The Phoenix Suns' Steve Nash doesn't fit any NBA mold, yet
the Canadian Kid is following up his MVP season with an even better one
When considering the phenomenon that is Steve Nash, there is
the temptation to present him as an NBA novelty act. He is a small man in a big
man's game, a white man in a black man's game, a Canadian man in an American
man's game. Even at age 31, with 177
pounds packed evenly but not buffly onto a 6'2" frame, Nash looks like the
dead-end kid who never gets picked for the hoops game and ends up hustling bets
at the corner pool hall.
But any story about Nash, the Phoenix Suns' point guard who
has his team fighting for the best record in the Western Conference (despite
playing all season without 6'10" superstar-in-ascension Amaré Stoudemire),
must begin in that most conventional of basketball settings (a gymnasium) with
his working on that most conventional of skills (shooting). It is 45 minutes
before the Suns are to play the Golden State Warriors at US Airways Center in
Phoenix, and Nash is the only player in the team's practice gym. He shoots,
equipment manager Jay Gaspar retrieves.
Nash begins near the basket, then gradually moves farther
away, firing jumper after righthanded jumper with what Dallas Mavericks
assistant coach Del Harris calls "absolutely perfect mechanics.” Next Nash
launches a dozen runners, some off his left foot and some, unconventionally,
off his right. He moves through his practice ritual according to some internal
rhythm ("I change spots when it feels right," he says), eventually
stepping behind the three-point arc (from where he makes 17 of 24) and finally
settling in at the free throw line (making 11 in a row). Then he signals to
Gaspar that he is finished.
"Any idea how many you shot?" a reporter asks him.
"No," says Nash.
"A hundred sixty-three. Any idea how many you
made?"
He ponders this for a moment. "A hundred thirty?"
he says.
"Nah," comes the reply. "A hundred
twenty-eight."
Nash shrugs. That's about average.
Aside from his nonsuperstar appearance and his
north-of-the-border upbringing, Stephen John Nash--the reigning league MVP--was
not even considered an elite player going into last season. In July 2004, when
he signed a six-year, $60 million free-agent deal that swept him out of Dallas
and into the Valley of the Sun, the consensus was that he would make Phoenix,
29-53 the previous season, a little better and maybe, just maybe, get the team
into the playoffs.
But when second-year Suns coach Mike D'Antoni handed him the
keys and told him to run all the red lights, Nash had a season that was truly
transformative, for himself and his team. He shot a career-high 50.2% from the
floor in scoring 15.5 points per game, but more important he led the league in
assists (a career-best 11.5 per game) and ignited an offense that became the
talk of the NBA. Winning 31 of its first 35 games, Phoenix finished with a
league-best 62-20 record, bowing to the eventual NBA champion San Antonio Spurs
in five games in the Western Conference finals. That's why the Maurice Podoloff
Trophy landed in the arms of a kid who grew up playing soccer and, of course,
hockey in Victoria, B.C.
Which raises a question: Did the man make the system, or did
the system make the man?
"When a guy can make plays 80 to 85 percent of the
time," says Milwaukee Bucks point guard Maurice Williams, beginning a long
paean to Nash (abridged version follows), "when he can pass, he can make
runners, floaters, and ... he'll burn you with a jumper too.... I mean, he's
awesome. The system doesn't work without Steve Nash."
Gilbert Arenas, the Washington Wizards' point guard, offers
a mild dissent. In the Phoenix system, he says, Nash "gets to control the
game with his ball movement. He is a probe--he can look for his teammates,
shoot the three. The system helps what he does."
Nash's play over the first three months of this season
provided the answer: Yes. Although Nash's primary receiver last season, the
fleet and high-flying Stoudemire, has yet to play a minute because of left-knee
surgery, and opponents had all summer to plot ways to thwart the Suns' fast
break, Phoenix was the Pacific Division leader again with a 26-13 record
through last Saturday's games, third best in the West. Nash was averaging more
minutes than last season (37.1 to 34.3), more points (18.7 to 15.5) and almost
as many assists (11.4 to 11.5) and puts the team on his back, always keeping
his head up, always looking for seams and always finding the open
man--sometimes with an outrageous wraparound pass delivered with his off hand.
