Steve Nash, master of the basketball pass

October 30th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

The new issue of the NYT’s Play magazine just dropped and its cover story is on Canadian Jesus himself, Steve Nash. There’s a lot here: his time in New York this summer where he just aired it out and chilled, his thoughts on the opportunities of the global village, his life as a father and his humanitarian trip to China not too long ago with some fellow NBAers.

There’s this sort of mystique about the guy because he’s short (for the NBA, of course), white, 33-years-old and yet, somehow controls a sport he should have no business being in. And he’s gotten better with age. It defies conventional wisdom, logic and whatever other normalcies we subscribe to on this Earth.

Dude also knows some insane stuff about his one-handed passes.

Nash’s one-handed bounce pass reminded me of a story I’d heard from Dick Davey, the Santa Clara coach, who had been the only man in college basketball interested in recruiting the future two-time M.V.P. They were having lunch a couple of years ago, and the coach had a bone to pick with his former protégé.

“I said to him, ‘Dammit, Steve, you penetrate the paint and you kick the ball out with one hand, you gotta do it with two hands.’ And he said, ‘If I do it with one hand, it’s about three-tenths of a second faster, and my teammate is going to have a better look at the basket.’ Do you want to know how smart he is? If he had a guy on the right wing in transition who he knew couldn’t shoot the ball, he’d throw a pass that was just good enough to include the guy in the fast break, but just bad enough that the guy wasn’t in a position to get off a shot and would have to pass the ball back.”

I tried blogging this post with only one hand it took me a lot longer. I totally thought it was be three-tenths of a second faster. Blogging and basketball, I have found out today, are very different.