boutons
01-19-2005, 01:50 PM
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/01/19/sports/19nash583.jpg
January 19, 2005
Nash Displays Polished Look: On the Court, of Course
By LIZ ROBBINS
PHOENIX, Jan. 12 - Steve Nash has been doing some light reading on the road, studying a playbook of sorts that outlines team concepts like discipline and sacrifice for the common good.
"I'm actually reading the Communist Manifesto," Nash said with a smile after a recent practice.
Nash's eclectic tastes range from Pat Conroy to Dickens to Kant. "I don't know if guys notice, which is good," he said. "I just want to be one of them."
So people won't think he is sympathetic to alternative causes, Nash explained that he picked up the manifesto, "only because I was reading the autobiography of Che Guevara and I wanted to get a better perspective."
Naturally. Nash's game, like his life, is about perspective.
Nash, a heady, selfless point guard, who was born in South Africa and reared in Victoria, British Columbia, left Dallas as a free agent last summer to play for Phoenix for a salary close to $65.6 million over six years.
Since returning to the franchise that drafted him in 1996, the 30-year-old Nash has led the Suns (31-8) to the best record in the N.B.A. In a league mired in isolation offenses and plodding defenses, the Suns' frenetic fast break has been nothing short of revolutionary.
Without him, however, the Suns could have been just an ordinary team. Nash has missed the last two and a half games with a deep bruise in his left thigh. The Suns, who won 29 games last season, have lost four straight and their steam.
"He's the guy who makes us run, and when he's not there we grind to a halt," Coach Mike D'Antoni said from Phoenix. "He just complements everybody so well, that without him, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle."
In his ninth season, Nash leads the league in assists (10.9 a game) and shooting percentage (51.6), and is averaging 15.3 points a game. Sending bullet bounce passes to Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, Nash has helped the Suns average 108.3 points a game, their highest total in a decade. That mark plummeted to 88.6 without him in the last three games. Nash was set to return Wednesday against Memphis, but D'Antoni said his status was up in the air because Nash tweaked his back on a freak play in practice when a teammate stepped on his foot.
"Steve is the first superstar that I've played with that is like the antithesis of what an N.B.A. star is supposed to be - in every which way you could possibly imagine," guard Casey Jacobsen said. "To the way he dresses, to the way he goes about his job every single day, to his fruit eating, to his attitude about life. It seems like he's not stressed about anything."
From Nash's view in the Valley of the Sun, life is better than when the Suns traded him in 1998 to Dallas - he played behind Jason Kidd - and brighter than he expected when he left the Mavericks. In October, he and his longtime girlfriend, Alejandra Amarilla of Paraguay, became the parents of twin daughters, Lola and Bella.
"I guess I'm learning more how insignificant my life is," Nash said. "I feel I still enjoy my work. I still enjoy my friends and family and my relationship, but the girls kind of make you realize they are so innocent and dependent. You realize how your life, in some ways, is over."
A new life is beginning, one without his best friend, Dirk Nowitzki, but with his parents, John and Jean, in their winter condominium nearby.
The Suns might have realized they had acquired a special player when Bryan Colangelo, the Suns' general manager, walked into the gym at 7 a.m. and saw Nash working out a month before he reported to camp. "Steve really set the tone," Colangelo said.
By the time the Suns' other free agent, Quentin Richardson, came to town a week later, the whole team was assembled. "I was like, 'Wow,' " Richardson said. "We had a chance to get our chemistry together quickly."
One of the ways Nash helped to build that chemistry was by renting out a Phoenix theater so his teammates could watch a movie without being bothered.
As a member of the Canadian Olympic team at the Sydney Olympics, Nash decided to give his teammates a boost. Nash had portioned roughly $3,000 for each of his teammates and asked Coach Jay Triano to give it to the players anonymously so they could go on a shopping spree in Hong Kong.
"He was just being respectful of amateur athletes in Canada," said Triano, a Toronto Raptors assistant coach.
Triano had arranged for Nash to fly first class and have his own room at the Games. But Nash was appalled. "If I don't have a roommate, I'm not going to go," Triano recalled him saying. "If you have to buy a first-class ticket, give it to one of the big guys. Steve sat in a middle seat for the whole 17-hour trip."
In Phoenix, Nash has been a mentor to the youngest team in the league. He has helped make Stoudemire "more accountable," Colangelo said.
Nash has also helped his Brazilian backup, Leandro Barbosa, feel more comfortable by speaking Spanish and watching soccer games with him.
