MJ apparently used his connections, of which he had many from all those years playing and doing TV color, to do a lot of informal interviewing and picking-of-brains with coaches, front office people, etc. for years. Not sure how much stock you can put into that translating into his success but he had his eye on coaching for a long time after his playing career.
I'd say MJ has a definite charisma advantage over Kidd, but I reckon Kidd is the more shrewd bball mind. Kidd is being hired by an owner who will likely go to any measures to support him with a great staff, much like Lacob did with MJ (Malone was reportedly higher paid than some head coaches). Kidd will also inherit a roster that has some talent while most rookie coaches start off getting the crappiest jobs around.
As others have been saying, there's no real advantage to taking on a retread coach that everyone knows is mediocre. Why not go for a guy who could be dynamite? Worst case is you'd have a lame duck coach, which you would have had anyway.
