When Steve Nash was selected as the fifteenth pick in a star-studded draft that included AI, Kobe and Ray Allen among others, he was booed by Suns fans simply because he was from an unknown college team. Today, I don't think there's a single Suns fan out there that isn't thankful that:
(a)they drafted him, but more importantly
(b)they signed him from the Mavs years later and
(c)they resigned him to another 2 years
It's difficult to appreciate the genius of Nash especially if you're not a Suns fan. His career stats are far from jaw-dropping and at the end of the day, there are no monster dunks or blocks and his defense has often been termed as non-existent.
The problem is that Nash made fans out of basketball followers in general as well as the cynics who deemed the NBA too boring and preferred college hoops instead.
In truth, the Phoenix run-and-gun/7-seconds-or-less system under D'Antoni worked because of Nash and not the other way round. It was basketball played like never before and it was basketball played with winning in mind.
And it reminded us that every once in a while, professional sport goes ...
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Article written by Rahil Devgan
Steve Nash: The steal of the 1996 Draft, Pick #15
March 18th, 2010 by Rahil Devgan Leave a reply »
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