Phoenix, June 3, 2006
Game 6, Western Conference Finals
Dallas 102, Phoenix 93
“Steve? You got anything?” (asked Phoenix coach Mike D’Antoni)
The question hung in the air in a hushed locker room in US Airways Center. A dozen pairs of eyes swiveled toward Nash, who was standing in front of his corner locker. It looked for a moment like he was going to say something, but then you saw the blink of the eyes, the purse of the lips, and, finally, the quick shake of the head. He was crying, and, if he had a platitude to offer, he couldn’t get it out. I looked over at one of the Suns’ assistants, Alvin Gentry, who, having seen the pain and sadness in Nash, began tearing up himself. Then Nash walked toward D’Antoni and his teammates gathered around. They put their hands together and then it was time for the same ritual that ended every practice and every game. “SUNS!” Marion said. “ONE-TWO-THREE…” and everyone shouted “SUNS!”
- Jack McCallum, from “:07 Seconds or Less, My Season on the Bench with the Runnin’ and Gunnin’ PHOENIX SUNS”
This happens to be one of my favorite sports books of all time. In “:07 Seconds or Less” Jack McCallum chronicled one of the most fascinating seasons any team has had in the history of the NBA. The 2005-2006 Phoenix Suns were supposed to be a disappointment. Steve Nash and the Suns caught the entire league by surprise the previous season; with him proving that he can run a team to perfection, winning the league MVP in the process, and the Suns dazzling the world with their fluid, eye-candy brand of basketball en route to the best record in the NBA. They followed this with an ill-fated offseason where they lost starting shooting guard Joe Johnson to free agency and star power forward Amar’e Stoudemire to a season-ending microfracture surgery. They were headed for a disaster, destined to become quirky, fluky one-hit wonders.
But the 2005-2006 Phoenix Suns did not disappoint – they impossibly surprised the NBA for a second-straight season. Steve Nash led a severely-undersized, ragtag group of NBA castoffs to a division title and a memorable playoff run. The fact that he won his second straight MVP award wasn’t the most impressive part; it was that he turned mediocre players – James Jones, Eddie House, and perennial underachiever Tim Thomas – into valuable contributors. They had 6’8 Boris Diaw, 6’7 Shawn Marion, and 6’8 Tim Thomas take turns playing center. Their highest scorer, Marion (21.8), was a limited offensive player for whom they never ran plays. They got as far as the Western Conference Finals.
The scene of a dejected Steve Nash limping away from their team huddle to dip into a tub of ice – “a procedure he follows religiously to reduce the swelling in chronically injured areas” – after their season-ending loss to the Dallas Mavericks is the one I am still left with, years after reading Jack McCallum’s book. It is an image befitting a superstar of Nash’s tragic cachet – the defeated, desperate need to deaden the pain.
Last year on this blog, I wrote a piece in praise of Dirk Nowitzki, not for his Finals-MVP-worthy performance to finally win the elusive NBA title, but for how he handled all the losing he experienced earlier in his career. He was a modern-day Sisyphean hero: his constant losing didn’t stop him from trying over and over again; it made his efforts more singular and focused. He already lost, failed, and got hurt so many times that he became almost immune to pain. And it certainly deadened his fear of failure. You only fear what is unknown and Nowitzki had stared failure in the eyes more times than he cared to think. This was the same thing that happened to LeBron James this past postseason. I saw the first signs when he scored 45 points on 75% shooting to destroy the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals and did so with a cold, emotionless precision only found in battle-scarred assassins. After the game, he famously declared, “I will not regret game 7”. It was Nowitzki all over again: the result doesn’t matter anymore – losing doesn’t matter anymore – the only thing that matters is the effort.
Yet, as high-profile as their past failures were (and as universally-blamed for those failures as they were), Nowitzki and James will not ever approach the sheer star-crossed grandiosity of Nash’s failures.
The Suns’ loss in 2006 was only the beginning. The following season, with Stoudemire back in the fold, the Suns rampaged their way to 62 wins and another division title. And then, they met their nemesis, The San Antonio Spurs, in the Western Conference Finals. In the 4th quarter of a still tight game 1, Nash broke his nose as he collided with Spurs guard Tony Parker. With the Suns training staff unable to stop the bleeding, Nash was forced to miss a critical stretch. Minus the man that made their offense work, the Suns couldn’t pull off the win.
