Just a few days after signing with the Knicks, Jason Kidd veered his Escalade off a Hamptons road, smashing directly into a telephone pole. He had had "a couple of drinks," he told a judge, "three or four." Now, exactly one year and one day later, Kidd is receiving his punishment.
After initially pleading not guilty to DWI, the new Nets coach today offered an "interim plea"—it's essentially a guilty plea, but if by October the court is satisfied with Kidd's service, the misdemeanor will be knocked down to a traffic violation.
Kidd will will make appearances at Long Island schools this fall, in talks that will be taped by the DA's office for future use as PSAs.
When asked on Monday what Kidd will say to students when he does appear at these schools, Burke said that the talk will be about drinking and driving with kids who either have their driver’s licenses or are about to have them, about how “it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done in your life, in basketball or anything else, that alcohol impairs everybody.”
Now that the case is over and Kidd has admitted wrongdoing, it's the NBA's turn to hand down discipline. CBS Sports' Royce Young notes that in the league's history of dealing with DWIs from players and coaches, the punishment is nearly always the same—a two-game suspension. That means that when the new-look Nets kick off the season, with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett in black, their head coach won't be joining them.