RealGM

...and I’m including a character whose abilities and shortcomings are partially based on Steve Nash. I was hoping someone here could tell me how effective prime Nash was at scoring on athletic defenders. How easily could he get by them? How easily could he create space for a shot? I believe that I’ll get more insight about this by asking people who’ve viewed his career over the years than I would get trying to extrapolate the answers from highlights (which only cover a small number of plays, and focus on the spectacular ones).

Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I always felt that Nash was extremely effective at scoring, no matter the opponent. He had a great repertoire of moves inside, mid-range and outside to get open looks, which is evident in his 50-40-90 career shooting percentages. Basically the only way to "stop" him was to bully him physically on both sides of the court to get him battered and bruised (*cough cough* Spurs are dirty *cough cough*), but even then Nash held up pretty well. I feel like his highlight reels are a pretty accurate representation of him as a player (unlike, say, a highlight reel of Jeremy Lin from the Linsanity days).

Nash was basically skilled enough to be a 20-25 points per game scorer but would rather give his teammate an easy look than score the ball himself - not to mention having great vision and skill for passing. There are more than a few players who had career scoring years thanks to Nash. He really was as close to a complete point guard on offense as you can get. I guess you could say that Nash was never the type of player to dribble the ball at the top of the 3-pt line and take his defender one-on-one, but that always felt more like an understanding that basketball is a team sport rather than an inability to do so. Plus, why size up the best opposing perimeter defender when you can get some mis-matches after an Amar'e screen?

Defense, on the other hand, was his glaring weakness.

Most of Nash's offense was based on deceiving his defender. Split second moves with his shoulders, eyes, legs, that would hint one thing while he did something totally different. It's what made all his moves surprising and beautiful to watch