by Simmons Bill
Dolphins)—and I finally unveiled Dave’s Ewing Theory to a national audience on ESPN.com in 2001, predicting that Drew Bledsoe was the single most logical Ewing Theory candidate for the future. Only a few months later, Bledsoe went down, the ’02 Patriots won their first Super Bowl without him and I looked like Nostrasimbo. You have to admit, that was amazing. Since then, we’ve had some other classics (Nomar and the ’04 Red Sox and Tiki and the ’07 Giants being the best ones), but none could have happened without the great Patrick Ewing.
Here’s my point: If your prime inspired a sports theory that hypothesized why your teams played better without you, you probably shouldn’t crack the top thirty-five of a Hall of Fame Pyramid.
38. STEVE NASH
Resume: 13 years, 9 quality, 6 All-Stars … MVP: ’05, ’06 … ’07 MVP runner-up … BS
MVP (’07) … top 5 (’05, ’06, ’07), top 10 (’08), top 15 (’02, ’03) … leader: assists (3x), FT%
(1x) … 4-year peak: 17–4–11, 51% FG, 45% 3FG, 90% FT … 3-year Playoffs peak: 21–4–11, 49% FG, 40% 3FG, 90% FT (46 G) … career: assists (9th), 3-point FG% (5th)
The case for Nash cracking the top forty: Won back-to-back MVPs, a sentence that looks so unbelievable in print, my eyeballs just popped out of my head Allan Ray–style (only Bird, Magic, MJ, Russell, Wilt, Duncan, Moses, Kareem and Nash did it) … along with Larry Bird and Dirk Nowitzki, one of three living members of the 50–40–90 Club (and he did it twice)104…
exceptionally fun to watch on the offensive end … willed himself into a Stockton-like crunch-time assassin … helped bring back three dying art forms: passing, fast breaks and crappy hair …
four-time winner of the Guy Everyone in the League Would Have Killed to Play With award (’05,
’06, ’07, ’08) … replaced Wayne Gretzky as the most popular athlete in Canada after the Janet Jones gambling scandal … along with Mike D’Antoni, improved the careers of Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire by at least 35 percent … the only player this decade who inspired Tim Thomas to give a shit 105… drew a handful of “that’s one bad-ass white boy” compliments from Charles Barkley over the past four years … probably would have played in a Finals if (a) Phoenix’s owner weren’t such a cheapskate, (b) Joe Johnson hadn’t broken his face early in the ’04 playoffs, (c) Tim Donaghy reffing Game 3 and the Amar’e/Diaw leaving-the-bench suspensions 106 had never happened in ’07, (d) Tim Duncan hadn’t hit that crazy three in Game 1 of the ’08 Spurs-Suns series, and/or (e) Phoenix’s owner weren’t such a shameless cheapskate … you could call him the Evolutionary Cousy, like Cousy with a jump shot … the more he plays with his teammates, the better he gets (almost like Wayne Gretzky during his Edmonton days).
The case against Nash cracking the top forty: Struggled with a bad back during his first four seasons, missing 64 games in all (and rendering the first third of his career moot) … an ineffective defensive player who doesn’t get steals and can’t be hidden against elite point guards … looks like a cross between Jackie Earle Haley and James Blunt … the validity of his consecutive MVP
trophies can be easily picked apart, although he probably should have won by default in ’07 … of all players who benefited from the rule changes before the ’05 season, Nash was number one on the list107… after seeing how Mike D’Antoni altered the statistical careers of many of the ’09
Knicks, coupled with Nash’s regression back to his Dallas numbers from ’01 to ’04, it’s hard to argue the theory that D’Antoni’s system made Nash to a large degree … creamed offensively in the playoffs by Mike Bibby (’02, ’04) and Tony Parker (’07, ’08), a huge reason for his team’s exits in those years … you have to wonder about the top-forty credentials of anyone who was offered a perfectly reasonable six-year, $60 million free agent offer by Phoenix in his prime, asked Mark Cuban to match that offer, and had Cuban basically say to him, “Sorry, that’s a little rich for my blood; we’d rather spend that money on Erick Dampier.” I mean, when Cuban wonders about the fiscal sanity of a contract, THAT is saying something.