Another unusual aspect of Nash's game is the amount of
dribbling he does. But that's a good thing too because he doesn't go side to
side so much as he is constantly on the attack. He may be the best ever at
driving toward the hole and, finding his way blocked, continuing under the
basket, like a bus passenger who doesn't like the look of his stop and keeps on
going. "The beauty of Steve holding it," says Raja Bell, Nash's
starting backcourtmate, "is that you know he's holding it to help you out.
There are times when I say, 'O.K., do you want me to float up the lane or back
cut?' And he'll always have an answer. You learn every day to be ready for when
that ball hits you in the hands because--trust me--it will hit you in the hands."
When Nash is not pulling up beyond the arc (his three-point
accuracy is above 40%), he can corkscrew his body to get off a reverse in the
lane or launch a deadly fadeaway. And because his head is always up, he can
find a good space from which to shoot even as he's driving at top speed. Thus
his shots are rarely blocked, though he's not a great leaper.
Defensively, Nash is hardly a stopper, but he's gotten
better at keeping opponents in front of him.
All told, last season's MVP might be playing even better this season.
"You could make that case," says D'Antoni, "but it seemed like
Steve went 60 games last year before he made a mistake, so I'm not going to say
it."
Nash also admits that last season's MVP award is sometimes
on his mind. "People have always told me I'd fall on my face, that I
wouldn't make it this far. But here I am."
And here he is after a practice, grinning as he watches a
trash-talk-fueled shooting contest between Bell and gunning guard Eddie House.
For someone who's the center of attention during the game, Nash skirts the
perimeter of the Suns' social circle. Whenever there's a break in practice, for
instance, Nash takes off and shoots, working his way around the gym's baskets.
14 years ago when, as a senior at St. Michael's University
High in Victoria, he made the outrageous decision that he would play in the
NBA. Nash had by then abandoned his first loves, soccer and hockey, because
basketball had seized his soul. "I happened to have a group of friends who
loved basketball more than the so-called Canadian sports," he says.
"At the same time the NBA was really, really big, with Magic, Michael and
Larry. I totally fed into the game and totally fed into the hype machine. I
don't know if it would have happened for me at any other time. Maybe I would've
kept on playing soccer and hockey."
"I remember looking out the window of our house,
watching Steve shooting free throws in the rain," says Martin, a
midfielder for the Vancouver Whitecaps in the United Soccer League's First
Division. "I didn't do that. Look, I have no regrets. I played in three
World Cup qualifiers. I had my chances. But with that little extra drive--that
Steve drive--who knows?"
No one, least of all Steve, can explain the origins of the
Steve drive. His father, John, a retired marketing manager for a financial
institution, played semipro soccer in his native England and also in South
Africa (where Steve was born). But he was, and is, Steve says, "a rather
laid-back guy who never pushed me at all." His mother, Jean, a former
special-needs assistant at an elementary school, supported her sons in sports
but was no soccer mom. Though Steve's basketball buds loved the game, none of
them ever thought about taking it all the way. "How do you explain where
drive comes from?" asks Martin. "You can't."
Steve knew his dream was outlandish, but along the way he
got bits of encouragement. After a summer basketball camp Eli Pasquale, a
Canadian point guard who had been a late cut by the Seattle SuperSonics in
1984, drove a teenage Nash home one day and said, without prompting, "If
you want to make it, really make it, have a plan. Decide right now. If I had
decided at your age, dedicated all I had to making it, I would be in the NBA
right now."
Recalls Nash, "That was a wake-up call."
It's one thing to have a dream, another to realize it. Nash
knew he would have to get into a Division I program in the U.S., but he
couldn't get any schools interested, even though he more than held his own in
all-star tournaments against top American high school players. Syracuse and
Washington, his dream schools, didn't even respond to his letters. "I
don't want this to sound egotistical," says Nash, "but what I heard
later was that scouts and coaches just didn't believe what they were seeing. It
was too weird. A recruiter would see this average-sized white kid, and then
he'd have to go back to campus and say, 'Hey, I saw this kid from Canada,' and
before he finished, everyone would say, 'Hey, we got a thousand kids like
that.'"
