Seven Seconds or Less

by Jack McCallum

  But the only accurate answer has to be a cop-out: Player makes coach and coach makes player. Nash and D’Antoni came together to their mutual benefit, a perfect marriage of form and function. Sometimes it happens that way. And it is spurious to argue, as some have, that Nash should not be an MVP just because the D’Antoni system happens to be a good fit for him. The Showtime Los Angeles Laker system was a good fit for Magic Johnson, the Chicago Bulls’ triangle offense was a good fit for Michael Jordan.

  Now, a better argument is that an MVP should be a better defensive player than Nash is. He is certainly not a bad defender, and from time to time is capable of being quite good. In regular season games against Washington’s Gilbert Arenas, Golden State’s Baron Davis, and Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson, he did an outstanding job of keeping those players, all quicker than he, in front of him.

  But Nash gets himself into defensive trouble when he runs around and overhelps, which is his tendency. (As a rookie assistant, Dan D’Antoni was reluctant at first to offer strategic advice, particularly to the Suns’ All-Stars, but early in the season he did caution Nash about “staying put” more; Nash agreed but he is, by inclination, a wanderer.) Also, Nash is susceptible to fatigue, which is manifested most often on defense. And he can get overwhelmed physically by big guards who can back him down and/or shoot over him. Case in point: Detroit’s Chauncey Billups.

  An MVP should not be selected on the basis of a single criterion and certainly not on the basis of a single game. Nash won his first MVP during the 2004–05 season because of his consistent excellence—I thought it was an easy choice. But this year there was an abundance of legit candidates—the Cavaliers’ LeBron James, the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki, the Heat’s Dwyane Wade, and the Clippers’ Elton Brand, along with Nash and Billups. In a nationally televised game on April 2 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Billups torched Nash with twenty-eight second-half points as the Pistons, then the consensus best team in the league, overcame a seventeen-point halftime deficit for a 109–102 victory. I couldn’t get that game out of my head when it came time to vote for the MVP, and on my ballot I put Nash behind Billups and James. But in no way did I feel Nash stole the vote—he was a deserving winner.

  Nash’s defensive deficiencies are alluded to, but not dwelled on, by the Suns coaches. D’Antoni certainly doesn’t like it when someone from the outside brings them up. It’s the I-can-talk-about-my-family-but-don’t-you-talk-about-my-family philosophy. Everyone agrees that Nash would be a better defensive player if (a) he didn’t expend so much energy on offense, (b) he didn’t have such a help mentality, and (c) the Suns were more of a defensive-oriented team.

  One interesting question about Nash’s game is the extent to which athleticism plays a part. Half the basketball world thinks he’s an incredible athlete, the other half thinks he’s the classic slow-footed, overachieving Caucasian. The answer isn’t that simple. His athletic skill set is rich and varied. Pick a sport that involves hand-eye coordination, and he would’ve been good at it. He modestly believes, for example, that had he stuck with soccer he would’ve been a candidate for Canada’s national team. During a typical practice, he might get in as much soccer work as other players get in basketball work. Whenever a ball rolls toward him, he toes it up his ankle, up his shin, up his thigh and, after gently toeing it around for a while, as if in a game of Hacky Sack, into his hands. “It feels as natural as catching it,” says Nash. His how-to basketball video shows him dribbling a soccer ball (“dribbling” in the World Cup sense, with his feet) and kicking it into the basket, and it took only four takes for him to complete it. I asked Barbosa, who grew up playing soccer in the ultimate futbol country, Brazil, who was the better soccer player. “Oh, Steve, he is much better than me,” says Barbosa. “Much better.”

  Nash is not that quick. On his own team, Marion, Stoudemire, Bell, and House are all quicker, never mind Barbosa, who’s twice as quick. But Nash has great feet. He jumps rope like a middleweight boxer. “I’m more elusive than quick, and people confuse the two,” says Nash. “I’m really good on the move, which involves coordination, timing and balance. Once I get going, I can do a lot of things. But I’m painfully bad at explosiveness.” What Nash has done, then, has mastered ways to always be moving slightly. The Suns’ offense is predicated on that principle, too, even in the half-court. Nash gives it up on the run and gets it back (via pass or dribble-handoff) on the run.

