Steve Nash really should have won multiple championships.

[One_and_Done]

Well in that case - Duncan’s offensive numbers were very similar in 2010, and he was still elite defensively. Also in round 1 they beat the Mavs, who won the title the following year.

So yeah, the only time the Suns got a full crack at the Spurs they swept them into oblivion. Your argument has holes the size of Uranus. Mine is ironclad.

Except it isn't true. The Spurs won only 50 games that year, the lowest in the Duncan era, and mainly because Duncan's knee problems got worse. It was bone on bone. After 2 consecutive failures in the postseason they asked Duncan to slim down in 2012 so he was carrying less weight. The result was a resurgent Duncan. This stuff is all easily looked up. I realise you're not serious, but I'm talking to your reader's too.

They beat the Mavs who won the title the next year. They were a good team and got swept. The only time they faced the Suns with a full squad. All of this is true.

Your entire argument against the Suns was they “deserved” their suspensions. If the rules were enforced so much why don’t you name 3 other times it was enforced? Oh yeah you can’t, because Duncan wasn’t suspended for leaving the bench in the same series, and KG wasn’t suspended for leaving the following year. You said nothing about Nash breaking his nose in game 1, missing the end of the game. Nothing about Donaghy saying game 3 was rigged. Basically you said the Spurs deserved to win because they won game 6 at home. Very weak argument at best. There’s a reason it’s a series, and there’s odds to this stuff.

Your comments discredit you from needing much of a reply. People said the moment it happened "well they are getting suspended", it's why coaches move so quick to stop players doing it, and why the commentators pointed it out right away too. I could name a tonne of guys so suspended, but so can you with the simplest of google searches. The Duncan red herring is a classic blunder. The rule is that you can't go on the court during an altercation. When Duncan put his foot on the floor at a different point in the game there was no altercation. Please do us all a favour and google this stuff bro.

[DimesandKnicks]

Just looking back at some of the teams he played for dude had Amare Stoudemire/Joe Johnson/Shawn Marion. That team should have won a championship.

He also had prime Dirk. Then he had Kobe/Pau/Dwight at the end of his career.


Why couldn't Steve Nash get over the hump with these talented teams?

Injuries and running into even better teams. As had been the same answer to your allegation when you tried to throw shade at Nash in other threads before.

It’s really his defense

[DimesandKnicks]

he replaced Marbury on the Suns and only added 32 wins to their record with the same players, 61-21

This isn’t really true. One, Marbury played 34 games that season. The year prior he took the Spurs that would eventually win the championship to six games with a rookie Amare.

Two, it wasn’t the same team/players
Jake Vishal, Penny, Jahidi White

Where essentially replaced with Quinten Richardson, Jim Jackson and Steven Hunter. Joe Johnson and Amare and Barbosa were also more seasoned.

They also added D’antoni who revolutionized the game and contributed to a ton of PG’s having their most productive seasons.

I think Marbury would have had as much success with that team as less of a defensive liability and someone who was averaging 20 and 8 running pick and pop with Kurt Thomas.

Conversely, the Mavs essentially flipped Nash for Jason Terry and won 8 more games then won 60 games the following season (They also made a coaching change). I don’t know if there’s another situation where a team got better after losing a HOF (I’m all ears). They replaced him with a player who never made an allstar team and won more games. Even the Piston’s started to deteriorate after they traded Billups.

[Masigond]

This isn’t really true. One, Marbury played 34 games that season. The year prior he took the Spurs that would eventually win the championship to six games with a rookie Amare.

Two, it wasn’t the same team/players
Jake Vishal, Penny, Jahidi White

Where essentially replaced with Quinten Richardson, Jim Jackson and Steven Hunter. Joe Johnson and Amare and Barbosa were also more seasoned.

They also added D’antoni who revolutionized the game and contributed to a ton of PG’s having their most productive seasons.

I think Marbury would have had as much success with that team as less of a defensive liability and someone who was averaging 20 and 8 running pick and pop with Kurt Thomas.

Conversely, the Mavs essentially flipped Nash for Jason Terry and won 8 more games then won 60 games the following season (They also made a coaching change). I don’t know if there’s another situation where a team got better after losing a HOF (I’m all ears). They replaced him with a player who never made an allstar team and won more games. Even the Piston’s started to deteriorate after they traded Billups.