Finally Dick Davey, then an assistant at Santa Clara (he
became the head coach in Nash's freshman year), believed what he saw and helped
Nash get a scholarship. "It felt good, and I owe so much to Santa
Clara," says Nash, "but honestly? I wish it would have been Syracuse
or Washington." At first, though, even the West Coast Conference seemed to
be too big a jump for Nash, who struggled just to get the ball upcourt in
pickup games against the Broncos' starting point guard, John Woolery, a
long-armed defensive stopper. "Here I am thinking I want to play in the
NBA, and I can't even get the best of somebody at Santa Clara I'd never heard
of," says Nash. "But I finally figured it out."
Nash just worked and worked, and got better and better. He
and his buddies would sit around at night talking sports, music and women--he
acknowledges that he was not a dedicated student and worked "just hard
enough" to earn a degree in sociology--and SportsCenter would come on.
That was the signal for Nash to get off his butt. "I felt uncomfortable
being comfortable," he says. "I'd call the manager, get the key to
the gym, call some teammates and go shoot for a couple of hours." Nash led
the Broncos to three NCAA tournament appearances and was the WCC's player of
the year as a junior and a senior.
In the summers, Nash played for Team Canada, first for the
junior squad and then for the national team, and it was during the World Games
in Toronto in 1994 that he had another Pasquale-like moment. Before taking over
as Los Angeles Lakers coach, Del Harris, then serving as an adviser to the
Canadian team, was smitten with Nash's see-the-whole-floor game. "I
remember it like it was yesterday," says Harris. "I approached him
and said, 'Steve, you may not know it, but you're an NBA player. You have a
shot at having a good career. You remind me so much of a guy who nobody said
could play named Mike Dunleavy.'"
Nash remembers too. "So many people said, 'Give me a
break' when I told them I wanted to be an NBA player," he says, "so
when you hear someone from the NBA say it, it means a lot. When you're on the
borderline, when you don't have what everybody thinks you need to make it, it's
important to have someone who believes in you. It's sometimes the most
important thing."
What Harris saw in Nash was the kind of court sense that
allowed Dunleavy, now the Los Angeles Clippers' coach, to carve out a solid
11-year career. That's what the Suns saw before they made Nash the 15th pick of
the '96 draft, primarily to back up All-Star Kevin Johnson. Phoenix fans,
however, saw something else entirely: a small Canadian. They booed the Nash
pick when it was announced at the Suns' arena. During Nash's rookie season, in
which he averaged 10.5 minutes per game, Phoenix traded for Jason Kidd, and
that seemed to spell doom for the Canadian Kid. "I figured I was the odd
man out," says Nash.
But Johnson, one of the Suns' alltime greats, had given the
rookie another Pasquale-Harris-like boost when he said, "You're as good as
anyone I play against." The moment remains frozen in Nash's memory.
"It stopped me cold," he says, "because until then maybe I
didn't believe in my dream myself." He got another jolt of encouragement
the following season, when Danny Ainge replaced Cotton Fitzsimmons as coach.
Having been a freewheeling guard himself, Ainge liked small ball and liked
shooters. He frequently deployed a three-guard offense, Nash usually being the
one to come off picks and shoot. "To this day," Nash says, "one
of my biggest accomplishments was getting minutes my second year." (He got
21.9 per game and averaged 9.1 points.)
Eventually, though, the Suns' brass didn't envision Nash's
supplanting Kidd and traded him to Dallas after the 1997-98 season. Over the
next six years Nash developed into the perfect point guard for the Mavericks--a
team that was offensive-minded, entertaining and, once Nash and Dirk Nowitzki
got their pick-and-roll game down, pretty good. But all the flash and dash
couldn't turn defense-deficient Dallas into a bona fide contender, and when
Nash became a free agent in the summer of '04, owner Mark Cuban decided his
point guard was expendable.