  But the real keys to Nash’s success are inborn (his court sense) or have nothing to do with basketball (determination and will). “Certain players are predisposed to creativity and decision making,” Nash says, “and I guess I’m one of them. I do believe that, to an extent, point guards are born, not made. But you have to make yourself better. You have to take those natural gifts and expand them. You hear about so-called ’tweeners, right, guys who aren’t quite point guards and aren’t quite shooting guards. What do they usually become?” The answer is: Mediocre shooting guards.

  The central dichotomy about the NBA’s fastest offense, then, is that it is quarterbacked by someone who’s not all that fast.

  Chapter Thirteen

  [The Second Season]

  Phoenix, May 10……………….

  SUNS LEAD SERIES 1–0

  “I wish I had some genius thing to tell you, but the energy’s not there. Why it’s not there, I don’t know.”

  D’Antoni had a theory that Game 1 would be easier for the Suns than Game 2. Everybody talked about the fatigue factor but he felt that Phoenix would still be running on its adrenaline from Game 7, and he was correct. The Suns’ offense was in high gear in a 130–123 victory.

  The frightening thing, though, was that the Clippers had played almost as well. Elton Brand (forty points) was unstoppable, and the primary reason the Suns won was a two-minute fourth-quarter spurt when, with Brand on the bench for rest, they extended a two-point lead to nine. Curtailing Brand’s output is the top priority for the Suns, as Iavaroni says in the pregame bigs meeting.

  “Game 2 is the real challenge, guys,” D’Antoni said as he sent the team out.

  He was so right. Marion misses four easy shots, then throws the ball away. Bell misses all five of his first-quarter shots. Eddie House, in the game early to possibly give the Suns a lift, falls asleep on defense, and Sam Cassell, creaky but crafty, grabs his own rebound, puts it back in, draws a foul and completes a three-point play. The coaches explode in anger—it’s exactly the kind of play that will keep Eddie under House arrest—but it isn’t any worse than a dozen others the regulars make in the first half. Walter McCarty, L.A.’s twelfth man, gets in the game in the first half, an embarrassing moment for the home team. The Clippers walk off with a 65–51 lead.

  “Turn that shit off!” D’Antoni says, pointing to televised replays of the first half as he storms into the coaches’ office. Then, realizing he sounded tyrannical, something he tries to avoid, he says, “Turn it down then.”

  “Guys, it’s twenty-four to two on second-chance points,” says Gentry. The coaches are unsure of where to begin, so horrible was the effort, but the Clippers’ offensive rebounding is as good a place as any.

  “We’re not playing smart, either,” says Iavaroni. “Technical mistakes. They’re not great shooters, and they’re going to drive to us, so why are we playing them outside the paint?”

  “It’s lack of hustle,” says D’Antoni.

  The only encouraging words come from Gentry. “Guys, we always say, to us, fourteen points is nothing.”

  D’Antoni relates that to the team, but it is all for naught. The Clippers win the third quarter, too, never failing to go more than two possessions without scoring. Marion almost air balls a left-handed layup from point-blank range. Diaw fumbles passes like a rookie playing in his first big game. It is hard to remember that James Jones, the somewhat invisible fifth starter, is on the court—he misses all four of his shots and has zero assists in nineteen unproductive minutes. Twice within a short span of time
, Cuttino Mobley posts up Marion and launches moonballs over him, both of which go in. The average fan says: Nothing can be done about those shots. But the coaches are incensed that Marion is not more aggressive on Mobley, trying to deny him the ball, “golding” in Suns’ vernacular. House never gets off the bench. Brand finishes with twenty-seven points and ten rebounds, and Cassell, jabbering away, outplays Nash with twenty-three points. Clippers win 122–97. Series tied.

  “I wish I had some genius thing to tell you, but the energy’s not there,” D’Antoni tells the team. “Why it’s not there, I don’t know. All right, we’re not having a good night on the offense end. That will happen. But that means you have to play harder on the defensive end. Goddamn.