So why stick Nash this high? For three reasons that went beyond everything we just mentioned. First, he played for a series of all-offense/no-defense teams in Dallas and Phoenix and never landed on a quality defensive team that protected him the way the Lakers protected Magic. His deficiencies were constantly exposed on that end, so we were always thinking about them. That’s not totally fair. If you think Nash sucked on defense, you should have seen Magic pretending to be a bullfighter in the late eighties and early nineties. Olé! Olé! But Magic’s teammates could protect him. When Nash’s opponents beat him off the dribble, they scored because he never had smart team defenders or a shot blocker behind him. It’s like Kate Hudson’s performance in Almost Famous—she’s a semi-abysmal actress, but give her a fantastic script and a great part and suddenly she’s getting an Oscar nomination. Had Nash switched places with Tony Parker (another lousy defender) for the past four years and gotten protected by Popovich and Duncan, we wouldn’t have complained about his defense as much. It’s all about situations. When we think about him historically, it has to be remembered that he would have been better on a smart defensive team with one good shot blocker to protect him. It’s just a fact.
Second, former teammate Paul Shirley argued Nash’s MVP credentials with me once by emailing me an excellent point about how valuable Nash really was to Phoenix, saying that Nash’s style was contagious to the rest of the Suns as soon as he showed up from Dallas. Within a few weeks, everyone started playing unselfishly and getting each other easy baskets, like his magnanimity had seeped into everyone else by osmosis … and when you think about it, that’s the single most important way you can affect a basketball team. In my lifetime, only Bird, Magic, Kidd and Walton affected their teams to that same degree. And Isaiah Rider, if this were Bizarro World.
Third, Nash’s magnificent performance during the ’07 season—ironically, the season when he didn’t win the MVP—pushed him up a level for me. He never had a killer instinct until that year; even when he dropped 48 in an ’05 playoff game because the Spurs were blanketing his teammates and daring Nash to score, he seemed sheepish about it afterward. But falling short in ’05 and ’06
hardened him; maybe he didn’t go to the dark side like Danny LaRusso during the Terry Silver era, but he developed a nasty edge that nobody remembered seeing before. My guess: Nash spent the summer mulling over his career and everything that had happened, ultimately realizing that he couldn’t do anything more other than win his first title. Then he thought long and hard about how to do it, ultimately cutting off his hair (feel the symbolism, baby!) and getting in superb shape so he wouldn’t wear down in the playoffs again. When he showed up for training camp and realized the Marion-Stoudemire soap opera would be an ongoing problem, 108 Boris Diaw was out of shape, and new free agent Marcus Banks couldn’t help, something snapped inside him. Exit, nice Steve Nash. Enter, icy Steve Nash. Suddenly he was tripping guys on picks, barking at officials and getting testy with his own teammates, eventually righting the ship and leading the Suns to the highest level of offensive basketball we’ve witnessed in twenty years. Really, it was a virtuoso season for him as an offensive player and a leader; borrowing the same tactic that once worked so well for Magic, Isiah and Stockton, Nash used the first 40 minutes to get everyone else going, then took over in crunch time if the Suns needed it. Sometimes he’d even unleash the “Look, there’s no way we’re effing losing this game!” glare on his face, an absolute staple for any MVP candidate.
Somewhere along the line, he won me over. Once one of the harsher critics of the voting for his back-to-back MVPs, I ended up writing the following about Nash during the ’07 Playoffs:
“Regardless of what happens in San Antonio, I love what happened to Nash this season; his competitive spirit, toughness and leadership reminds me of Bird, Magic, MJ and Isiah back in the day. That’s the highest praise I can give. At the very least, you know the Suns won’t get
blown out—they’ll be in the game and fighting until the very end. You can count on that from them. He’s the reason.” You could go to war with Steve Nash, and really, that’s all that matters.
37. DIRK NOWITZKI
Resume: 11 years, 9 quality, 8 All-Stars … ’07 MVP … top 5 (’05, 06, ’07, ’09), top 10 (’02,
’03), top 15 (’04, ’08) … 3-year peak: 26–9–4 (51%-89%-41%) … best player on runner-up (’06 Mavs), 27–12–3 (23 G) … 2007 averages: 25–9–3, 50% FG, 42% 3FG, 90% FT … 9
straight 22–8 seasons
The NBA’s alpha dog almost ended up being German. Yup, we came that close in the 2006
Playoffs—if not for the heroics of Wade, Salvatore, Pay-ton and others, Germany would have made its biggest advancement on American culture since David Hasselhoff infiltrated the horny brains of teenage guys with Baywatch. Personally, I was terrified—this was the same country that started two world wars and deliberately injured Pele in Victory. Had Nowitzki grabbed the conch that spring, maybe Germany would have gotten its swagger back, maybe the bad blood would have gotten going again and maybe our lives would have eventually been in danger. Instead the Mavs fell apart in the Finals and so did Dirk, who secured his spot on the “Crap, It’s Just Not in Me”
All-Stars along with Karl Malone, Drexler, KJ, Ewing and Sampson. How close did we come?