I don't think that Marbury would have been as successful in D'Antoni's system as Nash who was a way superior passer and decision maker. The reason why the Mavs did not suffer that much was that Nash wasn't used up to his best strengths in the same way. While the fast pace and the freedom to shoot did benefit him, he was by no means the same focal point of the Mavs' offense compared to how the Suns used him later.

You can't replace a PG with another without regards to their playing style. Would Nash have been an MVP in another system than SSOL in that specific timeframe? Probably not. But that's where his strengths were used to perfection, and this system was very successful for a couple of seasons. Marbury would not have been able to do the same, and the Mavs shifted away from a fast tempo to a rather grind-it-out system under Avery Johnson (in 2005-06 their pace had declined to 87.8, which was only 27th of 30 of the league in that season). It's more a testament to Dirk who could thrive in several very different systems.

Furthermore the 2003-04 season is quite a flawed comparison as the Mavs were kind of a mess in that season with Dirk having to play center to make room for Antoine Walker who did not really fit into the team. That team lacked defense so badly. In the season before they had been quite OK with shotblockers like Bradley and LaFrentz teaming up with Nowitzki's length to provide an underrated rim protection (while Bradley is known as the typical stiff center to be posterized by many, he actually contested a lot of shots for some effect), with some gritty players playing defense on the wing (Najera and Griffin). After Dirk's injury in the 2003 playoffs the Mavs front office panicked and traded for "stars", but they messed up the chemistry, and the defense was gone. They had declined from 102.3 DRTG, good for 9th in the league in 2002-2003, to 107.4 / 26th in the league in 2003-2004.

In 2004-2005 when Nash had signed with the Suns and Walker was gone, Johnson changed the team's style with more emphasis on defense again. So when comparing the Mavs with Nash to the Mavs with Terry, the actual comparable seasons are 02-03 to 04-05 or 05-06. The conclusion: Overall not that much difference (60 wins...). Yes, it's true that the Mavs did not suffer from replacing Nash with Terry, but that's also due to the kind how these players were used (Nelson's quirky systems often took the ball out of his hands to create mismatches with unorthodox approaches to the game) and team construction overall.

[Mavrelous]

This isn’t really true. One, Marbury played 34 games that season. The year prior he took the Spurs that would eventually win the championship to six games with a rookie Amare.

Two, it wasn’t the same team/players
Jake Vishal, Penny, Jahidi White

Where essentially replaced with Quinten Richardson, Jim Jackson and Steven Hunter. Joe Johnson and Amare and Barbosa were also more seasoned.

Just a general comment, when I said it's the same team, I didn't mean it in the literal sense, he just replaced Marbury and that's it, but that meaningful rotation players were the same, it's rare for any franchise to change just 1 player between seasons.
The only guy that played a significant role from the new ones was QRich and he did it for 1 year, Jim Jackson was past his prime, 25MPG bench player and Hunter was a backup who barely played.
The pillars of the team were Amare, Matrix and Joe Johnson.
Joe Johnson left a year after in FA, Amare went down, QRich was traded, and Nash took on Kurt Thomas, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell, had a top 4 team.
The common theme of these Suns wasn't Amare, Joe Johnson, QRich or the bench role player, it was the dynamo behind that offense.
I agree that D'Antoni played major role also.

Conversely, the Mavs essentially flipped Nash for Jason Terry and won 8 more games then won 60 games the following season (They also made a coaching change). I don’t know if there’s another situation where a team got better after losing a HOF (I’m all ears). They replaced him with a player who never made an allstar team and won more games. Even the Piston’s started to deteriorate after they traded Billups.

