Jason Kidd has been involved with girls basketball for the past five years with his own AAU team.<\/p>\n
Now the former NBA star and coach is partnering with alma mater California by putting on an exhibition game Wednesday against defending champion UCLA. Proceeds from the event will benefit Kidd\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about the foundation and the things that we\u2019ve done for youth and for young ladies in basketball with the JK Select program in Northern California and also launching last year here in Dallas,\u201d Kidd said. \u201cSo this is another opportunity to bring eyes to the ladies\u2019 game and we\u2019re really excited to be able to do it in the Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kidd was thrilled to bring the Bruins to Cal \u2014 an idea suggested by Bears coach Charmin Smith. The two former Pac-12 Conference opponents will play in Haas Pavilion for the first time since 2024. It\u2019s the first time the defending champion will play at Cal since Stanford did it in 1993.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited to be able to do that,\u201d Kidd said.<\/p>\n
Smith said she mentioned to Kidd and his group that UCLA wanted to play this year and that the exhibition game would work well for that. She hopes bringing the defending national champion to the area can become a yearly thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that a team would be willing every year to come out,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
UCLA coach Cori Close was happy to be playing Cal in the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cCharmin does an excellent job and I know it will challenge our team to grow,\u201d Close said. \u201cBut I love even more the way Charmin impacts her community and her players in the way she leads. I hope we can continue playing Cal, year in and year out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kidd said he saw how the late Kobe Bryant started to lift up women\u2019s basketball and wanted to do the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt can I help?\u201d Kidd said. \u201cNot be Kobe, but can I help pick up that light and keep it shining? There\u2019s a lot of us out there that are trying to help bring light to women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides the game, Kidd said there will be a chat with former NBA guard Gary Payton as well as former Cal player Reshanda Gray.<\/p>\n
Kidd also said his foundation will have an auction with Sotheby\u2019s in November to raise more money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope all of this will bring eyes to what we\u2019re doing for the Jason Kidd Foundation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Smith loves to see Kidd involved with women\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appreciate his investment in girls basketball. He has an amazing club team that\u2019s really successful,\u201d she said. \u201cI like having Jason Kidd\u2019s name linked to our sport. I think it\u2019s really obvious to see right now, girls basketball, women\u2019s basketball is something worth investing in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Kidd has been involved with girls basketball for the past five years with his own AAU team.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-880072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}