Steve Nash Letter Doesn’t Heal The Wound

In this season of zero wins and no Steve Nash, the All-Star point guard has been forgotten. Sports is heartless in this particular way: the world turns. Time goes on, you flip the page. The Lakers transitioned to Jeremy Lin so it was easy to forget the long suffering Steve Nash B movie melodrama with the awful but predictable ending. Truthfully, we got over Steve Nash ever since he waved the surrender flag nearly two weeks ago. Or perhaps, we were just used to his invisibility.

Mar 21, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Steve Nash (10) reacts to a foul call during the second half of the game against the Washington Wizards at Staples Center. Wizards won 117-107. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

All of us pride independence, doing what we want to do when we want to do it. This was taken from Steve Nash, cruelly ripped out of his hands or perhaps carved from his back. He was denied the privilege of a farewell tour and going out the way he wanted to. He was forced into leaving basketball behind. Since then, Steve Nash has been a ghost. He has been talked of, he has been missed. But he has not been seen nor heard from until last night when he penned a letter on his Facebook page explaining exactly what happened to him.

In true Steve Nash fashion, the letter was direct, succinct, forthright and honest. It was the last chapter in his Los Angeles Lakers book. Perhaps it was cathartic for him to write about his Lakers catastrophe but reading it was not an aha moment or experience.

Because what happened to Steve Nash and his body was not just a personal blow to him. It was not just the low mark in his career. It was not a dream that went unfilled. While the context may have circled the drain in the Steve Nash career window, the consequences were devastating.

The Lakers are still paying for the Steve Nash dream. It cost them three years, close to fifty wins, millions of dollars, two coaches, and a marathon of misery and bad basketball.

An athlete’s career always hovers around randomness. At any point in time it can disappear. The NBA is filled with unfair arcs. Sam Bowie. Penny Hardaway. Brandon Roy. Antonio McDyess. Grant Hill. Bill Walton. Yao Ming. Tracy McGrady. Gifted players whose careers couldn’t overcome the fragility of their bodies only illustrates the compromise professional athletes make. What makes professional athletes unique is that they accept physical stress, injury and pain. They hope for glory, triumph and relevance. They pray they do not drown. Sometimes it is a bargain that just cannot be met.

And so Steve Nash is not to blame for what happened to him. In his letter, as he details a career of back ailments, he writes he doesn’t want “sympathy.” Okay. Fine. But there is a larger view outside of Steve Nash that is part of the Steve Nash narrative only because of the way the world works.

Nothing happens in isolation. One person affects another person which affects another person and this is what they mean when they utter the term six degrees of separation. We are all connected to each other by six other people.

Steve Nash got hurt. So then Kobe Bryant had to do more. Kobe doing more alienated Dwight Howard who did less. Kobe doing more tore his Achilles. Dwight was not good enough to take up the slack. The Lakers waved the towel. They signed marginal players. They won 27 games. They fired a coach. They earned a high draft pick. They returned marginal players. Kobe came back. But Steve Nash was hurt again. Their lottery pick broke his leg.

This is how Steve Nash’s Lakers days will be remembered, in the context of what happened to him and what happened to everyone else.

It wasn’t just the fact that the Lakers traded for a 38 year old player, that they gave him $9 million dollars a year, that they depended upon him to deliver, that they hired one coach (Mike D’antoni) instead of another coach (Phil Jackson) to appease him. It was what they gave up. The 4 draft picks they had to surrender was a death blow to the organization and one they will pay for in the upcoming years. (They also gave Phoenix $3 million dollars).

An organization needs to replenish their talent by developing younger talent. In a cruel bit of irony, the Lakers may suffer the worst of all possible outcomes this year, denied their lottery pick because of… who else? Steve Nash.

Jan 20, 2013; Toronto, ON, Canada; Los Angeles Lakers point guard Steve Nash (10) talks to guard Kobe Bryant (24) against the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

He writes in his letter that some Lakers fans are “disappointed.” Disappointed? That’s hardly accurate. The Lakers fans are disappointed because they haven’t won a game. They are disappointed Nick Young will be out another three weeks. They are disappointed that Julius Randle broke his leg. They are not disappointed about Steve Nash. They are pissed at the Steve Nash fiasco.

Too harsh? Well perhaps you’ve never been robbed. Perhaps you’ve never come home to discover the window busted out and all of your possessions gone, things you have had for years. There is no replacing history. That is what this feels like.

Steve Nash was broken; we were robbed. Phoenix, who took us to the cleaners, were the beneficiary. Since trading Steve Nash they have won 76 games without him. Since trading for Steve Nash the Lakers have won 30 games with him. He has played in 65 games. Or to put it another way. He has not played in 104 games.

In his letter, he says something that should be a cautionary tale for every general manager. He wrote, “Once you’re asked to accelerate or decelerate with Steph Curry and Kyrie Irving, it is a completely different demand.” Translation: 38 year olds cannot play point guard in this explosive guard era. It was rookie Damien Lillard who put all of this into play for Steve Nash. A routine basketball play ended up ruining the rest of Steve Nash’s career.

If the Lakers return to what they used to be, as Steve Nash concludes in his letter, none of it will be because of Steve Nash’s contribution. If there is anything sad about his Lakers exit- making $27 million dollars for sixty five days of work should make no one cry- it is that the Lakers turnaround, if it happens, will be because of Steve Nash’s absence, not his presence.

There is a famous line in a very old movie. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

The NBA has loved Steve Nash for 19 years. They have celebrated him and marveled at him and were entertained by him. But it is the Lakers fans, those dedicated and loyal and die hard global supporters and purists, who are the ones sorry now.