Steve Nash: "Players Shouldn't Be Judged On Titles"

[PosImpos]

I tend to agree with Nash. His team would have won the title without the ludicrous suspensions of Diaw and Stoudemire, or the fluke injury to Joe Johnson. How should those events, completely independent of Nash, affect the determination of Nash's abilities? Every TEAM gets some breaks that help win a title, or has some unlucky breaks that prevent them from doing so, independent of the quality of the players.


KG never gets traded to a decent team. Now he's a better player?

PJ Brown isn't bought out, signs with the C's, doesn't save game 7. Pierce, Ray, and KG are now worse?

Kobe was a different player last year than now?

Bynum is healthy all of 2 seasons ago, maybe the C's never win. Fluke circumstances, independent of all other players.

Exactly.  KG could very well have played his whole career in Minnie and been exactly the same player.  Same for Ray Allen and Seattle / Oklahoma City.

[drza44]

I tend to agree with Nash. His team would have won the title without the ludicrous suspensions of Diaw and Stoudemire, or the fluke injury to Joe Johnson. How should those events, completely independent of Nash, affect the determination of Nash's abilities? Every TEAM gets some breaks that help win a title, or has some unlucky breaks that prevent them from doing so, independent of the quality of the players.


KG never gets traded to a decent team. Now he's a better player?

PJ Brown isn't bought out, signs with the C's, doesn't save game 7. Pierce, Ray, and KG are now worse?

Kobe was a different player last year than now?

Bynum is healthy all of 2 seasons ago, maybe the C's never win. Fluke circumstances, independent of all other players.

I'm one that will (and have) argue until the end that a player who has never won a title can be as good as a player that has won several.  My thing is, though, that for that to be true the player must carry his team as far as is reasonably possible.  The problem is that it is difficult to quantitatively state what a team's ceiling is, but with all of the advances in stats that have come along recently we can at least make reasonable estimate.

And again, as far as this relates to Nash, IMO he's actually had teams with enough talent to win titles.  For the entire 2000s so far, Nash has had either prime Dirk or prime Amare on his team (with 1 year of Amare injury).  And he has almost always also had a borderline-All Star as a 3rd option with Finley, Marion, and then older Shaq.  With talented secondary options/role players as well.  A solid decade of teams of this caliber should generate at least ONE title if Nash were really an inner circle All-Time great. 

So no, titles aren't the be-all/end-all IMO.  On the other hand, if a player HASN'T won any titles I'd have to see a pretty compelling argument as to why not if I'm going to rank him alongside the other great champions of the sport. 

[Fan from VT]

I tend to agree with Nash. His team would have won the title without the ludicrous suspensions of Diaw and Stoudemire, or the fluke injury to Joe Johnson. How should those events, completely independent of Nash, affect the determination of Nash's abilities? Every TEAM gets some breaks that help win a title, or has some unlucky breaks that prevent them from doing so, independent of the quality of the players.


KG never gets traded to a decent team. Now he's a better player?

PJ Brown isn't bought out, signs with the C's, doesn't save game 7. Pierce, Ray, and KG are now worse?

Kobe was a different player last year than now?

Bynum is healthy all of 2 seasons ago, maybe the C's never win. Fluke circumstances, independent of all other players.

I'm one that will (and have) argue until the end that a player who has never won a title can be as good as a player that has won several.  My thing is, though, that for that to be true the player must carry his team as far as is reasonably possible.  The problem is that it is difficult to quantitatively state what a team's ceiling is, but with all of the advances in stats that have come along recently we can at least make reasonable estimate.

And again, as far as this relates to Nash, IMO he's actually had teams with enough talent to win titles.  For the entire 2000s so far, Nash has had either prime Dirk or prime Amare on his team (with 1 year of Amare injury).  And he has almost always also had a borderline-All Star as a 3rd option with Finley, Marion, and then older Shaq.  With talented secondary options/role players as well.  A solid decade of teams of this caliber should generate at least ONE title if Nash were really an inner circle All-Time great. 

So no, titles aren't the be-all/end-all IMO.  On the other hand, if a player HASN'T won any titles I'd have to see a pretty compelling argument as to why not if I'm going to rank him alongside the other great champions of the sport. 

Yeah, I'd agree with what you just said too. In my post I was addressing Nash's words and NOT what Nash's legacy is. I actually tend to think that Nash is a bit overrated overall, because I agree that he's had incredible teammates. I think most people erroneously give Nash credit for why his teammates are good. Nash is indeed very good, but his teammates help him as much as he does them.