Every NBA player carries a what-if long after the final buzzer of their career. Brian Scalabrine revealed his in November 2015, three years into retirement — and it wasn't the kind most players talk about.
For Scalabrine, the career "what-if" wasn't a missed trade, a blown contract, or a season-ending injury. It came down to just one teammate — Hall of Fame point guard and now Dallas Mavericks head coach, Jason Kidd.
"Trading for Jason Kidd had nothing to do with me, but it helped me establish myself as a quality depth player in the NBA. Honestly, it changed my whole life," Scalabrine said during a Q&A session with "The Players' Tribune."
NBA fans know the league can be a brutal place, especially for the young guys who don't have the red carpet rolled out for them. Scalabrine, a late second-rounder out of USC, was one of them.
Of course, earning minutes became his only path forward. Scalabrine admitted later that sheer effort wasn't enough. How far the grind would take him, he said, depended almost entirely on where he landed on draft night in 2001. The right situation, the California native knew, could mean the difference between a short stay in the league and a ten-year career.
"For the guys who are truly elite — let's say, the top 20 percent of the NBA — they're going to be successful no matter where they land as a rookie. For everyone else, the difference between a long career and a short one can be based mostly on other circumstances," explained "The White Mamba."
Those circumstances came together almost perfectly. The 6'9'' power forward joined a young New Jersey Nets squad still finding its identity, which meant there were minutes to fight for, even if he had to claw his way into the rotation.
Then the real shift arrived: late June 2001, when the franchise pulled the trigger on a blockbuster trade for Kidd — the kind of seismic move that can reshape careers in ways you only fully appreciate years later.
"Suddenly we became perennial contenders in the East," Scalabrine recalled, reflecting on just how immediate an impact Kidd — then in his late 20s — made.
Landing next to a 10-time All-Star changed everything almost instantly. On the hardwood, the game slowed down, the reads came naturally and scoring chances that might never have existed elsewhere began to appear.
For Scalabrine, those early Nets years didn't just get him on the court — they kept him in the league and set up what would become the defining stretch of his NBA journey.
"I get drafted by a team other than the Nets, don't make the NBA Finals my rookie year and never get a chance to play alongside Jason Kidd. If that sequence of events goes down, I'd probably have been playing in China or Europe when the Celtics won a title in '08," remarked the 47-year-old.
Fortunately, things played out differently. Those Nets seasons cemented Scalabrine's place in the league. Later, as a bench role player with the Boston Celtics , he became an NBA champion — far from the overseas path he imagined if his career had taken a different route.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Dec 14, 2025, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
