TWO FOR ALL TIME
Kidd, Thorn resurrected the Nets together — now get enshrined together
FOR YEARS, they were the butt of most NBA jokes. Usually rightfully so. The Nets had won one playoff series in their tortured 25-year NBA history. Then before the 2001-2002 season, some newcomer acquired from the West — granted, an All-Star newcomer — made ludicrous claims.
Jason Kidd predicted a plus-.500 record. He predicted the playoffs. The reaction at that pre-training camp press conference was what you would expect. “Are you nuts?” Kidd repeated it all at the team’s kickoff dinner to a gang remade from the 26-victory mess of the previous season.
“He basically said, with a straight face, ‘I believe we can make the playoffs,’ ” said Richard Jefferson, part of the Nets transformation. Still, people thought Kidd was nuts. “Everybody was pooh-poohing it like, ‘Yeah, OK. You don’t know anything about the Nets,’ ” said Rod Thorn, the executive who pulled off the most important and transformative trade in team history.
People knew the Nets. Losers. Bozo would be insulted if you called them clowns.
“His message was ‘ This ain’t the same old Nets. We’re winning. We’re a playoff team,’ ” said Lawrence Frank, an assistant under Thorn’s first Nets coach, Byron Scott, before replacing him in 2003-04.
To the shock and disbelief of virtually everyone, Kidd and the Nets repeatedly backed up the claims. They weren’t good. They were really good. Back-to-back NBA Finals good.
“We felt we were back being part of the league,” said ex-Net Mike O’Koren, an assistant coach on that team.
“The New Jersey Nets became relevant in the NBA. To put the Jason Kidd and Rod Thorn era in perspective, think of the history of the Nets before and after,” said another assistant coach on that team, Tom Barrise, now with Detroit. “There was new life around the team. We weren’t the ‘Swamp Dragons’ or whatever the hell they wanted to call us.”
Now the greatest honor awaits.
THE man who concocted the turnaround from the front office, Rodney King Thorn, 77, a basketball lifer whose diverse NBA career began as the No. 2 overall pick in 1963, and Jason Frederick Kidd, 45, the greatest player ever to wear a Nets NBA uniform, will fittingly be enshrined together in the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday in Springfield, Mass.
Both are ultra-worthy. Kidd is second all-time in assists and steals. He twice won Olympic gold. He averaged 12.6 points, 8.7 assists, 6.3 rebounds and forged 107 regularseason triple-doubles in 19 seasons. The last time the Knicks, Nets and Mavs won 50 games, their point guard was Kidd. The last time the Nets made the playoffs, Kidd was their coach.
Thorn was a two-sport high school stud who stayed home for college, at West Virginia, and was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets. He played eight NBA seasons, was a Nets assistant, a head coach in both the ABA and NBA. He moved into Chicago’s front office and drafted Michael Jordan. He held similar jobs with the Nets and 76ers. He was the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations (1986-2000). He chaired the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball selection committee.
Thorn was summoned to rescue a franchise that often could not get out of its own way. Always, something arose. A key injury.
Drazen Petrovic’s death. Defeats devised in a sadist’s laboratory.
“Rod brought great creditability to a franchise that had some [minor] success, but things were going a little sideways,” Frank said. “The guy spent 15 years in the NBA league office. ... He brought honesty, candor.”
Thorn brought experience from all angles: player, assistant, head coach, executive. And there was another trait universally attributed to Thorn: “Rod is an ultra-competitor,” Frank said. He hated losing. “It was a winning mentality that Rod and Jason brought. Losing wasn’t part of the equation,” O’Koren said. “If we lost a couple games in a row, Rod would let us have it. Coaches and players. He was not going to tolerate that.”
After the Nets went 26-56 under Scott in 2000-01, another long season loomed. Then Phoenix executives called. Kidd was available.
KIDD was under fire for a domesticabuse charge after assaulting his wife, Joumana, in January 2001. The Nets gambled and sent Stephon Marbury, a very talented player — who also was enormously unpopular with teammates — to Phoenix that summer. That deal probably would not occur today.
