This appears on nba.com
Was the
Lakers trading for Steve Nash a mistake?
by rick olivares
In the wake of the 40-year old Steve
Nash going down with another injury (a nerve irritation after suffering a back
injury), there has been talk about how it was a mistake to bring the former
two-time Most Valuable Player to Los Angeles.
Remember how it was trumpeted that
along with Dwight Howard, Nash would make a great addition to an ageing Lakers
team that had Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol? You could even throw in Metta World
Peace to make them a pro version of the Fab Five.
But that team never achieved the
greatness that was expected of them. The Dwight Howard experiment lasted a
year. Nash has been mostly injured. Bryant has been also mostly injured the
past two seasons. Gasol’s name has been floated around once more as trade bait.
Metta World Peace? He went coast-to-coast where he now balls for the New York
Knicks.
My first thought was the LA Lakers of
2004 when they brought in former Utah Jazz power forward Karl Malone and
Seattle Supersonics point guard Gary Payton to complement Bryant and Shaquille
O’Neal. When was the last time Los Angeles was brimming with that many a player
who would one day hold their own Hall of Fame wing? Except that team made the
NBA Finals only to be unexpectedly waylaid by the Detroit Pistons. The
following year, Shaq, Payton, Malone, and head coach Phil Jackson were gone. So
much for the Fantastic Four.
The Lakers throughout their history
have fielded great teams with players coming up from the draft aided and
abetted by a few key trades.
They brought in Wilt Chamberlain to
hold the middle for draft stars Jerry West and Oscar Robertson.
In the 1980s, they had already brought
in the Milwaukee Bucks’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to man the middle for young bucks Earvin
Johnson, James Worthy, AC Green and Byron Scott (he was drafted by the LA
Clippers but traded on draft day to the Lakers).
The point being the Lakers generally do
well in the draft then trade for huge pieces to the puzzle. And it’s usually a
center like Chamberlain, O’Neal, and later Pau Gasol and Howard. When they try
to build instant contenders through trades, it hasn’t happened for them.
You might want to check out the Knicks
in the east where it hasn’t worked out with Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire
and Tyson Chandler. Their one shining moment was when Jeremy Lin almost
single-handedly brought them to greatness and they traded him away.
And that brings us back to Steve Nash.
Was it a mistake?
Not at all because of the simply reason
that who would have thought that he’d suffer all these injuries?
What I do remember was Nash’s initial
reticence to play for the Lakers. And even as the trade was gong down, how
would his style of play fit that Lakers team he was going into?
Nash was effective in Dallas and
Phoenix not simply with the uptempo offense or small ball installed by Don
Nelson and Mike D’Antoni respectively. He worked well with big men who knew how
to move and set up the pick and roll like the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitski and the
Suns’ Amare Stoudemire.
They ran and ran some more. They lit up
the scoreboard like former NBA coach Paul Westhead’s teams (the Showtime Lakers
from 1979-81 and the Denver Nuggets of 1989-90). Except the “Guru of Go” won
only one title and that was in 1979-80 when Magic Johnson was a rookie. But
when he began to push for more scoring, his teams won some but didn’t win the
Larry O’Brien trophy or worse, was booted out prompting his removal.
The Lakers acquired pieces that didn’t
seem to fit – Nash, Howard and even possibly, head coach Mike D’Antoni.
There were concerns whether Bryant
would cede ball control to Nash since the offense goes through the Lakers’
star. But we never really did find out as the two played 50 games together in
their first year as teammates and nothing in this second year as injured have
been injured. The two had finally broken down after so much mileage in those
legs. So it is really hard to say (although for many other it is looking more
and more like a mistake as in the latest ESPN poll, out of a poll of 16, 764
respondents, 41% said it was a minor mistake while 35% said it was a major
mistake leaving the remaining 24% to say, ‘nay’ it wasn’t a mistake at all.
“Now this is going to be fun” was the
blurb on the cover of the October 28, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated’s NBA
preview that featured Nash and Howard in their Lakers gear.
It wasn’t.
Just unfulfilled promises.
The rebuilding in LA continues.
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