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Dallas Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle wasn't coaching the team when Steve Nash made the move to the Phoenix Suns, but he still remembers the drastic change he had in that team, revolutionizing what it meant to have an efficient NBA offense after many years of individual dominance.
Only three days away from his induction into the Hall of Fame, Carlisle recalled how Nash's offensive style was ahead of his day, thriving under Mike D'Antoni's seven-seconds-or-less style of offense.
“In 2004-2005 when (Steve) Nash went to Phoenix and that team started basically playing an early version of today’s game, Steve was the engine that drove that team,” said Carlisle, according to Dwain Price of Mavs.com. “His jump-shooting and play-making and passing was Harlem Globetrotter-esque.”
Steve Nash was viewed as a pure-shooting point guard with superior playmaking skills during his time with the Mavs, but he emerged as the prime standard of floor generals in the league after his first season with Phoenix in 2004-05. He led the league in assists with 11.5 per game that season, only to do it again for the next two, and once again from 2009-11, tying fellow Hall of Fame classmate Jason Kidd with five assist titles.
The 6-foot-3 point man had an innate ability to get around defenders without devastating speed, but rather using a crafty handle that resembled those used by the famed Harlem Globetrotters.
The difference for Nash was that no other assist leader was as deadly from distance as he was, capable of threading the needle through the narrowest spaces, but also burn NBA defenses with his ability to shoot the three at the blink of an eye.
Nash was a deadly 3-point shooter, and showed so by shooting 40 percent from deep or more through 11 straight seasons — a testament to his well-rounded prowess as a long-range threat as much as his well known gift for passing as one of the NBA's dime maestros of the turn of the century.
