The Milwaukee Bucks winning the NBA championship this year was a pretty remarkable story if for no other reason than few imagined they were building a championship core years ago when they drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo and traded for Khris Middleton after a lackluster rookie season in Detroit.
They would come together under the guidance of Jason Kidd, whose tenure in Milwaukee is a difficult one to suss out. The Bucks two eventual All-Stars developed into the first glimpses of the players they would become under Kidd, leading to the idea that he had a way with player development. At the same time, Bucks players beyond Giannis weren’t exactly fond of Kidd for his extremely hard-nosed approach to coaching the team that many felt went too far, something that is extremely evident in an anecdote from Mirin Fader’s new book, Giannis: The Improbable Rise Of An NBA MVP.
In the book, Fader details a December 23 loss in the 2014-15 season after which Kidd demanded the team come back on Christmas Eve for practice, to the dismay of the veterans in the locker room as just about everyone had travel booked to go home for Christmas, and called Larry Sanders “a piece of sh*t” while making them run sprints over and over.
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It is a story that tracks with just about everything we heard about Kidd’s tenure in Milwaukee, but is particularly relevant now that he is returning to the head of the bench in Dallas. After a few years in Los Angeles on the Lakers roster — where surely there were no sudden Christmas Eve practices — it will be interesting to see if Kidd has softened his approach to practices, particularly with a young superstar already in place in Dallas in Luka Doncic.
Giannis’ feelings towards Kidd were more positive than most, but few others embraced his approach in the same manner. Finding the balance between pushing players without crossing the line will be paramount to whether Kidd can enjoy longterm success with the Mavs without wearing out his welcome as quickly as he has elsewhere. Scheduling impromptu pre-Christmas practices might be one to file away as an easy adjustment to make from his time in Milwaukee to help with that.
