To say Jason Kidd’s first season as an NBA head coach has been a roller- coaster ride is an understatement. But despite all of the ups and downs, Kidd said Monday night — hours after being named January’s Eastern Conference Coach of the Month — he has no regrets about his decision to jump straight into coaching.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Kidd said before his Nets faced the 76ers at Barclays Center. “This is a perfect situation for me.”
It’s still fairly remarkable to consider how much things have turned around for Kidd and the Nets in the space of a month. Heading into January with a 10-21 record and coming off a pair of back-to-back blowout road losses to the Pacers and Spurs — and with a road game against the Thunder to begin the month — Kidd was already feeling some heat just a couple of months into his first season on the job.
But a second-half comeback from a double-digit deficit to win that game in Oklahoma City on Jan. 2 jump-started the Nets to 10 wins in their first 11 games of the month, and allowed Kidd to take home Coach of the Month honors, becoming the second to win Player of the Month and Coach of the Month for the same team — along with Suns coach Jeff Hornacek, who did it in December.
Kidd will undoubtedly hope his winning the award goes better than it did for Avery Johnson last season, after Johnson was named the November Coach of the Month and was fired before the end of December.
“I think it’s a great honor for those guys in that locker room, because they were playing at a high level,” Kidd said. “It’s a very nice recognition, but it’s for those guys that are playing, and those guys are playing very well right now.”
It looked at times during the first two months of the season there was little chance of that ever happening, given everything that happened to this team since Kidd’s appointment last June, less than two weeks after walking away from his 19-year playing career following a final season with the Knicks.
After Kidd was expected to instill some heart and toughness into what seemed to be a fairly inflexible Nets roster that had lost to the injury-riddled Bulls the first round of the playoffs last season, the Nets stunned the basketball world by trading for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett on draft night, instantly ramping up the expectations for Kidd and the rest of the roster.
Then Deron Williams went down with a sprained ankle before training camp began, forcing him to miss virtually the entire preseason, and he has never really gotten going. Brook Lopez is lost for the season with his latest injury and subsequent surgery on his right foot.
Then there was the whole controversy surrounding the hiring and subsequent “reassigning” of top assistant Lawrence Frank.
Despite all the early turmoil, the Nets are inside the top eight playoff spots in the Eastern Conference and going into play Monday were only four games behind the Raptors for first place in the Atlantic Division and a top-four seed in the playoffs.
“I’m still feeling my way,” Kidd said. “It’s still early in my young coaching career, but I’ve seen a lot in the first couple months, but the biggest thing is being able to communicate with the guys in the locker room, and that we’re all on the same page.”