Jason Kidd ‘Overacted’ on Spilled Drink, But Stunt Was ‘Great Move,’ Former Nets Coach Says
Loughery, who coached the Nets for eight seasons in the ABA and NBA in the 1970s, admitted to the New York Daily News that he pulled Kidd’s stunt of purposely spilling a drink on the court to save a timeout “several times.” The last occurrence came in a playoff game while Loughery was coaching the Heat in 1994 — which also happened to be his last full season on the sideline in Miami.
Yet while Loughery admired Kidd’s gamesmanship, he apparently felt the Nets’ current coach oversold it.
“He shouldn’t have said to [Nets guard Tyshawn Taylor], ‘Hit me,'” Loughery told Stefan Bondy. “He should have just dropped it. He overacted.”
Loughery called Kidd’s stunt a “great move” and reminisced about the time he told a ball boy to pour water on the court. The ball boy “really had no idea what I was talking about until he sees the results,” he said. Loughery’s shenanigans came before Twitter, a thousand different camera angles for replays and witnesses with camera phones parked all around the arena, though, so clearly things have changed in the last 20 years to make tricks like these harder to get away with.
