JKIDD. I first discovered Jason when my alum Sacred Heart played in the island classic. It was not a tournament but it was a two day two game lineup. I was a sophomore at the time and our varsity played in it. So I made the trip over, was lucky to grab a set behind St Joes bench, and the dude was a work of art.
A grammar school buddy went to St Joes, so I started making trips over to watch Kidd play. A majority of the time I was able to score a seat behind the bench. Dude was amazing. If I recall he had a habit to grab a rebound and turn to the left in front of the bench and I saw him throw unreal almost full court bounce passes to Adrian Ealy.
Never in the Bay Area has any of us basketball junkies had to show up at 4:30 to get in a 7:00 game. JKIDD was by far the best high school player ever in the Bay Area. As someone said above, the guy dominated the game and he didn’t even need to score. He was the Nintendo remote control controlling himself. It was amazing.
Funny story. I went years never seeing another JKIDD. Ironically I ended up being good friends turned groomsmen Fontana. Dwayne will tell you JKIDD was the man hands down. They played together in AAU. JKIDD is actually born in SF, they asked him once if you didn’t move where would you have went to high school, he said Riordan. Imagine that, WOW.
On that note I had the privilege to be part of the Riordan program during the Kately Tofi years. One day I was at a USF baseball game. Saw quite a crowd in front of War Memorial, decided to see what was up. On the court was Tofi and Kately and some dude from Akron. I stayed a while but I am not the biggest AAU fan.
The next season at many practices me and Tofi would talk about great players. John says to me hey, we are playing at UC Berkeley and you got to come see that dude play. He is unreal. So that time came, John and Marquise introduced me to this lanky kid named Lebron.
Now l have sat on the floor at Arco watching James Harden (he rolled out of bounds saving a ball and the sole of his foot landed right under my chin). He didn’t apologize, LOL, Anyways seen Trevor Ariza, Klay, man I am getting old and so many others, nobody was better than JKIDD hands down until I sat and watched 15 minutes of Lebron.
I have been following high school hoops since around 1989, graduated in 1991, best high school player in this country is Lebron, second is JKIDD in my book.
