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Jason Kidd is always the first name to come up when discussing the New Jersey Nets’ back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in the early 2000s. Rightfully so — for all the talent that Kidd inherited to play alongside him, they did nothing before his arrival.
Among the talented players the Hall of Fame point guard played with in New Jersey was Kenyon Martin, who recently received serious praise from Antoine Walker during the retired three-time All-Star’s appearance on Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson’s Heavy Live with Scoop B:
I always tell people that Kenyon Martin was probably the toughest guy that I went up against.
Because of my skillset and because of my ability to step outside. People don’t know, Kenyon Martin is probably only 6’5″. But he’s athletic, can jump to the moon, quick feet. So your typical move wasn’t beating Kenyon Martin. You had to do some extra stuff. You know, you had to do some extra moves to get by Kenyon. He’s a great defender so, we had some unbelievable battles me and Kenyon. I respect him to the utmost as a defender, as a competitor so those were some epic battles. When you think about New Jersey, you think about some of those battles.
Of course, Walker couldn’t talk about that era of Nets basketball without discussing Kidd, too:
We just caught Jason Kidd in his prime man. We couldn’t match up. And no offense to Kenny [Anderson] and Kenny’s my man but, Kidd was unbelievable for a couple of years. Those two years they went to the Finals. I don’t think there was any better point guard in the game better than Jason Kidd. Those two years when they went to the NBA Finals back-to-back; see people don’t understand we get ’em in the Eastern Conference Finals we’re up 2-1, then we come back the following year and they sweep us in the second round but, those were epic battles man; we played that team probably like 30 times in two years it seemed like but, we couldn’t get past them. They were deep you know; Jason, Kerry Kittles, Keith Van Horn, Lucious Harris, Aaron Williams … they were loaded man, but they had our number for some reason. It was one of things that they had our number when it counted.