#35 - Jason Kidd is Anthony Cooper

Had to! Had. To. As mentioned before with Gary Payton et al, when I’m talking the best stealers in NBA history - need to pair them with a thief. A real thief too. A mean thief. A legit bad dude thief for the #2 all-time steals leader Jason Kidd. We all know that Kidd is respected for a lot - hard defense, steely steals, abundance of assists, a competent scorer in his own right - but he’s also a bad dude. Not known for being a good dude. ‘Lost’ has a lot of thieves and scam artists and all that, and most of them are people we end up rooting for, but not Anthony Cooper. Legitimately, one of the true bad dudes on the show with absolutely no redemptive arc whatsoever - just plain bad through and through - is Anthony Cooper aka John Locke’s nefarious dad and he fits pretty perfectly with the 10x All-Star Kidd. 

Steals and assists. Assists are scams. Did I say this already? I feel like I may have said this, but an assist is like running a scam on the other team’s defense. Moving the ball around and getting them out of position and getting the ball to someone else so quickly that they score with it without so little extra movement that you get partial credit for the points that someone else scored. That’s a scam. That’s a glorious scam. And Jason Kidd was about the best someone can be at both steals and assists. I mean we’ll get to the best aka John Stockton at some point, but J. Kidd is the number 2 in both categories. Kidd’s an incredible ball player. I’m over trying to argue the rankings of these players as I genuinely do not understand that, but even though I personally don’t like J. Kidd - as he’s an alleged spousal abuser and he did DUI his car into a telephone pole and he kind of just seems up his own ass about being a good guy and I legit never rooted for him on any of the teams he was on and the whole him blowing kisses before shooting free throws and he’s kind of always looked like a comic book villain no matter what age he’s been and yeah I mean I don’t root for everyone - he’s one of the best point guards ever, especially as one thinks of a point guard- steals, assists, solid scoring, defense, he does it all. Kidd’s even got a ton of rebounds too. He fills the stats sheet and has been a dynamic player for all the teams he’s been on (maybe, minus the Knicks at the end) and he has left quite an impressive career total chasing after numbers no one will ever best (Stockton’s steals and assists). 

Before I bring Anthony ‘The Kidney Taker’ Cooper back into this, let’s mention Steve Nash. Famously/infamously, the people who this blog is basically written for have been a part of a Nash v. Kidd debate. Originally, I was on Team Nash. I believe the debate of who is better or maybe more so who would you want on your team more if you were creating a team or something like that started in like 2009 or so. Back then, I was on Team Nash. Yeah, saying ‘back then, I was’ means that I’m on Team Kidd now. I’m reluctantly on Team Kidd in that I genuinely wouldn’t want him around and I wouldn’t want to pay him and all that and I’d much rather hang out with Steve Nash for sure, but if we’re in a vacuum I think Kidd is the way to go. Reason being, back then I think an offensive juggernaut of a team scoring 110+ a night was really more of a novel idea. Back then, I think the thought that a team needed a go-go-go Nash style point guard to consistently get to that many points and I’m not sure that’s the truth and I’m not sure the possible consistency of a couple more assists a game and a couple of more points a game by Nash really does even out the defensive aspects that Kidd brought. I think it’s still a good debate, but at this point I think I’d rather have one of the best defenders of that position with Kidd than let’s say a guaranteed extra 6 points if it were Nash. Ok? Ok. Discuss. 

THE KIDNEY TAKER!!!! KIDDNEY TAKER?! Anthony Cooper just thrusts himself into the ‘Lost’ universe as the estranged father of main character John Locke when Locke is seemingly in his 30s? early 30s? - who knows. The wig use in ‘Lost’ is more absurd/obscene than any storyline. So, Cooper shows up and takes John under his wing out of nowhere and long cons him to get his kidney. It starts with him just palling around with him and then he takes him hunting and teaches him about guns and knife shit and hunting and a bunch of other outdoorsy stuff and then one day Locke shows up at his house and he’s getting dialysis, which he’s never mentioned to Locke before. This turns into Locke signing up to give him his kidney and all that and they go into surgery and all that and when Locke wakes up from surgery- Cooper is nowhere to be found. And he won’t let him into his house. He cons him out of the kidney. And Locke spends like the next 10 years or so trying to get back into his dad’s good graces and/or blackmail him as he figures out that that kidney con was just one of a thousand cons he’s run including the con that broke up Sawyer’s family and caused Sawyer’s dad to kill his mom and himself. So, yeah, then Locke finally does get the goods on taking down his dad, Cooper, and he shows up at some swanky apartment and his dad takes him down by tackling Locke through a window pane and dropping him like 20-30 feet into the ground, which is what paralyzes Locke. So, yeah, Cooper’s a bad dude. 

Obviously, Cooper’s thieving and conning abilities are akin to Kidd’s 2,684 steals and 12,091 assists. 8,765 rebounds? Well, Cooper is really good at convincing Locke over and over again to let him go when he’s caught him and Cooper’s able to find other cons/thieving pretty easily for years upon years, so there’s that. The NBA championship late in Kidd’s career is definitely the kidney escapade. I guess that either makes Dirk the kidney or Dirk is Locke and one helps Kidd get a new life and/or championship. I don’t know. Both work. Eventually, Cooper is somehow brought to THE island, never explained how, and he’s strangled to death by Sawyer who has been wanting to kill him his whole life and it helps Locke who can’t convince himself to kill his own dad, so I mean maybe that will happen to Kidd. I don’t know. Sadly, the NBA is still employing him, but who is to say that at some point in the future Kidd won’t teleport to some island and get strangled to death by some person who was wronged by Kidd when they were a child. Maybe it’ll happen in Disney, in the bubble. Kind of seems like THE island, right? And Kidd played forever and played on a bunch of teams and Cooper seems to have existed for like a hundred years somehow and been everywhere on this planet and so they’re basically weird time travelling immortals. 

Fuck styles? Yuck. Unpleasant is my guess. He’s an odd looking and always intense looking guy and I would bet he has a very complicated relationship with his sexuality. Like you know those people who definitely watch a ton of porn and at the same time hate pornstars, specifically women, aka complete misogynist sociopaths who are like one second away from being serial killers? Like I don’t know if Kidd is exactly one of those people, but I feel like he’s pretty close. Definitely like a mad Christian who has a lot anger and guilty and resentment swirling around sex. Cooper too, but his is really locked in on his desire to use people and less about maybe Jesus judging him or whatever. Like have you ever been drunk and walked into like a Quickcheck or a gas station mart and gotten like a microwaveable cheeseburger and ate that because you’ve got the drunk hungries? Sex with them is like the feeling afterward from that.