You're absolutely right here, Mavs did improve when Nash left, and people incorrectly criticize Cuban for that, but the whole team was transformed when he left, they went from run and gun team with horrible defense, to the best defense in the league.
The money that was supposed to go to Nash didn't go to JET, it went to Dampier, they also added Stackhouse, a defensive 2nd year player in Josh Howard, Antoine Walker, a no D gunner was used to get JET.
Dirk himself played very differently between Don Nelson and Avery.
They completely changed the identity of the team.
Off the top of my head example for massive transformation after getting rid of MVP calibre HoFer player is 05-06 Kings replacing Peja Stojakovitch with Artest (1 time allstar, but he was known for defense mainly) an improving massively, but I wouldn't qualify this as good example since I wasn't a big believer in Peja as MVP-calibre player.
Another example would be 2022 Mavs, I don't know whether KP will be a HoFer, but he's certainly an all NBA calibre player, and they improved upon trading him for bench players basically.

[Biff]

Watch the Thinking Basketball piece on him. Dallas didn't use him correctly so not exactly his fault there. D'Antoni unleashed him but D'Antoni has massive flaws as a coach. Our rotation was way too short and he ran our guys into the ground. We had injury issues numerous times. First year Joe Johnson was injured in playoffs. Second year Amare was injured. Third year Amare and Diaw get suspended at a pivotal time. D'Antoni only played 6 guys the next game. We led most of the game but were completely gassed in the 4th.

And losing to Tim Duncan isn't exactly problematic. Nash is great, Duncan was just better.

[DimesandKnicks]

Just a general comment, when I said it's the same team, I didn't mean it in the literal sense, he just replaced Marbury and that's it, but that meaningful rotation players were the same, it's rare for any franchise to change just 1 player between seasons.
The only guy that played a significant role from the new ones was QRich and he did it for 1 year, Jim Jackson was past his prime, 25MPG bench player and Hunter was a backup who barely played.
The pillars of the team were Amare, Matrix and Joe Johnson.
Joe Johnson left a year after in FA, Amare went down, QRich was traded, and Nash took on Kurt Thomas, Boris Diaw and Raja Bell, had a top 4 team.
The common theme of these Suns wasn't Amare, Joe Johnson, QRich or the bench role player, it was the dynamo behind that offense.
I agree that D'Antoni played major role also.

But again. That’s not really an accurate statement. Especially if your comparing him to the team Marbury brought to the playoffs because he played more then half the season. That withstanding the team that won 29 games was a different team.

Marbury and Hardaway were traded midway through the season for Howard Eisley and Mcdyess. This is a trade for cap space, both those players were in the rotation

Nash replaced Marbury. Rich replaced Hardway and they are two completely different players. Hardaway was a non shooter. QRich led the NBA in 3 point makes and won the 3 point contest that year.

Jim Jackson averaged almost 10 points off the bench and averaged more threes than Nash and Hunter provided better production than Voshkal in half the minutes. Jake was a foul machine while Hunter, who was the only true center on that team, was their second leading shot blocker.

Lastly, the year prior Amare missed 30 games. So saying it was the same team but won 30 more games ignores the fact that their best player was traded, a heavy rotational player was traded with him, and there third best player missed nearly a third of the season.

Not to mention, they were coached by someone who would never be a HC again and only became an assistant for one year a decade later.

You compare that to the team that lost to the eventual champions in 6 games, it was Marbury, rookie Johnson and Amare, Hardaway and Bo Outlaw/Voshkal. This is an inferior team compared to that 60 win team

Off the top of my head example for massive transformation after getting rid of MVP calibre HoFer player is 05-06 Kings replacing Peja Stojakovitch with Artest (1 time allstar, but he was known for defense mainly) an improving massively, but I wouldn't qualify this as good example since I wasn't a big believer in Peja as MVP-calibre player.
Another example would be 2022 Mavs, I don't know whether KP will be a HoFer, but he's certainly an all NBA calibre player, and they improved upon trading him for bench players basically.

These aren’t good examples. Peja was averaging like 16 and 5 shooting almost sub 40 from the field when he was and unless he’s a part of a championship team KP isn’t going to be a HOF. Your kind of making my point for me.

[DimesandKnicks]

I don't think that Marbury would have been as successful in D'Antoni's system as Nash who was a way superior passer and decision maker.

Superior? How? Maybe better…but superior? Marbury averaged over 8 assist for like ten years with his best teammates being a young Garnet, Marion, and Kieth Van Horn. He’s a fantastic passer, while kind of still being a shoot first PG.

