Texas Chuck wrote:
Again I think Nash is an amazing player, and one of the best offensive pgs of all-time. He may well be as good as you are saying he is. But you can't use that argument as pro-Nash over Paul and ignore essentially no drop off in Dallas when he left.
Thank you for responding to the point about Nash's impact being irreplaceable. Barbosa has never in any sense ever been anything other than an undersized, streaky SG. He has a career APG of 2.3, the guy cannot run an offense.
And yes the Maverick offense did not drop off a cliff and their defense got better almost exponentially.
Doctor MJ wrote:I haven't seen Magic have much success outside of Los Angeles either, yet, you and I have both managed to become very confident that location basically has nothing to do with his capabilities.
Seriously man, just because Nash didn't change cities doesn't mean he didn't have to adapt some. He just didn't have to adapt that much because Phoenix continued to let him dictate the offense...just like every team everywhere does when they now they have an outlier offensive talent in their midst.
What about in Dallas? The team thought Dirk was the better talent and made Nash defer. It still worked out fantastically so no one should see that as Nash not being successful, but it absolutely would have been better to do it differently.
What about in LA? An absolute trainwreck that doesn't tell you anything about any of the players' capabilities (though you can learn things about their personalities). Additionally though I'll say that I think it was a pretty naive move acquiring Nash in a setup where Kobe is King. The reality is that one guy is going to be the one in control, and that will cause problems. Kobe in control means Nash can't be Nash, and Nash in control means Kobe can't be Kobe. Only way you do that is if you have two guys who really, really know each other well, understand both their own limitations and the other guys' limitations, and are ready to be patient as they find a good fit together.
We can extrapolate what Magic could do because he is a physical mismatch at his position never seen before. It would translate in any situation. Even train wrecks. Nash did not always shine in Dallas, nor did he always shine in PHX, under different coaching/vision. That's the crutches other players have had to go through, as has been said many times Nash got the benefit of a coach who let him do whatever he wanted. That was focus all on offense; it was the adage of the best defense is a good offense, unfortunately that doesn't work in basketball. Suns/Nash fans complain that the Suns never had that defensive presence like a Tyson Chandler but they would not be the dominant offense moving Amare/Marion to their natural positions. I don't see how it can be argued that Nash didn't get a huge advantage having players at every position that were great offensive players. Put Roy Hibbert in the middle and the Suns offense is not nearly as good but their defense improves immeasurably...but when you have a team that doesn't care about defense and it wasn't just D'Antoni that didn't care. Their best player didn't care about defense either...it wasn't his job, his job it just go, go, go, offense, offense, offense. That makes Nash look great in PG offensive comparison's but overall not so much. It's like comparing James Harden to Michael Jordan, Harden might be semi-comparable offensively but that's only because he doesn't care about defense.
Magic looked dominant but didn't always dominate the ball. Many times he gave the ball to his playmakers and let them create e.g. Kareem, Worthy. Nash always has to dominate the ball and that is a weakness of those PHX offenses. It didn't allow other players to contribute beyond catching and shoot/spotting up.
I don't understand your critique of Paul not increasing Blake's scoring. The Clippers are trying to win a title...not making Blake a scoring champ. I mean his scoring is up, PER is at it's highest, TS% is at it's highest...Blake Griffin is not being underused. The Clippers SRS this year equals anything those Suns ever did.
Could Nash get Deandre Jordan to have the 5th best Offensive Rating? I honestly doubt it, Deandre is not the type of center Nash likes to play with. 3 Clippers are in the top 10 in win shares.
The way I see it, CP3 has the Clippers #1 in offense this year and a top 10 defense....something Nash and the Suns were never ever able to do. A lot of teams can do one or the other but to combine the two takes a savant......
I'm so tired of the typical......