"Steve's ideal for this group of players who were lacking a humble but fearless leader," Colangelo said.
In Dallas, the Mavericks have tried to put the Nash era behind them. "When we lost Stevie, all of us were in a state of shock and depression," Donnie Nelson, the Dallas president, said recently in a telephone interview. "I don't fault Steve for taking advantage of a great offer."
The Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, said he felt like he had made a fair offer to Nash (four years, $36 million). Cuban thought that as Nash grew older, he would be a health risk for a large contract because of his fierce style of play.
Beyond the money, the lackluster presentation by Dallas, compared with the Suns' meticulous pitch (complete with a personalized yearbook with Nash pictured in a Suns jersey superimposed over his Mavs uniform) sold him.
"It was so clear that they wanted me, more than Dallas, it was an absolute no-brainer," Nash said. "It would be very difficult to want to stay in Dallas after everything I felt like I contributed and then feel less than wanted, let alone needed."
Stoudemire, traveling to Dallas with Nash on the private jet of Robert Sarver, the new owner, hammered that point home.
"Listen, we're young, we're talented," David Griffin, the Suns' head of basketball operations, recalled Stoudemire's saying. "We need you, man, to lead us, to be our point guard. If we have you, nobody can guard me. That's a wrap."
Here's the rap now: Stoudemire is averaging 26 points and 8 rebounds a game. Marion, the draft pick the Suns received from Dallas in the 1998 trade for Nash, is averaging 19.5 points and 10.7 rebounds. Richardson leads the league in 3-pointers with 112.
Nash has always seemed to have a moral compass. His father, John, recalled getting a phone call from a parent of a boy who was being bullied by a teammate on Nash's high school team. Nash promised to take care of the matter.
"Steve told the kid that if he did not stop the bullying, Coach would not allow him on the basketball team any more," John Nash recalled last week in Phoenix. The coach never knew the story until last week.
John Nash was a soccer player on a semiprofessional league in England and an apprentice printer. He married Jean, who had been a talented netball player, and they moved to Johannesburg when a team offered more money.
Neither John nor Jean wanted to raise Steve in the culture of apartheid, so they moved to Canada. With their support, Nash excelled in hockey, lacrosse, rugby, baseball and chess.
His father remembered the day when a family who had heard about the 12-year-old Nash took the 90-minute ferry ride to Victoria to watch him play lacrosse. But Nash had already moved to his afternoon baseball game.
Nash's brother, Martin, a year younger, was just as accomplished an athlete, especially in soccer. He plays professionally in Canada. His sister, Joanne, six years younger, was also an exceptional athlete in soccer and basketball.
By his senior year at St. Michaels University School, Nash was named most valuable player of the province in basketball, leading his team to the British Columbia high school championship.
"If there's anything that sets him apart physically, it's his eyes," his high school basketball coach, Ian Hyde-Lay, said. "When I first met him, I could tell there's something that burns brighter."
Somehow, Division I programs missed that signal. Except Santa Clara in Northern California. There, Nash struggled the first month.
"He could not get the ball across halfcourt under pressure," Santa Clara Coach Dick Davey said. "He got to the point where he had major doubts about himself as a player. We sat down and I told him how good I thought he would be. From that point on, I couldn't keep him out of the gym."
Nash would bounce tennis balls walking on campus to improve his coordination. "His greatest attribute was his desire to get better," Davey said. "He makes other people better out of embarrassment, they had to play as hard as he did."
As a freshman, Nash led Santa Clara to the N.C.A.A. tournament and made six free throws in the final 31 seconds to upset Arizona in a first-round game. The Broncos made two more trips to the tournament with Nash. "We haven't been back since he left," Davey said.
Nash graduated from Santa Clara with a degree in sociology, a major that came naturally considering his personality. "He's the most color-blind person I've ever known," Nash's agent, Bill Duffy, said.
Nash is still a close friend of Simon Ibel from Victoria, whom he met after leaving high school. Ibel was born with Mucopolysaccharidoses, or MPS, an enzyme deficiency that stunted his growth to four feet. In Dallas, Nowitzki, Nash and Ibel would go out together and poke fun at each other in a good-natured way.
At a Boys and Girls Club in Scottsdale recently, Nash's striped button-down shirt hung outside his jeans, his scruffy hair hung on his neck. He smiled for pictures, signed autographs and patiently entertained a student interview.
"What do you want people to know about you that they don't already know?" Charlene Scabby, 12, asked.