You can't replace a PG with another without regards to their playing style. Would Nash have been an MVP in another system than SSOL in that specific timeframe? Probably not. But that's where his strengths were used to perfection, and this system was very successful for a couple of seasons. Marbury would not have been able to do the same

Why? D’antoni’s system is tailored made for a PG like Marbury. Marbury is more explosive and could get to the paint at will. His Sun’s won 16 less games then the 60 win Sun’s with two rookies, a non shooter and Marion. Johnson couldn’t quite shoot yet either.

Marbury averaged 20 and 8 running pick and pop with Kurt Thomas. 20 and 10 would be guaranteed if he was playing with Stat at C, Marion and shooters with a coach that wants to spam pick and rolls. D’antoni said he wished Nash shot more, he wouldn’t have to ask that of Marbury and he was a better defender.

Raymond Felton averaged 15 and 6 the year before joining the D’antoni and Amare Knicks. Then he became nearly an Allstar running pick and roll with Stat and averaged 17 and 9.

[Bankai]

Steve Nash arguably the best player to never win a Title

[canada_dry]

The only reason the series was 2-2 at point of the suspension was nash couldn't finish game 1 and the suns offense fell apart late without him, giving up homecourt advantage

game 3 was the donaghy game that bill simmons famously called the worst reffed game he had ever seen on his blog, and it was still a close game. Thats 2 games. 2-2.

Its not at all hard to think the suns were actually better than the spurs that year, it was more than just the suspensions.

Sent from my SM-G960W using RealGM mobile app

[canada_dry]

I don't think that Marbury would have been as successful in D'Antoni's system as Nash who was a way superior passer and decision maker.

Superior? How? Maybe better…but superior? Marbury averaged over 8 assist for like ten years with his best teammates being a young Garnet, Marion, and Kieth Van Horn. He’s a fantastic passer, while kind of still being a shoot first PG.

You can't replace a PG with another without regards to their playing style. Would Nash have been an MVP in another system than SSOL in that specific timeframe? Probably not. But that's where his strengths were used to perfection, and this system was very successful for a couple of seasons. Marbury would not have been able to do the same

Why? D’antoni’s system is tailored made for a PG like Marbury. Marbury is more explosive and could get to the paint at will. His Sun’s won 16 less games then the 60 win Sun’s with two rookies, a non shooter and Marion. Johnson couldn’t quite shoot yet either.

Marbury averaged 20 and 8 running pick and pop with Kurt Thomas. 20 and 10 would be guaranteed if he was playing with Stat at C, Marion and shooters with a coach that wants to spam pick and rolls. D’antoni said he wished Nash shot more, he wouldn’t have to ask that of Marbury and he was a better defender.

Raymond Felton averaged 15 and 6 the year before joining the D’antoni and Amare Knicks. Then he became nearly an Allstar running pick and roll with Stat and averaged 17 and 9.

Su-pe-ri-or.

You read the man. Theres levels.

We're also gonna pretend like dantoni had NO interest of EVER having Marbury as the PG running his system? Why is that? Id venture to guess it was his decision making and shot selection. Get off basketball reference, my friend.

Btw This played out when dantoni became the coach of YOUR team when Marbury was still on it... how old are you? Maybe you weren't watching back then, which sould be understandable i guess. From day 1 reports were like yeah dantoni doesn't wanna coach him just like he had no interest of doing so on the suns.

Your hate for nash has you just reading basketball reference stats , making up elementary boxscore stats in your head(like 20 and 10) and ignoring history in a lot of aspects, and also ignoring what the actual basketball looks like outside of stats. Its no surprise every time Marbury was replaced as a pg , teams got better. Same happened with the nets with kidd, and the suns got worse replacing kidd with Marbury. Then it happened with nash. You're reading off all these stats, but in practice, what gives? Somethings obviously off? Why would dantoni , on two seperate teams, not wanna coach a guy with those tremendous boxscore stats you love to use ? There has to be some reason...

Being a poor leader, and a poor decision maker on and off the floor doesn't show up on basketball reference or in elementary box score stats.

So yeah. Superior.

Sent from my SM-G960W using RealGM mobile app

[Masigond]

I don't think that Marbury would have been as successful in D'Antoni's system as Nash who was a way superior passer and decision maker.

