Apex: Ray Allen vs Jason Kidd vs Steve Nash

[DeathLineup]

Which player was the best during their apex?

Bonus question: If you could have one of them (apex version) to play for your team in this modern NBA, which player would you pick?

[SHAQ32]

Steve Nash was super efficient offensively and consistently lead great offenses, even going back to Dallas. Jason Kidd had great vision, passing instincts, and was a great defensive point guard; and helped completely turn the Nets around in 2002. Ray Allen is the best shooter from his era and I think would be even better in today's NBA, with the heavy emphasis on 3's.

I think Kidd was the best player but in today's NBA I might go with Nash or Ray.

[Dr Spaceman]

Nash to me is a clear level above the other two in his best seasons. I don’t think it’s close enough for a meaningful comparison.

Between the other two I think I’d take Kidd, his dynamism off the dribble puts him near Allen but his defensive impact as a guard was tremendous.

[Amare_1_Knicks]

I’d likely take Nash and make him the centerpiece of my offense and bank on finding defensive players to hide him/compensate for his weakness on that end. He could have been even better than he was in the mid 2000’s if he was more aggressive offensively, because the skill was certainly there. His combination of scoring/shooting/passing all at elite levels puts him at the top for me.

[Duke4life831]

Kidd was the better 2 way PG over Nash. But Nash is right there with Stockton for me as the most efficient PGs to ever play the game. I just think Nash's elite efficiency on offense makes up for the defense, so give me Nash. Ray is an all time great shooter, I just dont think he had the same impact on teams as Nash and Kidd did.

[NY 567]

Steve Nash is a different class of player than Ray Allen or Jason Kidd. Allen was a better defender, and Kidd had more facets to his game, specifically his rebounding and defense, but Steve Nash is legitimately a top 5 offensive player of all time, and those two being more well rounded doesn't close that gap.

[canada_dry]

Nash. For reasons listed above. The guy was so good offensively that he had a more positive impact than even a great all around pg like kidd.

Allen is not quite in the discussion.

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[homecourtloss]

For overall impact, I’d have to lean towards NJN Kidd.

Nash was an offensive savant, and I wish he had shot more, but he was also a liability defensively.

Kidd’s impact in NJ was tremendous. Look at what they were when he was off court.

Kidd
Nash slightly behind
Ray

[Doctor MJ]

Kidd’s impact in NJ was tremendous. Look at what they were when he was off court.

The Nets in Kidd's MVP candidacy year were actually better off the court than the Suns were without Nash in either of Nash's MVP years.

Some folks want to give the nod to Kidd based on 2-way impact because Kidd was better on defense, but Nash's offense was so far ahead of Kidd's it more than makes up the differences.

You can of course still argue for Kidd based on longevity, because Nash was kept from immediate impact...by Kidd.

[JLei]

Kidd’s impact in NJ was tremendous. Look at what they were when he was off court.

The Nets in Kidd's MVP candidacy year were actually better off the court than the Suns were without Nash in either of Nash's MVP years.

Some folks want to give the nod to Kidd based on 2-way impact because Kidd was better on defense, but Nash's offense was so far ahead of Kidd's it more than makes up the differences.

You can of course still argue for Kidd based on longevity, because Nash was kept from immediate impact...by Kidd.

Most people have Kidd's peak wrong anyways. He peaked around 05-07 playing with Vince. He became a pretty/ very competent shooter by then but still with dynamism of the other parts of his game with his defense about 90-95% of the way there (worse against small guards due to slight loss in lateral quickness). The Kidd that showed up in 2007 playoffs was the best iteration of him IMO. I remember him absolutely destroying my Raptors. 14-10-13 2stls and 3 3's a game.

I will say that I would have liked to see him play with some better offensive talent throughout his career. His offensive on-off was always impressive even though his teams peaked at just ok when he was on the court.

[DirtyDez]

Doesn’t Kidd vs Nash arguments on here always come down to which you value more between elite shooting/efficiency vs elite defense?

[uberhikari]

I'm sorry, but I can't take Nash. He wasn't just a terrible defender, he was one of the worst defenders of all time. He was an absolute negative.

[Doctor MJ]

Kidd’s impact in NJ was tremendous. Look at what they were when he was off court.

The Nets in Kidd's MVP candidacy year were actually better off the court than the Suns were without Nash in either of Nash's MVP years.

Some folks want to give the nod to Kidd based on 2-way impact because Kidd was better on defense, but Nash's offense was so far ahead of Kidd's it more than makes up the differences.