Nash smiled. "That I'm just like everybody else," he said.
January 19, 2005
Nash Displays Polished Look: On the Court, of Course
By LIZ ROBBINS
PHOENIX, Jan. 12 - Steve Nash has been doing some light reading on the road, studying a playbook of sorts that outlines team concepts like discipline and sacrifice for the common good.
"I'm actually reading the Communist Manifesto," Nash said with a smile after a recent practice.
Nash's eclectic tastes range from Pat Conroy to Dickens to Kant. "I don't know if guys notice, which is good," he said. "I just want to be one of them."
So people won't think he is sympathetic to alternative causes, Nash explained that he picked up the manifesto, "only because I was reading the autobiography of Che Guevara and I wanted to get a better perspective."
Naturally. Nash's game, like his life, is about perspective.
Nash, a heady, selfless point guard, who was born in South Africa and reared in Victoria, British Columbia, left Dallas as a free agent last summer to play for Phoenix for a salary close to $65.6 million over six years.
Since returning to the franchise that drafted him in 1996, the 30-year-old Nash has led the Suns (31-8) to the best record in the N.B.A. In a league mired in isolation offenses and plodding defenses, the Suns' frenetic fast break has been nothing short of revolutionary.
Without him, however, the Suns could have been just an ordinary team. Nash has missed the last two and a half games with a deep bruise in his left thigh. The Suns, who won 29 games last season, have lost four straight and their steam.
"He's the guy who makes us run, and when he's not there we grind to a halt," Coach Mike D'Antoni said from Phoenix. "He just complements everybody so well, that without him, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle."
In his ninth season, Nash leads the league in assists (10.9 a game) and shooting percentage (51.6), and is averaging 15.3 points a game. Sending bullet bounce passes to Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, Nash has helped the Suns average 108.3 points a game, their highest total in a decade. That mark plummeted to 88.6 without him in the last three games. Nash was set to return Wednesday against Memphis, but D'Antoni said his status was up in the air because Nash tweaked his back on a freak play in practice when a teammate stepped on his foot.
"Steve is the first superstar that I've played with that is like the antithesis of what an N.B.A. star is supposed to be - in every which way you could possibly imagine," guard Casey Jacobsen said. "To the way he dresses, to the way he goes about his job every single day, to his fruit eating, to his attitude about life. It seems like he's not stressed about anything."
From Nash's view in the Valley of the Sun, life is better than when the Suns traded him in 1998 to Dallas - he played behind Jason Kidd - and brighter than he expected when he left the Mavericks. In October, he and his longtime girlfriend, Alejandra Amarilla of Paraguay, became the parents of twin daughters, Lola and Bella.
"I guess I'm learning more how insignificant my life is," Nash said. "I feel I still enjoy my work. I still enjoy my friends and family and my relationship, but the girls kind of make you realize they are so innocent and dependent. You realize how your life, in some ways, is over."
A new life is beginning, one without his best friend, Dirk Nowitzki, but with his parents, John and Jean, in their winter condominium nearby.
The Suns might have realized they had acquired a special player when Bryan Colangelo, the Suns' general manager, walked into the gym at 7 a.m. and saw Nash working out a month before he reported to camp. "Steve really set the tone," Colangelo said.
By the time the Suns' other free agent, Quentin Richardson, came to town a week later, the whole team was assembled. "I was like, 'Wow,' " Richardson said. "We had a chance to get our chemistry together quickly."
One of the ways Nash helped to build that chemistry was by renting out a Phoenix theater so his teammates could watch a movie without being bothered.
As a member of the Canadian Olympic team at the Sydney Olympics, Nash decided to give his teammates a boost. Nash had portioned roughly $3,000 for each of his teammates and asked Coach Jay Triano to give it to the players anonymously so they could go on a shopping spree in Hong Kong.
"He was just being respectful of amateur athletes in Canada," said Triano, a Toronto Raptors assistant coach.
Triano had arranged for Nash to fly first class and have his own room at the Games. But Nash was appalled. "If I don't have a roommate, I'm not going to go," Triano recalled him saying. "If you have to buy a first-class ticket, give it to one of the big guys. Steve sat in a middle seat for the whole 17-hour trip."
In Phoenix, Nash has been a mentor to the youngest team in the league. He has helped make Stoudemire "more accountable," Colangelo said.
Nash has also helped his Brazilian backup, Leandro Barbosa, feel more comfortable by speaking Spanish and watching soccer games with him.
