The Dallas Mavericks point guard Jason Kidd is thought to be one of the best basketball layers currently active in the NBA. Before joining the Mavericks, Kidd led the New Jersey Nets to the NBA finals in 2002 and 2003.

His career in the NBA actually began with the Mavericks; he went on to play for Phoenix for a time, until being traded to the Nets before finally coming back home to the Mavericks in 2008, when he scored the 100th triple-double in his career in the final regular game of the season.

The eldest of six children growing up in San Francisco, Kidd spent a lot of his youth playing on the public courts of nearby Oakland, often playing with NBA All-Star Gary Payton. To this day the two speak fondly of their time coming up on the public courts of the Bay area.

While in high school, Kidd was ranked the top high school player in the country, earning the Naismith Award. He stayed close to his native San Francisco, attending college at UC-Berkeley. He was a finalist for the Wooden Award as well as another Naismith while in college and in 1994, entered the NBA draft. When he left his college team, his #5 jersey was retired.

In the NBA, he was a 9-time NBA All-Star and on the All-NBA First team in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004. He was on the 1995 NBA All-Rookie First Team, 2003 NBA Skills Challenge Champion and made All Defensive First and Second teams since 1999 to 2007.

Kidd joined forces with some of the other greats of the game on the US Men’s Basketball team in the 2008 Summer Olympics, where they won a gold medal and went undefeated. Kidd has an unbeaten record of 56-0 in USA Basketball (including exhibition games). He has won gold medals in both the 2000 and 2008 Olympic Games.

However, the star’s personal life has not always gone as well as his athletic career. In 2001, he was charged with domestic abuse; he pled guilty to the charge and completed a course of anger management and counseling, in addition to quitting drinking. It was later announced that the couple had reconciled.

Six years later, in 2007, he filed for divorce claiming intense jealousy, paranoia and threats of false abuse charges from his wife. A month later, his wife counter-filed claiming he broke her rib and damaged her hearing by smashing her head into the console of the car. They had three children.

A year later, reports emerged that Jason Kidd and model Hope Dworaczyk were expecting a child.

While he may have had personal problems, Kidd’s record on the court is indisputable. Kidd is one of two players in the NBA to amass a career scoring total of more than 14,000 points, 9,000 assists and 6,600 rebounds. Jason Kidd is also (along with Wilt Chamberlain and Magic Johnson) one of only three players in NBA history who has averaged triple-doubles in multiple playoff games. In fact, he is one of the league’s all-time leaders on double triples, behind only Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson – it should be no surprise that Kidd was named the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year in 2007.

Jason Kidd is nothing if not an accomplished player, having set records and made great achievements in the NBA and as an Olympian. He is also a humanitarian, sponsoring youth programs in the greater Dallas- Ft. Worth area.