Portland Trail Blazers: Why Jason Kidd would be an egregious mistake

Damian Lillard named Jason Kidd as a potential candidate after the Portland Trail Blazers announced that they parted ways with head coach Terry Stotts and that Dame would play a huge part in the selection of Stott’s replacement.

With all due respect to Lillard, Kidd would be a terrible choice to replace Stotts on a number of levels. The biggest mistake teams commit when firing their head coach is not bringing in a successor that’s actually an improvement.

We’ve seen this often recently: Jim Boylen replacing Fred Hoiberg, Nate Bjorkgren with Nate McMillan, and Stan Van Gundy taking Alvin Gentry’s post are a few examples.

Jason Kidd at his best is an average coach, but his worst is a downright ugly and backwards choice for the Trail Blazers

Kidd had a decorated NBA career, not without its own ups-and-downs of course, but his coaching experience hasn’t been nearly as successful.

Following his retirement, he jumped straight into a head coaching position with the Brooklyn Nets without having spent any time as an assistant.

While his first and only season with the Nets was generally a positive, most of their accomplishments can be attributed to a stacked roster. That team featured NBA legends Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett. Many would say that the team actually underachieved under Kidd’s guidance, including CBS Sports’s Matt Moore, Royce Young, and Zach Harper who all picked the team to win 50+ games.

Instead, the team finished 44-38 as the sixth seed, upset the then-playoff-maligned Toronto Raptors in seven games, and then were gentlemanly swept by the Lebron James-led Miami Heat.

Between the team’s slow start, ugly finish to the postseason, and all the bumps in between, the Nets relieved Kidd of his duties in a not so amicable split.

He was then anointed as the next Milwaukee Bucks head coach with the responsibility of unlocking franchise superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Instead, Kidd kept the Bucks in mediocrity-limbo, including a 2015-2016 season where they regressed by 8 wins and missed the playoffs.

After another average start (23-22) to the 2017-2018 season with a rising star in Giannis, the Bucks fired Kidd after 45 games. The team then went 21-17 under interim coach Joe Prunty and increased their scoring by 3.6 points per game, according to statmuse.

The next season, Giannis was named MVP and the Bucks won 60 games and the first seed in the Eastern Conference under Mike Budenholzer.

There’s simply nothing in his resume that would lead us to believe that Kidd would be an improvement over Stotts.

As sub-par as he’s been on the court, his troubling off-court record would be even more detrimental to the Trail Blazers

Jason Kidd had a storied history as a player and not entirely in a good way. As a coach, he also had more than his fair share of controversy including his ugly exit from Brooklyn and an unforgettable incident involving Tyshawn Taylor and a spilled soda.

Away from basketball, Kidd’s shady story continues to spiral into darker depths. Kidd is already on record with a domestic violence case and a driving under influences incident.

Within the proceedings of his divorce with ex-wife Joumana, are disturbing details of infidelity and abuse, both physical and emotional. While these claims have not yet been charged in a court of law, the sheer atrocity of these allegations coupled with his confirmed misconduct would form a glaringly disconcerting stain on the Blazers new era.

Between his on-court struggles and off-court troubles, is Jason Kidd really worth the stigma that would come with him? The answer is a definite and resounding no.