Kidd admits Payton’s defense made him cry in high school

When he is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this week, Jason Kidd will have his mentor, Gary Payton, on stage with him. 

Kidd and Payton both grew up in the Oakland area and Payton took Kidd under his wing. Payton holds Kidd in high regard, telling ESPN that Kidd "was the first LeBron coming out of high school."

"People don't know, J was the first LeBron coming out of high school," Payton told Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN. "He was good. Really, really good. In the Bay Area, that's what all the talk was about -- J-Kidd. Joe Montana was doing the things in the '80s, winning Super Bowls. I had left [for college] in '86 and then J came in and all of the sudden, they [Montana and Kidd] were the biggest things in the Bay Area at the time."

Not only did Payton groom Kidd, he also showed Kidd some tough love early on. In the same interview with ESPN, Kidd admits Payton's suffocating defense and trash talking made him cry once in high school. Kidd was so demoralized that he actually considered quitting basketball.

"Oh, there were tears," Kidd told ESPN. "My parents would ask me, 'What's wrong?' I would be like, 'I think I should pick a different sport because I am not very good at it.' Gary wouldn't let me score. [And] he would tell me you are not going to score, that I was soft and that I wasn't good enough. And for a kid in high school that was built up to be this great high school player, it was very humbling and hard to swallow. So, it was borderline quit or man up and keep coming back to try to figure out a way to score."

Payton's tough love tutelage helped fuel Kidd's early success as a player. Kidd won two straight state championships in high school and was Parade's and USA Today's High School Player of the Year as a senior. He played his college ball at The University of California and was the second overall pick in the 1994 NBA draft.

In 1,391 career games, Kidd averaged 12.6 points, 6.3 rebounds and 8.7 assists per game. He was a 10-time All-Star, the 1994-95 Rookie of the Year, made the All-Defensive team nine times and was part of the Dallas Mavericks team which won the 2011 championship over the Miami Heat.

Kidd has recorded the second most assists in NBA history, dishing out 12,091. He has also registered the third most triple-doubles of all-time, compiling 107.