Hop into the NBA Time Machine with me; we’re heading back to 2006. Dirk had just completed his finest regular season and made a run at becoming the toughest NBA player in the history of Europe. 109 (Note: Dirk developed such a nasty streak that even when Ashton Kutcher punk’d him, it seemed like Dirk wanted to kick Ashton’s ass for a few seconds, which would have been the greatest and most random fight ever—but that’s a whole other story.) Although we liked following a cocky, snarling 7-foot German with a 25-foot range during a sublimely efficient offensive season, questions lingered about his crunch-time prowess and Dallas’ title prospects when its best player seemed soft and couldn’t guard anyone. 110 After all, nobody ever won a title with an all-offense, no-defense guy leading the way. Then Dirk broke through with the following moments:
• Game 7, San Antonio series (Round 2). Playing on the road against the champs, trailing by three in the final 20 seconds and still reeling from a gut-wrenching three by Ginobili on the previous possession, Dallas calls the season-deciding play for Dirk. He gets the ball and backs Bruce Bowen into the paint with a herky-jerky, grind-you-backward move developed the previous summer. With Bowen overplaying him, Dirk weasels past him and somehow avoids getting tripped, kicked, or punched in the balls. Then he barrels toward the basket, absorbs the contact from Ginobili, 111 finishes a twisting layup, draws the foul and buries the free throw. Tie game! Remember, the Mavs were 20 seconds away from blowing a three-games-to-one series lead and a 20-point lead in Game 7; they never would have been the same after that. Considering the circumstances, shouldn’t that play rank with Magic’s sky hook against the ’87 Celtics, Bird’s steal-and-pass against the ’87 Pistons, MJ’s basket-steal-basket sequence to end the ’98 Finals, Jerry West’s half-court bomb to extend Game 3 of the ’70 Finals and every other “I need to come up big Right Now” clutch play in NBA history? And since they ended up winning in OT and eventually made the Finals, another question has to be asked: how many superstars single-handedly altered the course of the playoffs with one play? At this specific point in time, it sure seemed like Dirk was making a leap from franchise guy to potential Pantheon guy. 112
• Game 5, Phoenix Series (Western Finals). Dirk torches Phoenix with one of the best performances of the decade: 50 points, 12 rebounds and an unforgettable “there’s no effing way we’re losing” explosion in the second half (scoring 24 of 34 Dallas points to ice it). I remember being delighted that he made the necessary fundamental and philosophical changes to become dominant, realized it wasn’t okay to bitch out teammates, found a way to punish smaller defenders and unveiled a swagger that his team desperately needed. Could anyone guard him? Opponents couldn’t use taller Duncan/Garnett types because Dirk was beating those guys off the dribble or even worse, pulling them 25 feet away and shooting threes over them. The gritty Bowen/Raja types had no chance because of his creative high-post game (fueled by his deadly fall-away). Who was left? Lankier forwards like Shawn Marion had the best chance on paper because they could stay in front of him, make him work for his points and force him to settle for 16-footers, 113 but Dirk learned to adjust when his shot wasn’t falling, adopting Larry Bird’s ploy of crashing the offensive boards and getting his points on putbacks and foul shots. So he was always going to affect a game offensively. At this specific point in time, with his confidence swelling, there wasn’t a way to fully shut him down. Here’s what I wrote: “Dirk is playing at a higher level than any forward since Bird…. He’s been a killer all spring, a true assassin, and I certainly never imagined writing that about Dirk Nowitzki.”
