Pro tip: Do not bring an Android around Jason Kidd.
The Dallas Mavericks head coach won’t tolerate Android users on his team and proved that a few years ago when he reportedly punished the entire Milwaukee Bucks team because one player had an Android phone during his stint as Bucks head coach in 2014, according to an excerpt in the upcoming book “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP” by Mirin Fader.
Fader wrote that Kidd was really strict and brought an interesting coaching tactic that punished the rest of a team for a single player’s mistake. If a player messed up during practice, he would make the entire team run sprints, while the player who made the mistake had to watch from the sideline.
Former Bucks center Thon Maker was remembered for this story after he screwed up the team’s group chat by using an Android instead of an iPhone.
“At one point center Thon Maker didn’t have an iPhone, messing up the team’s blue-bubble iPhone group chat,” the book excerpt read. “Kidd was upset about it and made the team run because Kidd felt that Maker not getting an iPhone was an example of the team not being united.”
The Bucks went a combined 139-152 and never advanced past the first round of the playoffs with Kidd as the head coach. He was fired halfway through the 2017-18 season.
Kidd spent the last two seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers as an assistant coach before being hired as the next head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.
