The high octane “seven seconds or less” Phoenix offense led by Steve Nash and Amare Stoudamire in Phoenix was the offspring of the Mavericks run and gun movement in the early 2000s led by none other than Nash as well.
The two-time MVP might have been the captain of the Dallas offense alongside Dirk Nowitzki, but the proprietor of the scheme was former Mavericks head coach Don Nelson. If not for him, we might not have experienced the offensive greatness of the Hall of Fame point guard.
According to Kurt Helin of Yahoo! Sports, Nash told Marc Stein of the New York Times via email how Nelson influenced his greatness.
Nash unexpectedly responded,
“Nellie was really hard on me, but he also really believed in me,” Steve Nash said in a phone interview the other day. “He had more belief in me than I did.
“It was him imploring me to score. And that was a fundamental building block for me, because once I balanced the playmaking with the scoring, it opened up everything for me and my teammates.
“My nature is just to pass, pass, pass — to give. Nellie finally got it in my head that that was B.S. — that you’re hurting us by doing that. He challenged me, without exactly saying it this way, to realize I was being selfish.”
It is understandable that scoring is a fundamental part of basketball, but it is hard to imagine a player of Nash’s caliber hurting a team with passing. Although we have to thank Nellie for pushing Nash to display his phenomenal scoring skills, we will be forever grateful or we might have never experienced his Hall of Fame greatness.
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