Superior? How? Maybe better…but superior? Marbury averaged over 8 assist for like ten years with his best teammates being a young Garnet, Marion, and Kieth Van Horn. He’s a fantastic passer, while kind of still being a shoot first PG.

IMO he was a good passer but not an exceptional one. Nash was an all-time great in the likes of Bird, Magic, Jokic, Kidd and else in terms of seeing scoring opportunities for his teammates before anyone else realized that there actually was one.

There's a reason why Marbury never managed to run a better than average team offense while Nash managed to run great team offenses, proven even with other than top-notch teammates. That was actually the reason for his second MVP as the Suns lost way less of a beat than expected when they had to play without their best offensive big man. If Nash was the reason for the Suns winning 62 games in 2004-05 (and he was the main reason for this as he was the guy able to run that system), he was obviously even more responsible for that than thought as he still could have his team score the most points per game with the 2nd best offensive rating even without a classic big man option in 2005-06. Who would ever had thought that the system would still work with Diaw in Stoudemire's place? Nash was a big part of making that work.

Marbury was long enough in the league with enough opportunities to show something comparable. We've never seen that. I think you let yourself be deceived a bit by Marbury's stats. While obviously very skilled he lacked the BBIQ to really run a great team offense, and when you compare the usage rates of him and Nash you see that he needed more possessions for the same output. And as I remember him I never had the feeling that he made his teammates truly thrive in the same manner as the best playmaker PGs in the history of the NBA.

Stats can be deceiving regarding a player's true impact for his team being able to win games. It was arguably somewhat of the same when the Kings could replace Webber as the alleged motor of the team with Brad Miller and didn't really get worse.

[Gus Fring]

It's almost impossible to win a championship with your point guard as your best player. Magic was anomalous as he was essentially LeBron before LeBron and his teams were stacked. Curry similarly was generational/an entirely new archetype of player that's yet to be replicated and also had stacked teams. Nash had good teams, but they weren't stacked and he was by far the best player. You just can't win like that, even Curry and Magic would struggle to win in the same position.

[One_and_Done]

It's almost impossible to win a championship with your point guard as your best player. Magic was anomalous as he was essentially LeBron before LeBron and his teams were stacked. Curry similarly was generational/an entirely new archetype of player that's yet to be replicated and also had stacked teams. Nash had good teams, but they weren't stacked and he was by far the best player. You just can't win like that, even Curry and Magic would struggle to win in the same position.

If you judge everything by narratives then sure. If you just put the Suns into a year where the opposition isn't stronger than them then not so much.

Put the healthy 05 or 07 Suns into the league in say 94 or 97 or 02; the Suns are winning the title. They just happened to run into teams like the Spurs and Tim Duncan.

[Black Jack]

Steve Nash arguably the best player to never win a Title

That's absurd. Barkley, Malone were clearly better players than Nash. Also Baylor, Stockton, CP3.

Nash is probably the most overrated all time great. It's just become silly.

[durden_tyler]

Those MVPs were telling of his special talent. Better than most point guards, as point guard, in the history of the game. i still wish he never left Dallas.

[DimesandKnicks]

Su-pe-ri-or.

You read the man. Theres levels.

We're also gonna pretend like dantoni had NO interest of EVER having Marbury as the PG running his system? Why is that? Id venture to guess it was his decision making and shot selection. Get off basketball reference, my friend.

He also had NO interest in playing Jeremy Lin, yet he had success in his system.

Marbury was competing with Chris Duhon for the starting position, “lost”, and didn’t play a single game for a team that lost 50 games.

He also DNP’d Nate Robinson for what felt like 20 plus games and Nate came back and dropped like 30 on the Hawks.

Your projecting. We have no idea why he chose not to play him. But considering he was the most talented player on that roster It could have been personal.

Btw This played out when dantoni became the coach of YOUR team when Marbury was still on it... how old are you? Maybe you weren't watching back then, which sould be understandable i guess. From day 1 reports were like yeah dantoni doesn't wanna coach him just like he had no interest of doing so on the suns.

34, you? #YouwerentThere. Weren’t you the guy who said Josh Howard’s nickname was garbage man?

