Los Angeles Lakers: Is Steve Nash’s Health Already An Issue?

The Los Angeles Lakers were undoubtedly one of the top three injury plagued teams last season, losing all four of their major stars at key moments during the grinding year.  Veteran point guard Steve Nash went down with a fractured leg in just the second game of the season, Pau Gasol missed a significant amount of time with a torn plantar fascia, Dwight Howard didn’t fully recover from his back issues until late in the winter and we all know the heartbreaking torn Achilles for Kobe Bryant.  Just recalling all the health issues leaves a sour taste for any Lakers fan and it becomes apparent as to why they only achieved 45 wins last season.

Hampered with injury concerns, the Lakers must have their two best players at 100 percent for them to win 49-plus games. (NBA.com photos)

Most of the problems have resolved this offseason, in terms of injuries.  Howard is no longer a worry for Mike D’Antoni and the Lakers as he packed his bags for Houston.  Gasol received a summer’s worth of knee treatment to prepare for this season and the latter years of his career, whether it ends in Los Angeles or not.  Bryant, who’s injury was the most severe and occurred at the end of the season, worked extensively to be back by November of this year.  Steve Nash?  We saw him play his share of soccer, another sport he is passionate about, throughout the offseason and even participate in tryouts with Inter Milan.

All good for the 2013-14 season, right?

Not exactly.

Just two weeks ago in the Lakers’ preseason game vs. Sacramento, Steve Nash was forced to leave the game in the first quarter as he couldn’t get his left ankle loose.  He claimed that the ankle “just wasn’t moving freely” and, as the quarter progressed, “started to get worse.”  This didn’t have a huge impact the night of the injury, considering Nash stated he would likely play in the following preseason game.

The comments made by coach Mike D’Antoni and teammate Pau Gasol, however, have a lot of people wondering how long the soon to be 40-year-old can play effectively this season.

Losing a dominant center in Dwight Howard that would bring some slower tempo on offense, D’Antoni has recently been on record saying that he wants the Lakers to be a top five team in “pace” this season, which is the estimated number of possessions for a team per 48 minutes.  The statistic is used to break down how quickly a team can get up and down the floor in transition, how quickly shots are taken, and usually indicates the amount of youth/fresh legs on a basketball team.

It’s quite head-scratching that D’Antoni believes they can be effective with a high pace rating this season, considering his recent comments about Nash foreshadow ankle concerns throughout the ENTIRE year:

According to Sam Amico from Fox Sports, a number of NBA talent-evaluators believe that Nash’s days of playing at a high level for 20-plus minutes per game are finished.  Keeping this in mind, general manager Mitch Kupchak could indeed be on the phone quite a bit this winter, trying to find the team a more athletic point guard that’s capable of defending the top floor generals in the league.

If it is the case that Nash sits more minutes this season compared to his past three years (32.4 minutes per game since 2010-11), the help in the backcourt won”t be ideal for the Lakers to make a run for the playoffs.  Jordan Farmar has looked solid in his return to the Lakers, most recently scoring 20 points in a win vs. Utah, but he’s not the type of point guard you would trust down the stretch of a season and we know he isn’t going to consistently score 20-plus points.  Steve Blake would see an increase in minutes and is someone D’Antoni has the most trust in, considering his late-season heroics helped launch the team into the seventh seed last year when Bryant went down.

For Lakers fans, nothing is ever 100 percent certain, but the odds of Nash suffering another major injury that causes him to miss 30 games is unlikely in 2013-14.  The reason for this is because he worked extremely hard this offseason preparing and D’Antoni knows he has to do a better job of managing minutes.  Figuring that the Lakers are actually going to have the future Hall of Famer for more than 52 games this year (yes, Nash was gone that long last season), the major concern is going to be all the lingering injuries sustained through the year.

His ankle has been setting him back from playing at the speed he wants to and only the right amount of time and treatment are going to be able to make that comfortable for him again.  His latest problems have been neck related, experiencing discomfort throughout practice.

Teammate Pau Gasol noticed a change in Nash’s play while dealing with these ongoing issues:

All in all, the only thing a veteran with that many minutes and seasons on his legs (especially at the point guard position) can do is be patient and hope that treatment pays off.  With Bryant returning sometime in November (since he doesn’t love the idea of timetables), the Lakers are going to need a backcourt presence to score produce enough points and not allow the opposing point guard to have a field day on them.

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