Steve Nash

• 1. Introduction

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  Steve Nash told his mother something remarkable in grade eight: that one day he would play in the NBA and become a star. He had not yet played organized basketball for long. He had grown up in Victoria, British Columbia, kicking soccer balls and playing ice hockey with his younger brother Martin, and he did not pick up a basketball seriously until he was 12 or 13 years old. The kid who made that prediction would go on to win the NBA's Most Valuable Player award twice, lead the league in assists for five separate seasons, and become the first Canadian ever to earn the honour.

  Nash was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 7th of February 1974, to a Welsh mother and an English father whose own career took the family across the world before they settled in Victoria. His neighbours growing up included future NHL stars Russ and Geoff Courtnall, who used to babysit him. His father coached soccer. None of it pointed obviously to an NBA career.

  What follows is the story of how a multi-sport kid from British Columbia, passed over by every major university program and booed by the home crowd on draft night, became one of the most decorated point guards the sport has ever seen, a two-time MVP who restructured how an entire era thought about offensive basketball.

• 2. Overlooked and Underestimated

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  Nash's high school coach, Ian Hyde-Lay, sent letters of inquiry and highlight reels to more than 30 American universities without receiving a single offer. Only one person bit: Santa Clara coach Dick Davey, who requested video footage and then watched Nash play in person. Davey would later recall that he "was nervous as hell just hoping that no one else would see him," and that it "didn't take a Nobel Prize winner" to recognize the talent on display. Davey also told Nash, directly, that he was "the worst defensive player" he had ever seen. It was an honest assessment from a man who still gave him a scholarship.

  At Santa Clara, Nash arrived for the 1992-93 season in a program that had not reached the NCAA tournament in five years. He changed that immediately, leading the Broncos to a West Coast Conference title and an upset over the second-seeded Arizona in the first round of the 1993 tournament. He sank six straight free throws in the final 30 seconds to seal it. Santa Clara lost in the next round, but the season set a tone.

  By his senior year of 1995-96, Nash was attracting national media attention for the first time. He had spent the previous summer working out with established NBA players Jason Kidd and Gary Payton, and it showed. Santa Clara again won the WCC title, Nash was named Conference Player of the Year for the second straight time, the first Bronco to repeat since Kurt Rambis, and he scored 28 points to lead the No. 10 seed past No. 7 seed Maryland in the NCAA tournament's first round. He finished his college career as Santa Clara's all-time leader in assists (510), and his .862 free throw percentage over four years hinted at the shooting precision that would define his NBA life. In September 2006, Santa Clara retired his jersey, making him the first student-athlete in the school's history to receive that honour.

• 3. Phoenix, Dallas, and Finding His Game

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  On draft night in 1996, when the Phoenix Suns took Nash 15th overall, the home crowd booed. Nash had not played in a major college conference, and most fans had never heard of him. A major influence behind the pick was assistant coach Donnie Nelson, who had known Nash since high school through a mutual connection to Ken Shields. During Nash's first two seasons, he played a supporting role behind veteran point guards Kevin Johnson, Sam Cassell, and then Jason Kidd. His minutes were limited, and his impact was modest.

  After the 1998 draft, Nelson, now working as assistant general manager under his father Don Nelson in Dallas, convinced the Mavericks to acquire Nash from Phoenix. The trade sent Nash to Dallas in exchange for Martin Müürsepp, Bubba Wells, the draft rights to Pat Garrity, and a first-round pick that the Suns would later use to draft Shawn Marion. In the lockout-shortened season that followed, Nash started all 40 games he played and averaged 5.5 assists per game for a 19-31 Mavericks team that missed the playoffs.

  The turnaround arrived quickly. By the 2000-01 season, Nash was averaging 15.6 points and 7.3 assists, directing an offense alongside Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Finley, with new owner Mark Cuban bringing energy and resources to the franchise. Dallas made the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. Nash posted career highs of 17.9 points and 7.7 assists the following season and was named to the All-Star Game for the first time. The "Big Three" of Nash, Nowitzki, and Finley became a Dallas fixture, and in 2002-03 they led the Mavericks through a 14-game winning streak at the start of the season all the way to the Western Conference Finals, where they lost to the San Antonio Spurs four games to two.

  When Nash became a free agent after 2003-04, Dallas owner Mark Cuban offered him a four-year deal worth roughly $9 million per year. The Suns offered a six-year, $63 million contract. Nash went back to Cuban to see if he would match it. Cuban declined. On a later appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, Cuban would say out loud: "you know Steve's a great guy and I love him to death, but why couldn't he play like an MVP for us?"

• 4. The MVP Years

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  Nash returned to Phoenix for the 2004-05 season and joined a Suns team with emerging young players in Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, and Amar'e Stoudemire. The season before he arrived, Phoenix had gone 29-53. On the 21st of November 2004, early in Nash's first season back, he put up 22 points, 18 assists, and 4 steals in a 122-111 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. Head coach Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo system fit Nash perfectly, and the Suns finished with an NBA-best 62-20 record, their highest points-per-game average in a decade.

  Nash averaged 11.5 assists per game that season while making 50.2% of his field goals and 43.1% of his three-pointers. He edged Shaquille O'Neal to win the MVP award, becoming the first Canadian to earn the honour and only the third point guard ever named MVP, joining Magic Johnson and Bob Cousy. In the playoffs, Phoenix swept Memphis before beating Dallas 4-2 in the second round, then fell to the San Antonio Spurs in the conference finals.

