It was hard to know what to expect when Jason Kidd retired from the NBA as a player and moved right into a head coaching job with the Brooklyn Nets. Despite his historical attachment to the NBA heyday of that franchise, Kidd could hardly have picked a worse team to learn the ropes with. The Nets featured a starting lineup full of former All-Stars and a payroll that would make Donald Trump blush.
There was nothing but downside for Kidd with the Nets and he fell under fire -- and nearly out of his job -- as his club limped to an 11-21 start last season. But Kidd and the Nets got better, finished with 44 wins and won a playoff series. It was a nice recovery, but for many, the jury was still out on Kidd as a coach. And when this season started and Kidd had moved on to Milwaukee, few would have predicted that he would finish third in the Coach of the Year balloting. Third. Behind the two guys who led their teams to No. 1 seeds, and ahead of coaches like Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers and Tom Thibodeau.
"It's always about the team," Kidd told the media on Wednesday. "The coach has nothing to do with it."
That is a typical Kidd statement. He says these self-deprecating things with a barely repressed smirk on his face. He gets the same look when he's running down his own Hall-of-Fame playing career, as if the Jason Kidd that ranks second all-time in assists were a different person altogether. It's not that he doesn't mean what he says, but he knows he's applying more than a little embellishment. We get it -- the NBA is a player's league. And Kidd empowers his assistant coaches to help shoulder the coaching load. But, come on, coaches do have something to do with it, right?
Milwaukee makeover
In Milwaukee, Kidd faced a whole different challenge than he did in Brooklyn. He was tasked with improving a young Bucks team coming off a franchise-low 15 wins. Expectations were at a nadir. To some extent, improvement was inevitable. The Bucks were unlucky with injuries in 2013-14 and the season before that, they won 38 games. Still, no one really expected what happened: a 26-win improvement and the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference, albeit with a .500 record.
No matter how you want to couch it, the 26-win turnaround was historic. There are only 13 one-season improvements that large in the histories of the current franchises, topped by the 42-win improvement the Celtics enjoyed in 2007-08 after acquiring Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. Boston was the only one of the 13 to win a title in its bounce-back season, but all of the teams on the list made the playoffs. Milwaukee's 41 wins is the lowest total among the turnaround teams, but it's still awfully impressive.
"It's a compliment to the whole staff, not just one person," Kidd said. "It's a compliment to the whole team. It's about the team, it always will be about the team as long as we're here."
OK, fine J-Kidd. You had nothing to do with it. But the thing about these extreme turnarounds is that they tend to stick for a few seasons. Which isn't at all surprising -- you don't luck your way into 26 extra wins. Whether it's a return to normal patterns of injuries, new players or whatever, there is always a tangible reason a team got so much better and that reason doesn't become obsolete after one season.
All signs pointing up
Of the 13 extreme turnaround teams (at least a 26-win improvement), the average leap was from 24 to 54 wins. But the average win totals for those teams over the following four seasons: 56, 54, 53 and 55. Of the 52 total seasons that comprised the four years after the turnaround for the 13 teams, not one was a below-.500 campaign. If the trend holds true for Milwaukee, not only can the Bucks expect to be even better next season, they can expect to be good for the foreseeable future.
Seven of the 13 coaches on the list were in their first season with the team, and another four were in their second. Rivers, who was in his fourth season leading the Celtics when the team took off, is the outlier on the list. The rest are more like Kidd: a fresh voice that made a lasting difference. When considered in that light, it's hard to look at Kidd's performance in Milwaukee and not come to the conclusion that he can really coach. I don't know how many lingering doubts there might have been about that, but after the way things went early on in Brooklyn last season, it's safe to say there were a few.
Kidd likes to be coy with the media and he's not one for drilling down X's and O's when questioned. He sticks to general concepts, like the need for his team to share the ball and defend because "that's who we are." His comments can usually be dismissed as "coachspeak," and it's easy to glaze over them. But after days, weeks and months of hearing the same messages, you get a sense of the kind of consistency he's tried to instill in Milwaukee. And the most telltale sign that his messages were getting through emerged earlier this season: His players started proffering the same platitudes as their coach, often using the exact words.
"He has a calm demeanor. He's a player," said Bucks veteran Jared Dudley. "Some coaches get intimidated by the moment and try to over-coach. He lets players play. He has a strong game plan of how he wants players to play, but within that game plan you have flexibility."
Defensive turnaround
The most impressive part of the Bucks' season has been their massive leap on the defensive end. Last season's group, which comprised many of the same players, was a listless unit that finished 29th in defensive efficiency. This season, led by long-armed perimeter defenders like Khris Middleton and Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee established an identity as an aggressive, helping defense that pressured opponents into the league's highest rate of turnovers, and a 27-place improvement to No. 2 in the defensive standings.
That defensive improvement puts Kidd in rarified company. In terms of raw defensive efficiency, only one team in the history of the NBA has trimmed more points of defensive rating from its previous season. The Bucks' defense improved by 9.6 points per 100 possessions. The team that did better? That would be the 1997-98 San Antonio Spurs, the club that saw the first edition of the Popovich-Tim Duncan partnership. San Antonio's rating improved by 12.9 points that season.
"All he does is ask you to give a 100 percent on offense and defense," Dudley said. "He's learning just like we're learning."
Kidd the coach
Kidd appears to be learning fast. That shows up most importantly in the improvement of Milwaukee's young players. Middleton's real plus-minus went from minus-0.3 to plus-6.47, and he'll get at least some support in the most improved player balloting. So, too, could Antetokounmpo, whose RPM went from minus-1.2 to plus-0.8. Before he was traded to Phoenix, Brandon Knight had emerged as one of the most improved players in the league. And his replacement at point guard, Michael Carter-Williams, improved his PER from 12.8 before the trade to 16.3, and during April has played the best basketball of his fledgling NBA career.
The bottom line is that despite any misgivings some may have had about Kidd's preparedness to coach an NBA team straight from a playing career, we can probably stop looking for evidence that he's overmatched. Is he really the third-best coach in the NBA? That may be a stretch, but it doesn't change the fact that all evidence from this season indicates that he's doing a terrific job. And he's still learning.