Kidd reflects on firing
Ex-Bucks coach accused of driving team too hard
It’s been just over two months since the Milwaukee Bucks fired head coach Jason Kidd. Since then, Kidd and his family have moved out of Wisconsin and are settling down in a new home in Phoenix.
In a wide-ranging interview with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck published Thursday, Kidd opened up about his coaching career, including his time with Bucks and his exit from the team.
According to a Bucks source in the story, Kidd was “putting in massive hours” and expected his players to do the same. “Jason was driving the team a bit hard,” the source said. “And that would have been fine if there was really good results.”
Kidd had a different perspective on the matter and wasn’t convinced his approach was wrong.
“When you are learning how to win, it’s going to hurt,” he says. “I told the players that. I showed them the piece of metal that’s in my hip” — a replica of a piece inserted during his 2015 hip surgery. “You’re going to give a piece of your body to this game if you want to be good . ... The money, the fame, whatever comes with it is great. But it does hurt to win . ...
“So, ‘driving them hard?’ I think,
There’s nothing wrong with work. If you want to be great, you have to work. If you want to be good, you have to work. If you want to just be average, or below average, then you don’t have to work.”
Kidd denied ever holding a practice after back-to-back games but discussed his decision to hold an extra practice before Christmas one season after a poor performance.
Earlier this season, Kidd held an intense practice at his alma mater in Berkeley, Calif., following a dismal game the night before in Utah. A couple weeks after that practice following the team’s sixth win in seven games, Giannis Antetokounmpo said, “He basically killed us,” when asked about that punitive practice that set the tone for the successful stretch.
On a broader level, Kidd said he believed his first season with the Bucks, which included guiding Milwaukee from 15 wins the previous season to a 41-win year, set unrealistic expectations, especially considering how young his players were. His commentary about the team’s youth grated on members of the franchise and fan base, something Kidd tried to explain further in the Bleacher Report piece.
“Maybe I didn’t explain it fully — young is for everyone,” he says. “The owners are young. And they’re going to make mistakes . ... So they win 41, as a new owner, what happens?”
(Answer: They expect a steady, continued rise.)
“Doesn’t work that way,” Kidd says. “The master plan got erased once we won 41 games. Because the expectations were, ‘This is what we can do every year.’ But no one’s ever been in this situation but one person, and that’s the head coach. And the head coach is saying, ‘We still have a ways to go.’ But no one is listening.”