Steve Nash and the Last Gasp of Greatness

The protracted sunset of Steve Nash's post-prime is nearly over. The 41-year-old, who has been sitting out all season with nerve and back issues, announced on Saturday that he is retiring, an admission of such Bear to Shit in Woods obviousness that it feels more like a call for requiems than a statement of intent. Then again, a two-time MVP who passed the ball as inventively as anyone ever has is worth reminiscing over.

The popular portrait of the Seven Seconds or Less Suns as a snake-bitten team that verged on greatness without ever quite realizing it both diminishes what they built—an ever-kinetic offense that the league never completely figured out how to defend—and subtly lies about the extent to which the Suns were flatly outplayed toward the end of their many playoff runs.

It's true Phoenix suffered some lousy luck. They topped the standings in 2004-05, then Joe Johnson broke his orbital bone in the middle of their subsequent playoff run. During the 2007 Western Conference Finals, Nash was in and out of the closing minutes of a closely contested first game due to a cut on his nose that wouldn't stop bleeding, and Amar'e and Boris Diaw, with the series deadlocked 2-2, missed game five due to a pair of dubious suspensions.

Further, the Suns simply lost the 2010 Western Conference Finals. They fell in game five at the hands of a flukey Ron Artest (now Metta World Peace) buzzer-beater, but that came after Jason Richardson unintentionally banked in a 26-footer to knot the score with 3.5 seconds to play. This was the final year of Nash and Amar'e's pick-and-roll preeminence—the springy forward fled to New York the following offseason—and that was last time the Suns sniffed a title.

The version of Nash who played in that series had aged out of MVP contention, but was staving off the reaper by stripping his game and day-to-day routine down to the elements. The mid-2000s Nash who swirled around the court with defenders always on his tail was replaced by a player who labored, but made up for his physical degradation with acuity and purposefulness. Where once Nash seemed like a freewheeling philosopher exploring the limits of what the pass could accomplish, he was now focusing the sum of his abilities toward winning, and nothing else. His game had become economical and, sacrilegiously, a bit joyless. When you have failed by a slight margin numerous times, and you sense that your next failure is likely to be a lasting one, perhaps you possess an edge that comes to you only in that particular circumstance. You are sprinting through a crowd toward a momentarily parked bus, feeling as if you might die should you miss it.

For six games, Nash experienced something like this, and for five of them, he played well. He realized after two lopsided defeats that he would need to dominate for the Suns to have a chance and showed up for game three bent on attacking the paint. He dropped 17 points and 15 assists while turning the ball over exactly once. In that Artest-aided game five loss, he had 29 and 11. As Phoenix bowed out, he put up 21 and 9 on 8-for-11 shooting. His play evolved from night-to-night, like he had been obsessing over the previous game's tape for 48 hours straight, discovering something he hadn't done properly that he was definitely going correct next time out. He unleashed the full breadth of his talent: he penetrated, got to the free throw line, took threes, pushed the pace, found shooters, got the big men involved, and used the pick-and-roll like a chef cooking snout-to-tail cuisine. It was everything, and it was not enough.

Nash never had a shot to win much of anything after that. He spent two more productive years captaining post-Amar'e Suns teams that, by the grace of his professionalism, were more fun and competitive than they had any right to be. The less said about the failed Kobe-Dwight-Nash superteam experiment, the better, though it is maybe even more unflattering to remember Nash's tenure in Los Angeles for a documentary series in which he mused weightily over ambient pap about his career's impending conclusion.

We could all see this dissatisfying final act coming as Nash struggled to guide the Suns past the Lakers. Amar'e was probably on his way out of Phoenix, and Nash wouldn't leave because of a loyal streak and a desire not to uproot his kids. The way he played in that series indicated he could see the future, too. Athletes do not get to choose when their relevance is kaput. They choose only when to acknowledge it. Nash has done so twice now. Once on Saturday, and once as the Lakers celebrated, and the frustration washed over him.