In game 4 of the same series, with the Suns down 1-2 and down 8 points in the 4th quarter, Nash singlehandedly put his team back with a dazzling array of drives and dishes to teammates. With their win ensured, the Spurs’ Robert Horry body-checked Nash who went tumbling onto the floor, his teammates on the bench reacting accordingly to their fallen leader who was already nursing a broken nose, bolted out of their seats. Stoudemire and Diaw, who left the bench to check on their captain, were suspended in the pivotal game 5, which they lost along with the series.
The next season, against the same Spurs team, Tim Duncan – a career 17% three point shooter – hit a three point shot to send a game that the Suns had otherwise dominated into a second overtime, where the Spurs eventually won the game. That heartbreaking loss proved to be too tough to recover from, as the Suns went on to lose that series as well.
Two years later, they were back in the Conference Finals, against a heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers. They got there after sweeping their bullies, the Spurs, in which Steve Nash closed out the final minutes of game 4 with 12 points, six stitches, and one open eye. In game 5 of the Lakers series, with the series tied 2-2, Kobe Bryant – a career 33% three point shooter (15% better than Duncan) – airballed a possible game-winning three to a right-place-at-the-right-time Ron Artest for the actual game-winning putback. The Suns’ bad luck really had a sick sense of humor.
In the ensuing offseason, the Suns’ front-office inexplicably dismantled a team that once again surprised the NBA, once again defied the odds, and was 2 wins away from the NBA Finals. Nash’s Suns were never the same since.
When Nash failed, he failed epically – with blood, bruises, and cruel twists of fate. To narrate all his playoff losses is to say nothing of all his offseason losses (losing Johnson, Marion, Stoudemire, Raja Bell, Jason Richardson, and Goran Dragic and failing to hold on to Rajon Rondo and Rudy Fernandez in the draft) courtesy of their owner Robert Sarver, who was always more interested in not paying the luxury tax over fielding a competitive team. Jack McCallum wasn’t in the Suns locker room in 2007, 2008, and 2010, so there is no book to tell us how Nash reacted in those losses – losses that were far worse than those chronicled in the book. But I still somehow pictured him alone in that tub of ice, staring emptily into nothing as his nerves slowly froze to numbness.
Because the Nash-era Suns came at a time when my New York Knicks were really really bad, they became my adopted favorite team. I liked them for the same reasons lots of people liked them – for their “Seven Seconds or Less” offense that revolutionized the NBA, for Stoudemire’s vicious dunks, for Marion’s fastbreak sprints, for Barbosa’s lightning-quickness, and for Nash’s pinpoint passing and creative drives. But the more they lost; the more I liked them. And because the team kept changing around him, my fondness became increasingly exclusive to Steve Nash.
There was always something beautifully tragic about Steve Nash. He looks frail but he has otherworldly skills that betray his unimpressive physical stature. His teams were always flawed; they rarely played any defense and he never played with anyone who could consistently create his own shot. He was always surrounded by high-flying athletes and thoroughbreds, yet they always depended on him – all 6’3 and 195 pounds of him – to get them their shots.
Unlike Nowitzki, Nash could make the Sisyphean look poetic. When he played with that broken nose in 2007 in vain, it looked brave and sad at the same time. In 2010, when he played an amazing final minutes with his right-eye stitched and almost swollen shut to sweep the Spurs, it was breathtaking; the way he swished three-pointers, hit open teammates, and drove the lane with a defiant carelessness. You could see it in his body language: he just didn’t care anymore. It was as if closing one eye allowed him to not see the defense. He’s been bloodied, he’s been knocked down, he’s been hurt, he’s been heartbroken – at some point you will stop feeling anything. At some point it will only be about you and the world will no longer matter.
Nash’s quest for an NBA championship will continue with the Lakers at 38 years of age. I’d like to believe that he doesn’t really care about winning the championship so much as having the chance to once again compete for it. When Nowitzki won it last year, I was left with Nash as my lone Sisyphean hero. But the boulder that he’s been shouldering in Phoenix has crumbled and he needs his new challenge. With Kobe’s aching knees, the Lakers’ shallow bench, and Mike Brown’s legendary coaching ineptitude, I really wish that the burden remains heavy, remains impossible. All sports fans are selfish, but perhaps in this case, I am perversely so. I need Steve Nash to keep struggling because I still need inspiration in losing. I need to keep seeing that passion can exist in the face of hopelessness. And Steve Nash is the only one left who can still show me that this is possible.
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