At one point this summer – he’s not exactly sure when, because when you’ve got five kids running around the house and there’s a pandemic going on and you live beside the beach in Los Angeles who knows what summer is anyway – Steve Nash decided it was time.
After six years removed from the fire — time spent mostly as a part-time basketball consultant, soccer analyst, occasional podcaster and full-time Dad — it was time to feel the heat.
What was Nash, the Hall-of-Fame point guard looking forward to as a rookie head coach – not just in the NBA, but at any level?
That scary moment when things are going wrong and a committed team has to try and figure out how to make them right.
“[That’s when] you learn about people and you learn how they respond to challenges and how to respond to adversity,” the newly minted head coach of the Brooklyn Nets said. “Because at the end of the day, it’s about how you embrace being uncomfortable and wanting those moments and wanting to handle that and survive and to thrive, during friction or during moments that are difficult.
“So that’s what excites me as much as anything: the challenges; the tough times.”
It will remain to be seen the shape of those challenges and where the friction stems from, but they are coming. In the NBA they always do.
Those close to Nash were as surprised as everyone else when it was announced he was leaving retirement to take a four-year deal to run the Nets, but they understood it in an instant.
“I had no inkling. None,” said Charlotte Hornets assistant coach Jay Triano, who coached Nash for Canada at the Olympics and who worked for him when Nash was the national team general manager and is the only other Canadian to have been an NBA head coach. “Never even thought of it. I didn’t know he wanted to [do it]. He never talked about coaching in all the years I’ve known him.
“But listen, you know him. The guy is competitive. That’s how he got to be as good as he was. This is where he’s going to get his competitive juice now.”
Nash said he missed being part of a team, the learning, the pressure, the growth. He was taking notes and keeping his ears and eyes open he says, particularly when working as a consultant to the Golden State Warriors during their championship years, which is where he built a relationship with Nets star Kevin Durant.
He felt it was time to take the plunge and reached out to his old teammate Sean Marks, who happens to run the Nets and was looking to hire a head coach for the plumiest job in the NBA.
The former national team star and 18-year NBA veteran may have – admittedly – “skipped the line” when he came out of nowhere to run the bench for an already deep Brooklyn team that will add likely Hall-of-Famers Kyrie Irving and Durant after each recovers from injuries that caused them to miss part or all of the 2019-20 season.
But that just means that the expectations will be higher and the scrutiny that much more intense. With a loaded roster in the NBA’s largest media market, Nash will be learning on the fly with everyone watching.
It’s easy to imagine the Nets as the favourites to emerge from the East and reach the NBA Finals whenever the 2020-21 season starts and a 60-win regular season will be on the menu too.
It doesn’t leave much room for error or learning on the job.
For those of a lesser grade of steel, that might be an issue, but Marks has known Nash since the former New Zealand star was the 15th man on the Phoenix Suns in the mid-2000s and even before that from playing against him internationally. Over the years a friendship developed, and a lot of brainstorming went on, so when Nash reached out to Marks about throwing his hat in for the Nets job, Marks felt like he knew what he was getting.
“As we spread the net in our search for the next leader, the next connector, a communicator and a cultural driver, we look for these qualities and all these qualities we found in Steve,” said Marks as he shared the floor in a virtual press conference Wednesday as a follow-up to Nash being hired last week. “His Hall of Fame resume; his experiences both on and off the court and his character [are] second to none … [and] look: there is nobody that I’ve been around that hasn’t wanted to be pressure-tested on the spot quite like Steve.
“He’s never shied away from a moment … this guy has never run from anything and he wants the ball in his hands at the end of games and, you know, his career speaks for itself but he’s made the right decision more times than not, so the experience he’ll bring here speaks volumes.”
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Nash’s hiring has already been caught in the crosshairs. At a moment when sensitivity about the lack of racial representation on NBA coaching staffs and front offices has been heightened in a league where 80 per cent of the players are Black but only five head coaches are and only one team president, even hiring the widely popular Nash – a two-time MVP and member of the 2018 Hall of Fame class – raised eyebrows, his hiring called out as an example of white privilege seeping into the NBA.
Nash stood by his qualifications, even while acknowledging the obvious lack of coaching experience on his resume.
“Well I did skip the line, frankly, but at the same time, I think, leading an NBA team for almost two decades [as a player] is pretty unique,” he said. “So, while I haven’t necessarily learned some of the skills that I’ll definitely seek to understand and learn as far as the technical aspects of coaching, I was never far from that. So, to be the head of the team on the floor, to think on the fly, to manage personalities, people’s skill sets to bring people together — collaborating with a coaching staff for almost two decades. I mean, it’s not like I was in a vacuum; I learned a tremendous amount during my career.”
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“… I think as white people we have to understand, we have been served a privilege and a benefit by the colour of our skin,” Nash said. “… and we have a long way to go to find the equality in social racial justice … so I’m very sensitive to the cause and the goal.
“I’m not sure that [my hiring] is an example that purely fits that conversation, but I own it and I understand why it’s important to talk about it and that we need more diversity, more opportunity for African-American coaches and staff in all capacities. And this league was built through African-American players of the stars that have made this one of the greatest entertainment industries, businesses and sports in the world … and I want to be part of change going forward.”
Bringing a championship to New York for the first time since the Knicks did it in 1973 would be a different kind of change and momentous in itself.
Nash has played for a long line of elite coaches and alongside and against some of the greatest in the game.
What will he be like as a coach? He’s not sure, but he’s eager to find out.
“I don’t see myself as a yeller and screamer but I haven’t actually been over there [on the sidelines] yet so we’ll see what transpires,” Nash said. “But I think the reality is, I’m going to be myself, and if I’m anything other than myself it’s not gonna work.”
Brooklyn has the talent and will be looking to Nash to deliver an assist unlike any he’s made before.
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