Meanwhile, the Suns were intent on remaking themselves along
the lines of the Showtime Lakers and felt that Nash was just the point guard
they needed..
The move was big news around the NBA--but not big, big news.
At the time, Nash was perceived by his peers as a curiosity as much as an
All-Star point guard.
•Shooting
If a lead guard is deadly from the outside, opponents have
to play up on him, and that increases his opportunities for what the Suns call
"blow-bys." There are nights when Arenas, Iverson and Davis are
unstoppable, but opponents can always play off them and make them hit a few
outside shots. Nash, like the Detroit Pistons' playmaker, Chauncey Billups,
must always be crowded. The Phoenix assistants joke that they want to rebound
for Nash when he works on his jumper before and after practice. "You just
stand under the basket, and it comes right to you," says Alvin Gentry.
•Drive and determination
That's Nash and always has been Nash. He concedes that last
season he wanted to show the Mavs--whom he torched for a career-high 48 points
in Game 4 of the conference semifinals--that they'd made a mistake in not
re-signing him. Now he's playing to win a championship.
•Court sense
In this regard Nash is as good as anyone since Utah Jazz
star John Stockton. "Certain players are predisposed to creativity and
decision making, and I guess I'm one of them," Nash says. "I do
believe that, to an extent, point guards are born, not made. But you have to
make yourself better. You have to take those natural gifts and expand them. You
hear about so-called tweeners, guys who aren't quite point guards and aren't
quite shooting guards. What do they usually become?"
Mediocre shooting guards?
"Exactly," says Nash.
•Leadership
It's not absolutely necessary that coach and quarterback be
on the same page, but it helps. Nash and Mike D'Antoni aren't just on the same
page--they're in the same sentence. D'Antoni is convinced that Nash is always
trying to do the right thing for the team, and it goes without saying that Nash
buys into D'Antoni's go-go-go philosophy on the break and his
dribble-dribble-probe philosophy in the half-court. "There are times when
Steve dribbles too much," says D'Antoni, "and times that he tries
stuff that is too outlandish. But why would I say anything to him? Nine times
out of 10 he makes it work."
•Athleticism
Physically gifted point guards go around (the speedy
Iverson), through (the powerful Billups) or over (the spring-loaded Davis)
their opponents. It's obvious that Nash isn't that powerful or blessed with
much lift. But here's news: He's not all that quick, either--not from a
standing start, anyway. Nash and his teammates and coaches shake their heads
when they hear testimonies to his quickness, for within his own team Bell,
House, Stoudemire and All-Star forward Shawn Marion are all quicker, never mind
backup guard Leandro Barbosa, who's twice as quick. Yes, the Suns are one of
the league's quickest teams, yet Nash feels he can be outquicked by most of his
opponents.
But not outjuked. "I'm more elusive than quick, and
people confuse the two," says Nash. "I'm really good on the move,
which involves coordination, timing and balance. Once I get going, I can do a
lot of things. But I'm painfully bad at explosiveness." What Nash has
done, then, is to master ways to be always moving. The Suns' offense is
predicated on that principle, even in the half-court. Nash gives it up on the
run and gets it back (by a pass or a dribble handoff) on the run. But what else
would you expect?
"We all just feel, I don't know, safer when Steve's out
there," Mike D'Antoni says. And Nash knows that the responsibility to keep
things safe stops with him. He's an MVP, so that's where it should stop. He can
handle it. The pieces have fallen into place better than he could have imagined
when he hatched his NBA dream back in Canada. He is the elite leader of an
elite team that could challenge for the championship if, as expected,
Stoudemire comes back after the All-Star break.
All those mornings when he shot free throws in the rain or
all those nights when he asked the Santa Clara team manager to open up the gym.
"Most guys somewhere along the line will meet an obstacle they aren't
willing to clear," he says, "whether it's shooting or dribbling or
something off the court, like girls or partying. They will not keep on going. I
kept on going."
The Steve drive. That's really how the Canadian Kid became
America's Point Guard.