From day 1? Sounds personal

Your hate for nash has you just reading basketball reference stats , making up elementary boxscore stats in your head(like 20 and 10) and ignoring history in a lot of aspects, and also ignoring what the actual basketball looks like outside of stats.

Just because I don’t gargle Nash’s nuts doesn’t make me a hater. My god bro, get a hold of yourself. He’s not your dad. It’s a basketball forum where people talk sports.

It’s no surprise every time Marbury was replaced as a pg , teams got better. Same happened with the nets with kidd, and the suns got worse replacing kidd with Marbury. Then it happened with nash. You're reading off all these stats, but in practice, what gives? Somethings obviously off? Why would dantoni , on two seperate teams, not wanna coach a guy with those tremendous boxscore stats you love to use ? There has to be some reason...

You already read the post highlighting how the Suns didn’t just replace Marbury with Nash and go from 29 wins to 60. Marbury and Hardaway got traded and Amare played 50 games. They got better adding Nash, Richardson, Jackson, Hunter, and 30 more games from Amare.

As far as Kidd. I don’t need to look and compare the rosters. Kidd is a superior player to both Nash and Marbury and it’s not even close. BB reference won’t tell you that because the hardest thing to quantify in basketball is defensive impact.

You also conveniently left out that a 23 year old Nash was Kidd’s back up in Dallas and that a 35ish year old Kidd won a championship with the player Nash couldn’t and was probably more valuable than MVP Nash for that team because he’s one of the best perimeter defenders in NBA history and you don’t have to hide him on Defense. The Mavs don’t win a championship without him throttling Kobe, Westbrook and James.

Being a poor leader, and a poor decision maker on and off the floor doesn't show up on basketball reference or in elementary box score stats.

Your projecting again.

[HomoSapien]

Just looking back at some of the teams he played for dude had Amare Stoudemire/Joe Johnson/Shawn Marion. That team should have won a championship.

I mean, Joe Johnson broke his face in the playoffs. Then he left. And then Amare was often injured as were many other key players.

[Iwasawitness]

Really overrated, managed to have only 4 50/40/90 seasons and people consider him a good shooter, he had a season there he only hit 89.9% from FT line, to miss this record, basically Shaq level FT shooting, he replaced Marbury on the Suns and only added 32 wins to their record with the same players, 61-21, take any other Steve, like Blake for example, would've given them 71 at least, and that's only because he wouldn't want to touch the Bulls record.

I see only facts here tbh

[cupcakesnake]

It's almost impossible to win a championship with your point guard as your best player. Magic was anomalous as he was essentially LeBron before LeBron and his teams were stacked. Curry similarly was generational/an entirely new archetype of player that's yet to be replicated and also had stacked teams. Nash had good teams, but they weren't stacked and he was by far the best player. You just can't win like that, even Curry and Magic would struggle to win in the same position.

I believe that most Western Conference teams that were able to make the Conference Finals were good enough to win a title. Get that far in the West and lose, it's often running into an even better contender, or not having the injury luck, or losing a coin flip series.

Every now and then a WC teams gets the injury luck early and sneaks through to the WCF (Dame's Blazers, Melo Nuggets, D.Will Jazz), and I'm not calling those teams championship level. So many years though, that WCF loser is a championship calibre team. So many Kings/Mavs/Spurs/Blazers teams in the early 2000s, the Nash Suns, the Durant Thunder, Grit n' Grind Grizzlies, the Spurs in 2012 and 2017, the 2018 Rockets, some Clippers teams had Kawhi stayed healthy.

Calling it "impossible to win a championship" for a team that made the WCF and lost to a historically good team doesn't line up to me. I feel like the proof of concept is already there. If you never beat other contenders in the playoffs, I get feeling that team didn't prove they can win. But the Nash Suns went toe-to-toe with all kinds of good Spurs, Mavs, and LA teams and made 3 different Western Conference Finals. That's a lot of playoff series wins, and they only ever lost to juggernaut contenders.

If anything, the Nash-era Suns faltered most often because of lack of depth. They played insanely short (6-man) rotations in the playoffs, played their starters 40mpg and then always had some of them run out of gas or get injured in the 3rd round.