PHILADELPHIA — Michael Kidd-Gilchrist’s basketball career can sound like a fairy tale. A McDonald’s All-American in high school in New Jersey, national player of the year, and co-MVP of the McDonald’s game itself. On to Kentucky where Kidd-Gilchrist didn’t just start as a freshman, he helped Kentucky win an NCAA title. Next stop, NBA, where Kidd-Gilchrist was the No. 2 overall draft choice, chosen by Michael Jordan himself.
“It was kind of everything that …”
Here, Kidd-Gilchrist paused for a second.
“… like, as a person who stutters, that I didn’t want,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “As crazy as that sounds.”
Each milestone meant literal spotlights hauled into the room, cameras focused on every word. University of Kentucky basketball is one of the great fishbowls in sports. For star players, all your words matter. The Final Four … way more cameras and tape recorders. Moving on to the NBA? High draft status guaranteed lengthy interviews with teams, your words picked apart.
Kidd-Gilchrist was not complaining about any of this. He kept reaching his goals, quickly. They just came with this price tag often only he could see.
“It’s the difference between my life and my career,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “Looking back, I don’t know how I got through all that stuff. … Sad, lonely, frustrated, mad. I went through all that.”
About to turn 28 years old in September, Kidd-Gilchrist has had a productive and profitable NBA career, 446 games played over eight seasons, 356 games started. Not an All-Star run, with serious injuries often part of the package, just as he was hitting his prime. (News alert during his fourth season: “Charlotte Hornets forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist suffered a torn labrum after dislocating his shoulder during Feb. 10′s game against the Indiana Pacers. He will not return this season.”)
He had five seasons averaging at least 9 points a game, and five with at least 5 rebounds a game. A career not really defined by numbers, though. Ask those who worked closest with Kidd-Gilchrist as a pro, they might talk about a grounded person, a teammate who took every single loss to heart.
“At the end of the season, he wrote a thank-you note to each member of the staff,” said one former Charlotte assistant. “I still have mine. He literally bought a Hallmark card. Probably a first and only …”
Kidd-Gilchrist, raised in Somerdale, Camden County, now living in Charlotte with his wife and two children, has come to define his stuttering as a way to see the world as it is, not as it should be.
When you’re 8, 9, 10 years old and the words struggle to make it out, what you feel right then, he said, is … lonely. Nobody else in class is stuttering. The words keep flying all around you.
“You feel isolated,” Kidd-Gilchrist said.
It’s natural to wonder if all the traits learned on a basketball court carry over, but Kidd-Gilchrist doesn’t go for such an easy trope. He bats it aside like a soft jumper.
“It held me back,” Kidd-Gilchrist said of the stuttering.
