kayess wrote:I've been skimming through it, so I'm not sure is this is answered later on in the post (I do expect it to be, given the amount of work you've put into this) but a couple of things that caught my eye:
1) Nash requiring a ridiculous lineup? I might have agreed with this in 2005; after which, JJ leaves, Amar'e gets injured, and he gets Diaw as a replacement. The result? Nash's on-court ORTG goes down by a couple points.
If anything, Nash is the most lineup resistant offensive star we've seen. Hell, even in 2010 when he and Amar'e were close to being shadows of themselves, his team puts up the league's best O under Gentry. There's simply so many different contexts Nash has been in - different teammates, system, whatever - and he's still able to produce the best O in the league.
You're not recalling it accurately (I think you're recalling narratives rather than games). 2010 Amar'e was not a shadow of himself, he played some of his best ball then, which he continued the next season in NY without Nash. If you look at the game log for Phoenix's turnaround, it was heavily correlated to Amare's elevation to his peak that continued from midseason or so until the WCF. Then when Amar'e left Phoenix missed the playoffs, and NY went from lotto team to playoff team. But, that doesn't fit the Nash narrative...
While I agree Nash ran the Suns and deserves credit for 2005... You can't disregard the other players. Marion was consistent with hi pre-Nash all-star play, and they added Raja Bell, and Diaw was an impactful player and in a good system for his skills. Nash fans always point out he made it to the WCF, but let's be honest, that was a bit of a fluke. They almost got beaten by a horrible LAL roster and then beat a Clippers team which was a surprising playoff team, lower seeded. It sounds good to say the Suns went to the WCF without Amar'e. But it isn't when you point out they weren't the 2nd best team in the West in a year the WC had 2 contenders, and say the decent Suns roster went 7 games against a mostly terrible LAL roster and a worse LAC roster before losing to the Mavs.
It's way too selective to point to 2005 when there were many caveats and the phenomenon wasn't reproducible in other situations. Like after Amar'e left to NY and when they traded Marion for Shaq. It appears to be an outlier which Nash advocates embellish.