  The next season, Stoudemire suffered a serious knee injury and Johnson was traded away. Phoenix was not expected to repeat. Nash helped the Suns compile a 54-28 record anyway. On the 2nd of January 2006, he recorded 28 points, 5 rebounds, and 22 assists in a 140-133 triple-overtime loss to the New York Knicks. He led the league with 10.5 assists per game and shot a league-leading .921 from the free throw line, and the MVP award came to him a second time. He had now set career highs in points (18.8), rebounds (4.2), field goal percentage (.512), and free throw percentage.

  In 2006-07, Nash averaged 18.6 points and a career-high 11.6 assists per game, becoming the first player since Magic Johnson to average 18 points and 11 assists per game in a regular season. He received 129 first-place votes from the panel of 129 media members voting for the All-NBA First Team. The MVP, however, narrowly went to Dirk Nowitzki: 83 first-place votes to Nash's 44. Hall of Famer Bill Russell later commented on Nash's two MVP seasons, saying the guys liked playing with him because "he creates an atmosphere where they win games."

• 5. The 50-40-90 Standard

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  In the 2005-06 season, Nash became the fourth player in NBA history to shoot 50% or better from the field, 40% from three-point range, and 90% from the free throw line in the same season, joining Larry Bird, Reggie Miller, and Mark Price in what the league calls the 50-40-90 club. Nash would repeat the feat three more times, in 2007-08, 2008-09, and 2009-10. No player in NBA history has achieved the threshold as many times as Nash.

  His career free throw percentage of 90.4% was formerly the best in NBA history before Stephen Curry surpassed it, and his career three-point shooting average of 42.8% ranked eighth-best in league history at the time he retired. He led the league in assists per game five times: 11.5 in 2004-05, 10.5 in 2005-06, 11.6 in 2006-07, 11.0 in 2009-10, and 11.4 in 2010-11. With Nash running the offense between 2005-06 and 2009-10, the Phoenix Suns led the entire NBA in field goal percentage every single season.

  In 2021, The Athletic ranked Nash the 38th greatest player in NBA history as part of the league's 75th Anniversary recognition. A 2009 survey by nba.com found that Nash received the highest ratings among the league's general managers for both best passer and best basketball IQ. On the 21st of April 2012, Nash passed Oscar Robertson for career assists in a game against the Denver Nuggets, cementing his place among the sport's most prolific distributors. Earlier, on the 8th of January 2013, he assisted on an Antawn Jamison jumper to become the fifth player in NBA history to reach 10,000 career assists.

• 6. Canada and the Olympics

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  Nash's relationship with Canadian basketball was complicated before it became celebrated. In the early 1990s, he was cut from the Canadian junior national team by head coach Ken Olynyk. At age 17, still finding his footing in the sport, he was the youngest member of Team Canada at the 1991 Summer Universiade, where the team won a silver medal.

  By 1999 he had become the team's anchor. At the Tournament of the Americas that year, Nash led Canada to a silver medal, qualifying the national team for the Olympics for the first time in 12 years. He was named tournament MVP. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Nash led Canada to win their round robin group, including an 83-75 upset over favoured Yugoslavia in which he scored 26 points with eight rebounds and eight assists. Canada was eliminated in the quarterfinals with a five-point loss to France, and Nash left the court in tears. He told reporters, "It hurts a lot. I feel like I let everybody down. We could have been in the championship game. We were good enough." He also offered a quieter hope: "Hopefully kids in Canada will be inspired to play. That's what I really hope."

  Nash again played for Canada at the 2004 FIBA Americas Olympic Qualifying Tournament in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he led the tournament in assists and was again named MVP. Canada finished fourth, missing the three available Olympic spots, and that marked Nash's last appearance for the national team. He was reportedly upset about the subsequent firing of head coach Jay Triano and said in December 2007 that he was not going to play for Canada anymore.

  He did not walk away from Canadian basketball entirely. On the 8th of May 2012, Nash became general manager of the Canadian senior national team. Three months later, he rehired Triano as head coach. Nash transitioned to a senior advisor role in March 2019. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2007 and invested into the order in 2016, and in 2010, at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, he became the first NBA player in Olympic history to carry the torch and light the Olympic cauldron.

• 7. Life Beyond Basketball

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  Nash founded the Steve Nash Foundation in 2001, which focuses its resources on communities in Arizona and British Columbia, funding projects for children affected by poverty, illness, abuse, or neglect. The foundation was given charitable status in 2004 and received the Steve Patterson Award for Excellence in Sports Philanthropy in 2008. Nash has also sponsored the Steve Nash Youth Basketball League in British Columbia, which grew to more than 10,000 participants.

  In a charity event Nash organized in September 2007, he and Yao Ming headlined a group of NBA players who travelled to China to play an exhibition game with the Chinese national basketball team. The event reportedly raised 2.5 million dollars for Chinese children in need. In May 2006, Time named Nash one of the 100 most influential people in the world; the accompanying write-up was authored by Charles Barkley, who lauded Nash for being, among other things, "just a nice guy" who had paid for a new pediatric cardiology ward in a Paraguayan hospital.

  Nash has been a co-owner of Vancouver Whitecaps FC of Major League Soccer since the club entered the league in 2011. He also co-directed the documentary Into the Wind, about Canadian athlete and activist Terry Fox, as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series, and at the 2003 NBA All-Star Game he wore a custom T-shirt reading "No war - Shoot for peace," a public stance against the Iraq War that drew criticism from some corners and support from others.