  “We make a mistake on the offensive end and go down to the other end and play less hard? We do a pretty good job on the initial trap, then we lose interest and don’t get back? We’re watching and hoping somebody else gets it. I mean it’s the same theme all year, guys, the same stuff. Same stuff. Damn, you gotta dig a little deeper.”

  There is widespread dejection. D’Antoni can’t figure out exactly what to say. He tries to explain his team’s general torpor, not sure he believes it himself.

  “Let’s put it all in perspective real quick,” D’Antoni tells the team. “One, we did not play well. And, as a coach, I have to feel what’s going on in people’s minds and my mind. We’re two weeks with the Lakers. Elimination game, elimination game, elimination game. We have to say we were a little bit tired. Now, Friday we’re going go bust their ass, and do it with all the energy we didn’t feel tonight. Okay? It’s an easy formula, guys.”

  Except it isn’t an easy formula. The Clippers are bigger, stronger, and deeper than the Suns. And now they have home-court advantage.

  May 11

  As the coaches watch film, it becomes apparent how little animation came from the Suns’ reserves on the bench in Game 2. Their spirit, or lack of it, seemed to reflect what happened on the court. Or did their lack of spirit in fact transmit to the regulars? That is a reach. But a dead bench is a theme that has echoed throughout the season.

  The coaches thought it would be taken care of when Jimmy Jackson, aka the Chin—so named because his principal mode of communication was thrusting his chin out defiantly—was waived in early March. (The Lakers picked him up; one of the Suns’ greatest fears was that Jackson would play well against them in the first round, but it didn’t happen.) But even after Jackson left, on occasion a coach has asked Noel Gillespie to make sure he has isolated snippets of a Suns’ bench in full repose for contrast with an opponent’s bench that is full of life.

  The coaches have yet to bring up the issue in a team meeting, but it smolders from time to time, particularly since the Suns had a gang of gung-ho cheerleaders riding the pine during last season’s sixty-two-win ride. They included: Jake Voskuhl, a deeply religious backup center who talked about the team-that-prays-together-stays-together, that sort of thing; nice guy Bo Outlaw, who during an un-distinguished career that began in 1993 has filled locker rooms with laughter and who rarely fails to get into conversations with courtside fans on the road; and Paul Shirley, who used his time on the bench wisely, ogling women and writing a blog that drew widespread attention in both Hollywood and the sports world. (Shirley turned up as an extra in Glory Road, the basketball flick to which D’Antoni took the team in Charlotte, and also cowrote a pilot, appropriately called “The Twelfth Man,” that did not get picked up.) The reserves would joke about not playing much—whenever a loose ball would end up in one of their hands, they would quickly pass it down the bench and each of them would rub their hands over it, like it was a precious nugget of gold—but they were almost always in an upbeat mood.

  The de facto captain of this year’s bench is, clearly, House, Casa as he’s known to his teammates. D’Antoni compared him to Outlaw. Casa is the circle dancer, who, earlier in the season, accidentally clipped backup center Jared Reiner in the knee during one particularly inspired bit of choreography, effectively putting Reiner on the shelf for a couple of weeks, which was, incidentally, where he was at the time and where he belonged permanently. (A player can’t be released when he’s injured, and Reiner milked his injury for as long as he could before finally being cut.) Toward the end of Jackson’s tenure in Phoenix, the only time he had a smile on his face was when Casa went into his pregame dance. House is the one who gives each of the starters a special let’s-go-get-’em before the game, a hug for Marion, a series of hand slaps with Nash, a split-second boxer’s pose with Bell in which they face each other with fists raised. House picked up that particular move from one of his heroes, actor/comedian Martin Lawrence, who told him it is the universal sign for “respect.”

  House is also the one able to get to an insult with maximum expedience. He looked at James Jones’s size-eighteen sneakers one day and said, “How do you play basketball with them big-ass skis on your feet?” When Diaw entered the locker room wearing a pair of retro short shorts (as Diaw pointed out, they are not retro in Europe), House said, “Damn, Boris, you gotta pull your shoes up.” And when Bell showed up in a strangely patterned brown jacket, tight-fitting and zippered just below his waist, House took one look at him and said, “Damn, Rah-Rah, you look like motherfuckin’ luggage.”