You can of course still argue for Kidd based on longevity, because Nash was kept from immediate impact...by Kidd.

Most people have Kidd's peak wrong anyways. He peaked around 05-07 playing with Vince. He became a pretty/ very competent shooter by then but still with dynamism of the other parts of his game with his defense about 90-95% of the way there (worse against small guards due to slight loss in lateral quickness). The Kidd that showed up in 2007 playoffs was the best iteration of him IMO. I remember him absolutely destroying my Raptors. 14-10-13 2stls and 3 3's a game.

I will say that I would have liked to see him play with some better offensive talent throughout his career. His offensive on-off was always impressive even though his teams peaked at just ok when he was on the court.

Thing is, if you look at Phoenix during and after Kidd, it's all basically the same flaming mediocrity of an offense. Replace Kidd with Marbury? Not a big difference on offense. And then Nash comes in, the offense gets vastly better and achieves what could reasonably be called the GOAT offensive dynasty. So dominant were that even when ownership refused to pay Johnson and Stoudemire got hurt, the team still had an elite offense based around the point guard and Marion...and Marion was largely the same player he'd been with Marbury and Kidd (at least in Kidd's last year there).

Now context is a thing. The gap between Nash and Kidd on offense isn't simply the difference between the two teams. But I do think there's a false connection between Nash and Kidd on offense simply because they were both pass-first point guards who were great passers. But they didn't play the same particularly in the half-court in part because, well, nobody plays like Nash. He plays a style that would generally be a high risk/reward game that would burn most other players. Kidd was a quick thinker so it's worth asking what he could have done in Nash's context...but the SSOL context was the context that Nash created. D'Antoni encouraged it, but that offense largely amounted to Nash making decisions for everyone else on the court, and the way he did that is just not the same as other players.

[1993Playoffs]

IMO Nash is very overrated, god awful defender. Leader of a gimmick style. Meh

[Doctor MJ]

Doesn’t Kidd vs Nash arguments on here always come down to which you value more between elite shooting/efficiency vs elite defense?

Well Nash was the most effective offensive player in the league and Kidd was nothing anything close to that on defense so I'd say it's not so much a matter which you value more, and more about recognizing that one of these "elites" just isn't like the other.

[Doctor MJ]

Leader of a gimmick style. Meh

It's so disheartening that that meme still exists on this forum. It was wrong back in 2005, but I understood why so many people didn't understand. Now though, in 2018, we exist in the "pace and space" era, and both of those concepts come directly out of the SSOL Suns.

I mean for god's sake, back then people thought you couldn't win a title playing "that fast" or "shooting that many 3's", but by today's standards they didn't shoot enough 3's and only play at an average pace. No one should still be confused about this, let alone people on the PC board.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm sorry, but I can't take Nash. He wasn't just a terrible defender, he was one of the worst defenders of all time. He was an absolute negative.

Not actually true. He was a weak one-on-one defender who would be better exploited by opposing offenses in today's game, but if you think you saw him be one of the most negatively impactful defenders of all-time when he played, then you don't know how to actually judge such things. Nash knew how to play his role virtually without error and made high IQ plays on both sides of the ball, as a result, the Suns really didn't get burned that badly by Nash relative to what most other team's dealt with in their point guards.

Again: Things might be different today, but this meme comes out of that era, and it's just not a correct assessment of his actual impact.

[dhsilv2]

I'm sorry, but I can't take Nash. He wasn't just a terrible defender, he was one of the worst defenders of all time. He was an absolute negative.

Not actually true. He was a weak one-on-one defender who would be better exploited by opposing offenses in today's game, but if you think you saw him be one of the most negatively impactful defenders of all-time when he played, then you don't know how to actually judge such things. Nash knew how to play his role virtually without error and made high IQ plays on both sides of the ball, as a result, the Suns really didn't get burned that badly by Nash relative to what most other team's dealt with in their point guards.

Again: Things might be different today, but this meme comes out of that era, and it's just not a correct assessment of his actual impact.

I agree with this to a degree. Nash for example took a lot of charges (though 15 in a year is a huge number) and I think in general he was very good at rotating. Anyway, that said the 97-14 defensive RAPM has him ranked 1138 and no player below him had more minutes. Now there are 510 guys below him, but minutes are a factor here. Of guys with super star minutes, he's certainly in the bottom 10-15% of defenders.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm sorry, but I can't take Nash. He wasn't just a terrible defender, he was one of the worst defenders of all time. He was an absolute negative.