"Steve's ideal for this group of players who were lacking a humble but fearless leader," Colangelo said.
In Dallas, the Mavericks have tried to put the Nash era behind them. "When we lost Stevie, all of us were in a state of shock and depression," Donnie Nelson, the Dallas president, said recently in a telephone interview. "I don't fault Steve for taking advantage of a great offer."
The Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, said he felt like he had made a fair offer to Nash (four years, $36 million). Cuban thought that as Nash grew older, he would be a health risk for a large contract because of his fierce style of play.
Beyond the money, the lackluster presentation by Dallas, compared with the Suns' meticulous pitch (complete with a personalized yearbook with Nash pictured in a Suns jersey superimposed over his Mavs uniform) sold him.
"It was so clear that they wanted me, more than Dallas, it was an absolute no-brainer," Nash said. "It would be very difficult to want to stay in Dallas after everything I felt like I contributed and then feel less than wanted, let alone needed."
Stoudemire, traveling to Dallas with Nash on the private jet of Robert Sarver, the new owner, hammered that point home.
"Listen, we're young, we're talented," David Griffin, the Suns' head of basketball operations, recalled Stoudemire's saying. "We need you, man, to lead us, to be our point guard. If we have you, nobody can guard me. That's a wrap."
Here's the rap now: Stoudemire is averaging 26 points and 8 rebounds a game. Marion, the draft pick the Suns received from Dallas in the 1998 trade for Nash, is averaging 19.5 points and 10.7 rebounds. Richardson leads the league in 3-pointers with 112.
Nash has always seemed to have a moral compass. His father, John, recalled getting a phone call from a parent of a boy who was being bullied by a teammate on Nash's high school team. Nash promised to take care of the matter.
"Steve told the kid that if he did not stop the bullying, Coach would not allow him on the basketball team any more," John Nash recalled last week in Phoenix. The coach never knew the story until last week.
John Nash was a soccer player on a semiprofessional league in England and an apprentice printer. He married Jean, who had been a talented netball player, and they moved to Johannesburg when a team offered more money.
Neither John nor Jean wanted to raise Steve in the culture of apartheid, so they moved to Canada. With their support, Nash excelled in hockey, lacrosse, rugby, baseball and chess.
His father remembered the day when a family who had heard about the 12-year-old Nash took the 90-minute ferry ride to Victoria to watch him play lacrosse. But Nash had already moved to his afternoon baseball game.
Nash's brother, Martin, a year younger, was just as accomplished an athlete, especially in soccer. He plays professionally in Canada. His sister, Joanne, six years younger, was also an exceptional athlete in soccer and basketball.
By his senior year at St. Michaels University School, Nash was named most valuable player of the province in basketball, leading his team to the British Columbia high school championship.
"If there's anything that sets him apart physically, it's his eyes," his high school basketball coach, Ian Hyde-Lay, said. "When I first met him, I could tell there's something that burns brighter."
Somehow, Division I programs missed that signal. Except Santa Clara in Northern California. There, Nash struggled the first month.
"He could not get the ball across halfcourt under pressure," Santa Clara Coach Dick Davey said. "He got to the point where he had major doubts about himself as a player. We sat down and I told him how good I thought he would be. From that point on, I couldn't keep him out of the gym."
Nash would bounce tennis balls walking on campus to improve his coordination. "His greatest attribute was his desire to get better," Davey said. "He makes other people better out of embarrassment, they had to play as hard as he did."
As a freshman, Nash led Santa Clara to the N.C.A.A. tournament and made six free throws in the final 31 seconds to upset Arizona in a first-round game. The Broncos made two more trips to the tournament with Nash. "We haven't been back since he left," Davey said.
Nash graduated from Santa Clara with a degree in sociology, a major that came naturally considering his personality. "He's the most color-blind person I've ever known," Nash's agent, Bill Duffy, said.
Nash is still a close friend of Simon Ibel from Victoria, whom he met after leaving high school. Ibel was born with Mucopolysaccharidoses, or MPS, an enzyme deficiency that stunted his growth to four feet. In Dallas, Nowitzki, Nash and Ibel would go out together and poke fun at each other in a good-natured way.
At a Boys and Girls Club in Scottsdale recently, Nash's striped button-down shirt hung outside his jeans, his scruffy hair hung on his neck. He smiled for pictures, signed autographs and patiently entertained a student interview.
"What do you want people to know about you that they don't already know?" Charlene Scabby, 12, asked.
Nash smiled. "That I'm just like everybody else," he said.