Considering his past history, the brevity of Steve Nash’s season was not unexpected. Often the body resists the body’s own gravity. For Steve Nash, point guard extraordinaire, it was a war of contempt. The battlefield was littered with debris, there were mines everywhere he walked. The challenge wasn’t a mystery or some new theory. His durability during training camp was going to be the primary question that needed to be answered and only Steve Nash could answer that particular bell: would he be the same person on the first day of camp as he was on the last? In a similar way to hikers trying to outlast the vulgarities of Mt. Everest, Steve Nash understood the behemoth challenge awaiting his body. The effect on his mind? Well that was going to be something else altogether different.
Apr 4, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Steve Nash (10) during the game against the Dallas Mavericks at Staples Center. The Mavericks defeated the Lakers 107-95. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
If you listened to him talk these past few weeks you could hear in his voice a certain isolated wariness. It’s a human instinct when you have been crushed, when the body that used to bring you glory now just brings you cruelty. You make these bargains, you anticipate the worst thing to happen. So in this psychic way of self-protection, rarely did Steve Nash get ahead of himself. Those moments when he felt like himself were not enough for congratulations or even anticipation. He had not crossed some invisible hill, not yet. Just as easily as it started to feel good, it could all go sideways.
In San Diego, in his first game of the new season, he was similar to what Steve Nash was supposed to be. He played 20 minutes, he had 11 points on 50% shooting and 5 assists but that was just the half of it. He moved effortlessly around the court, his body seemed elastic again. Never an athletic player, he was always bouncy and masterful with the ball which he expressed that Monday night, almost as if he was an imitation of himself.
It is always a tricky calculus when you deal with the human nervous system and a historically fragile back. There are the emotional leftovers no one else would understand because very few have been put in this particular time warp. So great and then so injured. One day you feel competent and the next day it takes a turn for the worse. Which is what happened last week. It led to a Monday meeting with Nash, his agent Bill Duffy and Mitch Kupchak.
It’s a horrible way for it to end, really it is. It seals the door shut on that iconic 1996 draft. Only Kobe Bryant is left. Everyone else either aged, were injured, were unwanted or just ended their career. Years from now, the Steve Nash years will encompass the Dallas Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns and it will end there. Outside of the Lakers world, very few will connect him to what happened here, none of which was his fault, this matrix of bad luck, terrible decisions and well, life not being fair.
After the Steve Nash announcement which was a joint statement from both he and the Lakers, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, said: “I’m crushed. I really believed that Steve, based on karma or whatever you want to call it, would go out and have a good year and the basketball gods would shine upon him and get him a few good nights, help his team win a few times, just so he can feel it.”
In the carefully worded statement the word ‘retirement’ was never used. “Unfortunately my recent setback makes performing at full capacity difficult. I will continue to support my team during this period of rest and will focus on long-term health.”
Apr 1, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Steve Nash (10) shoots against the Portland Trail Blazers during the second half of the game at Staples Center. Trail Blazers won 124-112. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
His ‘support my team’ reference as well as ‘this period of rest’ are not the white flag of surrender that Lakers fans were hoping for.
Steve Nash is on the Lakers roster until the Lakers don’t want him on their roster. Why? Retirement precludes the team from receiving a Disabled Player’s Exception. The Exception, if granted (a physician determines he cannot play before June 15th), allows the Lakers to sign a free agent for 50% of the disabled player’s salary which in Steve Nash’s case would be $4.9 million dollars. The Lakers can also acquire a player off of waivers or trade for a player that fits into those salary constructs. Allowing Steve Nash to remain on the roster gives the Lakers flexibility.
It gives Steve Nash something too, if he is interested. It was what Steve Kerr talked about but only in the passive. He can have a few good nights just so he can feel it. But as someone totally different, close but not close, a beholder to the dream that fate destroyed.