  House is still in an upbeat mood much of the time—at this point he says he wants to remain a Sun for next season. But he gets into funks, depending on how well his jump shot is or is not falling and how much D’Antoni is or is not playing him. He feels the pressure even if he doesn’t show it. “Make a motherfuckin’ shot, E. House,” he’ll say aloud when he comes to the bench after missing a few in a row. Like a hundred other players just holding on to regular NBA employment, he is sensitive to every slight and eager to correct what he considers to be inaccurate assessments of his play. What House must overcome is his reputation for being a poor ball handler and weak defender, both of them pretty much deserved. As the Suns were heading for the court to play the Philadelphia 76ers and Allen Iverson on January 5 at home, House stuck his head into the coaches’ office.

  “Hey, Mike,” he said to D’Antoni. “Before the game, you say to Steve, ‘Stay in front of Iverson.’ But you tell me, ‘Eddie, don’t foul him.’ ”

  “Oh, hell, Eddie, I can’t remember what I said,” says D’Antoni. “It didn’t mean anything. You’ll do a good job on him, just like Steve will.”

  But for someone hanging on, House is not the most dependable of players. He is frequently the last one on the team bus, and, on a couple of occasions during the season, he strolled in just after the ninety-minutes-before-tip-off rule, blithely giving a friendly hello to the coaches as he passed the office. “Eddie, damn, at least come in the other door [the one the leads to the training room, far from the coaches office] if you’re going to be late like everybody else does,” Gentry told him. “Thanks for the tip, Alvin,” answered Casa.

  Once past House, the bench chorus is subdued. Barbosa is reliably upbeat, but, increasingly, he’s on the floor. Brian Grant is Mr. Steady, a generally optimistic guy who hopes (against hope) that his aching knees will allow him a few minutes of action. He is widely respected, one of the only guys on the team who can offer words of encouragement to Marion and get him calmed down on the bench. But after twelve years in the league and a couple thousand anti-inflammatories to ease the pain in his knees, Grant isn’t the jumping-around type. Nor is Kurt Thomas, who still harbors an outside chance of seeing playoff action after coming back from a broken foot. Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Skita, is a generally placid fellow, too; his biggest contribution of the year was anthropological—before a game against Portland on March 12, the team chose to perform a Russian-style circle dance. James Jones and Tim Thomas, usually one of whom is on the bench, are both low-key. No, when the coaches complain about a quiet bench, they are generally talking about Pat Burke.

  In the eyes of the Suns’ coaches, Burke has underachieved, not necessarily due to lack of effort but perhaps by trying t
oo hard and pressing in game situations. There was a time during the season when it seemed as if he could be a major asset, particularly in the eyes of Dan D’Antoni. Dan would report to Mike from time to time that Burke had lost a little confidence, and the brothers would have a little sparring match about it.

  “Well, hell, maybe I can run the whole offense through Pat,” Mike would say. “Maybe that would get his confidence back.”

  “You wanna be coach of the year again, go ahead and do that,” Dan would say.

  At a game in Madison Square Garden against the Knicks on January 2, Burke stepped to the line with 1:24 left in overtime and Phoenix trailing 118–116. Over on the bench, Dan said: “This could make Pat or break him as an NBA player. He makes these two, he’s a player. Because, I tell you, these are crap-ass shots.” And Burke made them both. (Although the Suns lost that game in double overtime 140–133.) Burke may have finally fallen off the radar, in fact, when Dan got down on him midway through the season; before that, Burke had considered himself, along with Barbosa, one of “Dan’s boys.”

  The coaches wanted Burke to evolve into an all-purpose backup big man, but it hasn’t happened, and he finished the season with forty-six DNP-CDS—Did Not Play, Coach’s Decision. But Burke hadn’t caught many breaks during the season, either. A masseuse hit a nerve deep in his shoulder during a routine massage and his right arm ached for weeks. When he did get into a game, he was a whistle waiting to happen, a victim of that referee tendency to call a reserve for an infraction that he wouldn’t dream of calling on a star. “You don’t get minutes,” Iavaroni says, “you don’t get whistles.”