SpreeS wrote:Nash teams were oriented especially into offence. Change Amare or Dirk into Green and numbers would look differently
There’s some truth to this, but I think there’s three important things worth noting here:
1. There’s a difference between being offensively-slanted and actually being offensively better. Nash was definitely on some offensively slanted rosters. But does that reflect that they were particularly good offensively compared to other players’ supporting casts, or just that they were bad defensively? He did have Dirk, so that was definitely a truly great offensive teammate in the Mavs years. But on the Suns, it’s really not clear to me that guys like Amare, Marion, Bell, etc. are better offensively than what other guys have had. Do we really think that having guys like that is better offensively than having Wade and Bosh, or Kyrie and Love? Do we think it’s better than having Durant and Klay? Is Amare better offensively than Blake Griffin? Is it better than having Kobe or Penny? Going beyond the scope of what we have this data for, do we really think it’s better than Magic having Kareem and Worthy? I think people sometimes miss the forest for the trees with this kind of argument. Those Suns teams definitely had offensive talent in Amare’s years there, but the idea that they were such a great supporting cast offensively that we’d expect Nash to tower over other great offensive players (who had great teammates of their own) in a measure like this just seems wrong to me.
2. Nash’s teams had years where they clearly were not all that offensively talented. And yet the offensive results were still great. For instance, let’s look at 2006, a year where Amare was out, and Nash’s best offensive teammate was Shawn Marion. In my version of this that puts 3x weight on playoff possessions, Nash’s on-court rORTG in the 2006 regular season & playoffs was +9.31. Amongst the guys I looked at (LeBron, Curry, Jokic, Chris Paul, and Luka), that is still amongst the best seasons, despite the relative lack of offensive talent on Nash’s team that year. To take another year, in the 2011 season, a 36-year-old Nash had a pretty weak team that was riddled with injuries and still had an on-court rORTG of +6.71. For reference, that’s similar to Steph in 2015 and LeBron in 2010, and it’s notably higher than years like Steph in 2022 and LeBron in 2018.
3. In the year where Nash had the most offensive talent on his team—with the 2005 Suns—his on-court rORTG was the highest of anyone I’ve seen. In my version that puts 3x weight on playoff possessions, Nash had an on-court rORTG of +15.54. The next best I found was Steph in 2017, with a +14.78. Beyond that, the next best was LeBron in 2017, who was pretty far off with +12.70. Having Amare, Joe Johnson, and Marion is a very good offensive supporting cast, but it doesn’t strike me as correct to think it’s better than what those guys had in those years. Jokic is in the middle of having a year with similar numbers to LeBron in 2017, and I wouldn’t say his supporting cast is as good offensively as the others, but there’s plenty of the year left, so there’s a good chance that falls, and even now it’s well below Nash’s 2005 number.
To me, prime Nash is the best offensive player ever. And I thought this even just watching him at the time. The problem for him is that he was also a significant negative defensively, while other truly great offensive players generally are at least average defensively (and in some cases are really good defenders).