cupcakesnake wrote:So I never said Nash was inhibited by Nellie. He just wasn't optimized in Dallas
just like James Harden when he was all NBA first team and an MVP candidate pre-optimization
Just like Harden post Houston when he went to Brooklyn and adjusted his game from having free range to go one on one to having to compete with two ball dominant scorers and becoming a full time pg
Just like Dirk when he went from pick and pop to the high post
Just like Steph when he went from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr and won MVP after having a season that last year that was arguably statistically better.
To get the best out of great players you have to optimize your system for them. But great players adjust their games in ways that are optimal for their teams to win.
and wasn't as featured as he could be because Nellie preferred as many cooks in the kitchen as possible. Dirk was the main option in Dallas always, as he probably should have been. But it wasn't a tight little offense around the skills of Dirk, Finley, and Nash. Nellie loved to add extra actions and use all the tools at his disposal. From 2002-2004, Dallas made big room in its offense for guys like: Juwan Howard, Van Exel, old Tim Hardaway, Raef LaFrentz, Antoine Walker, and Antawn Jamison. Nellie even tried brief experiments running offense for guys like Wang Zhizhi and Antoine Rigeaudeau lol. I do think it was sloppy at times, and the best Mavs team was 2003, when Nellie played more defensive hustle guys in lineups next to his offensive players, rather than live his dream of playing 5 point forwards lol.
Nellie-ball in Dallas produced some serious offensive fireworks and Nash got to show the value of his rare shooting/playmaking synergy. But if your very best skill is creating plays off the dribble, you're not going to be your best individual self playing on a team with a bunch of other guys needing the ball in their hands. I think you can attack Nash's "portability" because of this, and I do think he's an MVP with the ball in his hands, and more of an all-NBA 3rd team guy when he's blending in with other ball dominant players.
As far as I remember, independent of the year with Walker, the Mavs offense was focused on the 2 man/3 man game and elbow actions. This is a very pg friendly style of play. Than Nash joined an offense that was so innovative at the time that it was seen as a novelty. The media couldn’t wait to trash the Sun’s as soon as they lost to reinforce the fact that you can’t play basketball that way.
That’s why when you guys say optimized. It’s like what are we talking about? What other coach during that period do you think was more PG friendly than Nelson’s offense which ran those above actions, ran fast, and had an elite stretch 4? I really am curious.
I actually do think being "optimized" is the difference between being an all-NBA 3rd team guy and being in the MVP discussion.
Being “optimized” is the difference from being a perennial all-NBA first/second teamer/ Top 10 MVP candidate to be an MVP. There are plenty examples of this. I don’t believe there are any examples of your hypothesis.
There's not an exact analogous situation for Nash's weird career, and I'm noticing that whenever I give you an example to show a personality, you prefer to flip it to point out the differences rather than address the point I'm trying to make with it (explaining to me that Steve Nash is not Michael Jordan!). Steph and Durant stopped winning MVPs when they played together (despite fitting together in a way that was still quite optimal due to their off-ball stuff).
I keep flipping it because they aren’t good examples. Even this one. Curry and Durant were still All NBA first and second teamers those two years and both got enough MVP votes to finish top 10 in voting. They also won back to back championships and are regarding as one of the greatest teams of all time.
Part of the weirdness of Steve Nash's late-career bloom is simply that he wasn't a no brainer star coming into the league. He was a lottery pick so he didn't come out of nowhere. Maybe he got Stockton comps at the time (I was super young and only sort of following the league when Nash was in college). It did take innovative coaches to imagine Steve Nash as the epicentre of an offense. Anyone can imagine it for a Lebron or a Dirk.
Dirk absolutely had to prove himself but became all nba by his third season in a western conference that was a gauntlet for PFs. European players still had that stigma for being soft during his time and really long after he got into the league.
The Nash dislikers have this consistent argument that any good point guard could have done what Nash did in Phoenix.
Any all-nba level PG. At least most of them.
But I don't get it. A) so why didn't anyone do it if it was so simple? and
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D’antoni’s starting PGs outside of Nash were:
Chris Duhon who would never start for another organization again and was out of the league three years later
Raymond Felton who ran the 7th best offense in the league and scored the 2nd most PPG. This season would be the beginning of the end for Raymond Felton. And I’m willing to bet that that offense was a top five before the Melo trade which completely **** our offense. It was so bad the home crowd started booing Melo.
Jeremy Lin averaged about 18 and 8 as a nobody before Anthony came back. Lin also became the biggest story in sports for two weeks!
Russell Westbrook, who managed to be more efficient and score more points than he did the previous season alongside the ball dominant Harden despite being the more ball dominant player and in MVP form. This is a year after still playing with that stripped OKC team where he was the offense. This team, after one year of playing together lost to the eventual champs in the Lebron Lakers in a gentleman’s sweep
Chris Paul managed to still average comparable numbers in Houston alongside James Harden at the peak of his USG rate despite having always been the man on every team he played for. People forget this team took the KD, Steph Warriors to 7 games and could have won if Paul wasn’t injured for the last two games. Than lost two six the next year to the same team. I think it goes without saying this was one of the top offenses. Funny how Paul isn’t afforded the same excuses that Nash is.
So the answer to your question is, he did!