To bang my point home that Nowitzki was better than anyone realized, I created something in that same column called the 42 Club. I was especially fond of the idea because of its simplicity. I added up the point, rebound, and assist averages for franchise guys during the playoffs, and if the number topped 42, that meant we were probably talking about a potential Level 4 (or higher) guy. 114 To figure out the members, I allowed only guys who played 13 or more playoff games in one postseason, since that’s a legitimate sampling (more than a month of basketball at the highest level). Here were the 42 Club members from 1977 to 2008 (so we can include LeBron):
Michael Jordan (6x): 49.4 (’89); 50.7 (’90); 45.9 (’91); 46.5 (’92); 47.8
(’93); 43.8 (’97)
Shaquille O’Neal (4x): 43.6 (’98); 49.2 (’00); 49.0 (’01); 43.9 (’02) Larry Bird (4x): 42.0 (’81); 44.4 (’84); 43.4 (’86); 44.2 (’87) 115
Moses Malone (2x): 43.0 (’81), 43.3 (’83)
Magic Johnson (2x): 43.8 (’86), 42.5 (’91)
Karl Malone (2x): 43.0 (’92), 42.9 (’94)
Hakeem Olajuwon (2x): 44.2 (’94), 47.8 (’95)
Tim Duncan (2x): 42.7 (’01), 45.4 (’03)
LeBron James (2x): 44.7 (’06), 43.6 (’08)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1x): 47.1 (’80)
Charles Barkley (1x): 44.5 (’93)
Kobe Bryant (1x): 42.8 (’01)
Allen Iverson (1x): 43.7 (’01)
Kevin Garnett (1x): 44.0 (’04)
Dirk Nowitzki (1x): 45.1 (’06 pre-finals)
There wasn’t a single fraud on that list with the possible exception of … well, I’m trying to be nice, but fuck it—Karl Malone! Every other memorable spring from 1977 to 2008 is represented except for Walton in ’77 (didn’t score enough points), Bernard in ’84 (only played 12 games), Magic in
’87 and ’88 (barely missed), and Wade in ’06 (didn’t heat up until the last two rounds). Just like in real life, the best playoff seasons of Ewing, Robinson, and Drexler fell a tad short. Career-year/MVP seasons for KG, Barkley, and Iverson all qualified, as did Kobe’s ridiculous ’01
season when he quietly peaked as an all-around player. I also like that our most dominant player (MJ) leads with six appearances, and his precocious next-generation challenger (LeBron) cracked the 42 Club at the tender age of twenty-one. Everything about the concept checks out; there are no flukes, no aberrations, no injustices. It just works. I’d never imagined that Dirk could potentially crack a list of elite playoff performers; just two summers before, I’d skewered Dallas for refusing to part with Nowitzki in a Shaq trade. The 50-point game altered my opinion. As I wrote the next day, “He’s the most unstoppable player in basketball, a true franchise guy, and I think he’s headed for his first championship in about two weeks.”
So what happened? Dallas won the first two Finals games, carried a 13-point lead into the final six minutes of Game 3 in Miami … and collapsed faster than a Corey Haim acting comeback. Wade took over, the refs took over and the Mavs lost their composure. Even after Miami’s big comeback, Nowitzki (
a 90.1 percent FT shooter that season) had a chance to tie the game with two freebies in the final three seconds. He clanked the first one. Ballgame. So much for making the leap. Dallas pulled a bigger no-show in Game 4 than Corey Haim in Fever Lake, then rallied in Game 5 before getting screwed by more dubulent 116 officiating, although they did commit a number of brain farts down the stretch and Josh Howard missed two key free throws in overtime. By Game 6, they were more rattled than Corey Haim watching the coke scenes in Scarface. In retrospect, Miami deserved to win for being a tougher, more experienced team. Dallas got tight down the stretch; Miami stayed cool. Dallas complained for two straight weeks; Miami didn’t complain about anything. Avery Johnson looked tighter than a whipped husband afraid to get a lap dance at someone else’s bachelor party; Pat Riley always looked like he was getting ready for a postgame bottle of chardonnay on his boat. Even the body language of the two stars was different: Wade was cooler than cool, but Nowitzki was constantly frowning, yanking his mouthpiece out and acting more bitchy than Corey Haim when he was banned from the Lost Boys 2 shoot. 117 Let the record show that Dirk sucked in all four of those losses while his teammates imploded around him. And in an amazing wrinkle for 42 Club purposes, Dirk finished the ’06 Playoffs with …
(Drumroll, please…)
A 41.6!
See? The formula never fails. The following season, Dirk stumbled into an MVP Award that was invalidated by the great Golden State Collapse of ’07. Now he’s hitting the latter half of his career and we can safely say that Dirk Nowitzki missed the boat as an alpha dog. Sure, he’s one of the best forty players ever. But he was never the dominant guy for an entire season, and as far as I’m concerned, America is safe.