Optms wrote:schnakenpopanz wrote:Kingdibs19 wrote:Nash was just overrated.
Not this again. I can write pages why he was underrated, but i think it is just an opinion.
without Nash and D#antoni and Don Nelson's Warriors we would have a different NBA today.
What did Nash's Suns change exactly? The league was still running a predominantly big man centric roster in regards to building contenders.
It was not until Curry that the game genuinely changed, seemingly overnight (2015). Comments like this that credit Nash are why people call him overrated.
The early 2000's Celtics were way ahead of the Suns of shooting 3's and running. The Wizards were playing the same way while the Suns were active and we never give those teams credit. No one ever mentions Gilbert Arenas as being the guy that all guards play like today. When in reality, those Wizards teams resemble what teams look like now way more than the Suns.
No this incorrect.
Suns actually were built similar to todays teams...you had Amare who was an undersized center, and then you had great shooters surrounding him like Nash, Marion, Joe Johnson, Richardson etc. They didn't play the traditional power forward and center...you had Amare who is really a power forward playing center on a small ball team.
Then in 2005-2006 with Amare injured the Suns went even smaller with Nash, Bell, Marion, Jones, Thomas. Kurt Thomas was 6'9 and not a true center, but you had 4 really good shooters around him led by the pace of Nash.
Remember the Suns in 2004-2005 led the league in 3 pointers averaging 25 a game.
In 2005-2006 the Suns led the league again in 3 pointers averaging 26 a game...when the league average was closer to 16 a game.
It was also the run and gun pace that the Suns played with that we hadn't really seen before.
The Suns averaged 98.6 possessions per game that season, most in the league en route to 62 wins in D'Antoni's first full season as coach. Although the league as a whole was still playing slower than it had five years earlier, the Suns were the forerunners of a revolution. The NBA had received a jump start that would propel it into a new golden age, a better age -- one in which speed is a virtue and a pull-up 3-pointer in transition sends fans into mass hysteria. Nearly 14 years after those pickup games in Phoenix, the Western Conference finals between the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets are a formal celebration of the fact that what was once merely an idea has become the NBA's new normal.
Today, the Suns' "Seven Seconds or Less" offense of 2004-05 would be unexceptional when measured by possessions per 48 minutes. Back then, Phoenix's 98.6 pace was more than a possession per game faster than that of any other NBA team.