and that you’re going to make all the right decisions.”
Read more about how Jason feels about coaching with the Lakers, a long time rival, working with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and how he can help more NBA players in the article at The Undefeated.