Jason Kidd Quotes

I grew up the No. 1 Michael Jordan fan on Earth. I was from the Philadelphia area and Jordan was king.

Every since I started playing basketball, I wanted to be just like Kobe. To get to see him play in person, and to meet him, was just a dream come true.

Julius Peppers is a beast, man. I don't know how many pounds he outweighs me by... I still try to do things like him to make my game better.

Growing up I definitely looked up to Dominique Moceanu. She was my favorite gymnast and she was on that '96 Olympic team. She was always so fun to watch. I kind of wanted to model my career after hers.

Magic Johnson was my favorite player growing up.

The one player I have looked up to since I was a kid is Ryan Giggs.

I can't walk in an airport, walk into a gym, where the kids in the gym don't come to me and ask me about Allen and tell me he's their favorite player of all time. And everywhere I go in airports, people look at me, and they, 'You're Allen's coach.'

My role models were all men. I grew up - I was a big 1980s Laker fan: you know, the years of Worthy, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and, you know, eight-foot-tall men that I could never emulate, and then these big 300-pound football players.

I was a big fan of Shaq when I was little, but I don't think I'm going to play too much like him, though.

I had the Kobe jersey. I would do the Kobe walk. I would walk around the house doing the Kobe stare-down face. Anything you can name, I was idolizing him, trying to be like him.

I grew up - obviously I'm from Philly, where Kobe is from, so we grew up idolizing Kobe. He meant everything to us.

When I was a kid I used to look at Wes Brown. I loved him as a player.

People compare me to Batistuta, and he is the player I base myself on.

LeBron James has always been the biggest one - I just love to watch him. I'm a big fan, and he's a big inspiration of mine.

Some young players think that they want to be like Manuel Neuer.

I'm your favorite player's favorite player.

I always watched Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, and I said I could be playing on the court with them.

When I was young, I looked up to Martina Hingis.

You can't have a greater person to emulate your game around than Scottie Pippen.

Growing up, John Terry was my obvious idol. I based my whole game on him.

Dirk was obviously a player that I looked up to. In high school I actually wore No. 41 in honor of Dirk. He was the first player where I was like this guy is seven-feet tall and shooting jump shots and shooting threes, this is what I want to be like.

It's really cool to see how many people try to imitate me or wear my stuff. I get a lot of Instagram videos of people doing my entrance. I think that's so cool. To see the variety of people, little girls, guys, doing it. I never really thought that would happen. It's amazing.

This mum comes up, she's got a five-year-old kid and she says, 'Can he have your autograph, you are his favourite person in the whole world.' I thought, 'How cool is that? I've got five-year-old fans,' and as I'm signing this autograph, the mum goes, 'Yeah, yeah, you're by far the best Wiggle.'

Federer said something interesting once. He said that he was watching Rod Laver, and me, and he said he was trying to copy us and to be like us. And that’s a great compliment for us.

I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.