What if Golden State had prime Nash instead of Curry?

[durantbird]

How well do they perform to remove Steph Curry and replace him with the best years of Steve Nash? Do they still win those rings? One ring, two rings, more?

Do they become better or worse?

[bbms]

worse

curry was the dynamic off ball scorer they needed. he enabled draymond green and a number of other quality players that lacked scoring firepower - talking iggy, livingston, bogut..

nash was a player that best skill was to put dynamic scorers altogether and make elite offenses out of them

the opposite is also true.

they had similar technical traits but very different tactical and strategical traits.

[Doctor MJ]

How well do they perform to remove Steph Curry and replace him with the best years of Steve Nash? Do they still win those rings? One ring, two rings, more?

Do they become better or worse?

So, when Kerr came to GS, he did so with the plan to create an offense where Curry stopped being an on-ball point guard. Part of the motivation for this was that Klay wasn't getting the opportunity to feast with Curry as on-ball that they thought he needed. The serendipitous blessing of it was that it turned out that this back up who couldn't really shoot named Draymond Green was the best passer on the team.

If Nash is on that team in 2013-14, Klay is already feasting, and Green would never become anywhere near the best passer on the team, hence I'd say that the path forward looks totally different. Quite honestly if Mark Jackson wasn't such a paranoid narcissist you'd probably just roll him back because giving Nash the kind of on-ball primacy he gave Curry is actually the right move.

But of course then things get tricky. Do they ever even realize that Draymond Green is the best defender of his generation if he doesn't make sense offensively in their starting lineup? If you never recognize Green as a building block, aren't you perpetually the lesser for it? I think clearly there's no way that the '15-16 Warriors are as good like this unless they are able to acquire some additional talents.

[lessthanjake]

I think the Warriors wouldn’t have been as good a fit for Nash as they were for Steph.

The Warriors didn’t really have a dangerous pick and roll partner for Nash. Nor did they really have the court spacing that would help Nash’s style the most, unless they went with more offensively slanted rosters (which would open up defensive issues). Furthermore, Nash having the ball so much would surely lead to Draymond getting less value on offense. I think Nash would still make them a great offense, but it wouldn’t have been very optimal for him or the rest of the team.

The other factor beyond fit is that Steph is a notably better defensive player than Nash. So, in order to be as good a team, the Warriors would need their offense with Nash to be a little bit better than the offense with Steph. I think Nash is actually a slight tick better offensively than Steph, but he’s not enough better that I think he’d get better offensive results on a team that I think fits him notably less well.

[Kingdibs19]

Much worse. Nash is the most over rated NBA player of all time.

[durantbird]

Yeah makes sense they'd be worse. But do you think they still win rings? Notice I'm not talking only about 2015 but also the Durant years

[SpreeS]

Yeah makes sense they'd be worse. But do you think they still win rings? Notice I'm not talking only about 2015 but also the Durant years

What’s the point to talk about Durant years? A lot of all time great PG would won with this team and this isn’t about Curry, he is all time great. The same thing is with Bulls 96. Kobe/West/Oscar/Curry and other would have won if they replace Jordan.

[durantbird]

Yeah makes sense they'd be worse. But do you think they still win rings? Notice I'm not talking only about 2015 but also the Durant years

What’s the point to talk about Durant years? A lot of all time great PG would won with this team and this isn’t about Curry, he is all time great. The same thing is with Bulls 96. Kobe/West/Oscar/Curry and other would have won if they replace Jordan.

When people talk about Curry, they talk about 4 rings not 2 rings. He credit the credit for all of those.

My OP question was about the whole dynamic of Nash instead of Curry. How many rings they win? It's okay that they get worse, that's still not a complete answer.

[Laimbeer]

Yeah makes sense they'd be worse. But do you think they still win rings? Notice I'm not talking only about 2015 but also the Durant years

What’s the point to talk about Durant years? A lot of all time great PG would won with this team and this isn’t about Curry, he is all time great. The same thing is with Bulls 96. Kobe/West/Oscar/Curry and other would have won if they replace Jordan.

When people talk about Curry, they talk about 4 rings not 2 rings. He credit the credit for all of those.

My OP question was about the whole dynamic of Nash instead of Curry. How many rings they win? It's okay that they get worse, that's still not a complete answer.

Nah, he had a cheat code in the Durant years. No way can you give him as much credit for those as the other two.

[parsnips33]

Are they allowed to make trades to make it a better Nash-fitting roster than a Steph-fitting roster?

[Mazter]

The difference between Nash and Curry at their peak is that Nash could make the most out of something and Curry was part of something that made the most out of it. One lead superb offenses no matter what, the other was part of a great offense when all the pieces where there.

Essentially making Nash better option, but of course, not necessarily the more successful one. But given the great front office and coach staff the Warriors had between 2014 and onward I have no doubt they could have easily build a dynasty around Nash.