“Jason had the [abuse] matter in Phoenix and it was time to move on. The organization was ready for a change and Rod Thorn took that on. For Rod to — I wouldn’t even say take a chance on Kidd because he was one of the better players in the NBA — but for him to take on that kind of heat in today’s age? What Rod did, think about that today,” Jefferson said.
Knowing Kidd was coming, Thorn and GM Ed Stefanski concocted a draft-night trade that hastened the process. They traded the No. 7 pick to Houston for three firstrounders: Jefferson, center Jason Collins and guard Brandon Armstrong. In the second round, they grabbed Brian Scalabrine.
“It’s very rare in one fell swoop to reset your team, your culture and then basically bring in a guy who single-handedly, through talent and force of will changed your culture,” Frank said. “But Jason couldn’t do it alone.”
The Nets essentially got another impact player, a revitalized Kerry Kittles who missed 2000-01 but returned with speed that fit perfectly.
To Thorn, Kidd simply “meant everything” to the Nets.
“That first year we were a very poor rebounding team, a very poor defensive team, a very poor passing team and we didn’t have chemistry. When Jason came, all of the things we were bad in, he was good in,” said Thorn, whose third Nets blockbuster was get- ting Vince Carter in December 2004. “Kittles came back. We drafted Richard and Collins. We got Todd MacCulloch in free agency. Kenyon [Martin] was healthy all year. Jason made everybody better.”
Everybody saw it. During the height of Kidd’s success in New Jersey, The Post asked numerous luminaries, most now enshrined in the Hall of Fame, what it was that made Jason Kidd, well, Jason Kidd.
“I’ve not seen anyone faster than him with the ball,” Joe Dumars said.
“It’s his basketball intelligence. Jason Kidd knows the game, smells the game, feels the game,” Pat Riley said.
“Myself, Michael, Larry — we made guys better. That’s what Jason does. He makes guys better,” Magic Johnson said.
“His will. There’s no other point guard as important to his team as Jason Kidd because of how he plays. He doesn’t let them quit,” Doc Rivers said.
“He does whatever it takes for his team to get it done every night,” John Stockton said. Kidd once assessed himself this way: “My strengths? To want to give everything I have every time I take the floor. I just try to improve on something each game and help my teammates,” Kidd said. “I’d say my strengths are passing and defense.”
Kidd continued it throughout his stay. He did things that defied logic (Google “Bowling Ball Pass.”)
“The first day of practice was electrifying. He set a tone for a group that was demoralized the year before,” Barrise said. “Jason brought out the best in everybody, players and coaches. It’s what greatness is. He held everybody to a higher standard. He just couldn’t tolerate ordinary.”
Kidd couldn’t tolerate the Nets taking a back seat to the Knicks. He vowed the Nets would no longer be the No. 2 area team, then beat the Knicks like a drum for six-plus seasons.
There were bad times. Kidd’s relationship with Scott soured and the coach was canned. Eventually he forced Thorn into a trade. But Thorn insisted good times outweigh bad.
“[The trade] was not one of the more pleasant moments but he and I are really good friends to this day,” Thorn said. “I have only good thoughts about him.”
SO BOTH Thorn and Kidd are headed for basketball immortality, in part for their tours with the Nets. “It’s so hard to go start and create something. New Jersey had nothing. The state had a stigma. The arena, the team, the Meadowlands area all had a stigma,” Jefferson said. “These guys changed that.”
Kidd had done it before. He transformed Cal-Berkeley, Dallas, and Phoenix, but admitted the Nets turnaround “was hardest.”
He wouldn’t have gotten the chance if not for Thorn’s trade gamble.
“It was fun to go to a game. Guys wanted to come play for the Nets,” Barrise said. “Every one of us, down to the interns, who were there and now have great jobs in the league have Rod Thorn and Jason Kidd to thank for helping us have a better life.”