Not actually true. He was a weak one-on-one defender who would be better exploited by opposing offenses in today's game, but if you think you saw him be one of the most negatively impactful defenders of all-time when he played, then you don't know how to actually judge such things. Nash knew how to play his role virtually without error and made high IQ plays on both sides of the ball, as a result, the Suns really didn't get burned that badly by Nash relative to what most other team's dealt with in their point guards.

Again: Things might be different today, but this meme comes out of that era, and it's just not a correct assessment of his actual impact.

I agree with this to a degree. Nash for example took a lot of charges (though 15 in a year is a huge number) and I think in general he was very good at rotating. Anyway, that said the 97-14 defensive RAPM has him ranked 1138 and no player below him had more minutes. Now there are 510 guys below him, but minutes are a factor here. Of guys with super star minutes, he's certainly in the bottom 10-15% of defenders.

I don't think it's justified to try to compare Nash as a defender only against other guys who played superstar minutes. Nash was a below average defender who happened to be the best offensive player of his generation. Of course he's going to play more than most other guys worse a defense than he is, and of course of the guys who play big minutes, most will need to be better defenders than Nash, because almost all of them are much worse on offense.

If we go by those spreadsheet and interpreted them literally, it would indicate that Nash contributed 5-6 times as much positive impact on offense as he did negative impact on defense. This doesn't mean we ignore the negative, but people who focus on defense when his defensive impact was basically negligible compared to the offense are clearly focusing on the wrong thing. It's a bit like insisting on evaluating Eddie Vedder by his ukulele skills when considering him as a singer.

By contrast, using the same metric, Melo's positive offensive impact is only 1.5 as big as his negative defensive impact, which has everything to do why he's not in the Top 100 of that list, and Amare's defense basically cancels out his offense. There are players where a one-to-one ratio of offense & defense weight makes sense, but those who apply such thinking to Nash have never put in the effort to even begin to know when they can use it and when they can't, and yet they have consistently made claims that Nash was just about the worst defender in history.

To state the obvious: It's frustrating to deal with these people and I lack the patience I used to. 13 years ago I could believe that they might learn a thing, but the answers have been around for forever now. Those who remain ignorant do so because to do otherwise would mean owning up to just how flawed their thought process is, and how silly they should feel.

[uberhikari]

Not actually true. He was a weak one-on-one defender who would be better exploited by opposing offenses in today's game, but if you think you saw him be one of the most negatively impactful defenders of all-time when he played, then you don't know how to actually judge such things. Nash knew how to play his role virtually without error and made high IQ plays on both sides of the ball, as a result, the Suns really didn't get burned that badly by Nash relative to what most other team's dealt with in their point guards.

Again: Things might be different today, but this meme comes out of that era, and it's just not a correct assessment of his actual impact.

I agree with this to a degree. Nash for example took a lot of charges (though 15 in a year is a huge number) and I think in general he was very good at rotating. Anyway, that said the 97-14 defensive RAPM has him ranked 1138 and no player below him had more minutes. Now there are 510 guys below him, but minutes are a factor here. Of guys with super star minutes, he's certainly in the bottom 10-15% of defenders.

I don't think it's justified to try to compare Nash as a defender only against other guys who played superstar minutes. Nash was a below average defender who happened to be the best offensive player of his generation. Of course he's going to play more than most other guys worse a defense than he is, and of course of the guys who play big minutes, most will need to be better defenders than Nash, because almost all of them are much worse on offense.

If we go by those spreadsheet and interpreted them literally, it would indicate that Nash contributed 5-6 times as much positive impact on offense as he did negative impact on defense. This doesn't mean we ignore the negative, but people who focus on defense when his defensive impact was basically negligible compared to the offense are clearly focusing on the wrong thing. It's a bit like insisting on evaluating Eddie Vedder by his ukulele skills when considering him as a singer.

By contrast, using the same metric, Melo's positive offensive impact is only 1.5 as big as his negative defensive impact, which has everything to do why he's not in the Top 100 of that list, and Amare's defense basically cancels out his offense. There are players where a one-to-one ratio of offense & defense weight makes sense, but those who apply such thinking to Nash have never put in the effort to even begin to know when they can use it and when they can't, and yet they have consistently made claims that Nash was just about the worst defender in history.

To state the obvious: It's frustrating to deal with these people and I lack the patience I used to. 13 years ago I could believe that they might learn a thing, but the answers have been around for forever now. Those who remain ignorant do so because to do otherwise would mean owning up to just how flawed their thought process is, and how silly they should feel.

Baiting, derailing, trolling, personal attacks
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