Phoenix Suns: Steve Nash Earns His Rightful Place In Ring Of Honor

Nash’s Career

As most fans know now, Nash never seemed destined for the path to greatness. He worked hard to become one of the greatest point guards to ever play the game of basketball, making him a true underdog story after Suns fans booed the team’s selection of Nash with the 15th overall pick in 1996.

“When Steve came out as a senior, most people in the league said, ‘He’s a backup guard,'” Jerry Colangelo said. “We took him despite the fact that we had three point guards on this team — Kevin Johnson, Jason Kidd and [Sam] Cassell. You know why? He was the best player on the board, without question.”

Though Nash was soon traded by Phoenix to the Dallas Mavericks, the Suns would reunite with their former draft pick in free agency heading into the 2004-05 season. And once he joined the franchise for the second time, the Suns and the league as a whole would never be the same.

In his first season on a team with Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson and Amar’e Stoudemire, Nash helped engineer a 33-win turnaround for the Suns, who went 62-20 while averaging an NBA-best 110.4 points per game.

Nash’s playing style meshed perfectly with D’Antoni’s up-tempo offense, and he won the MVP award for it, edging Shaquille O’Neal with 15.5 points and 11.5 assists per game.

Phoenix advanced to the 2005 Western Conference Finals that season before bowing out in five games to the eventual champs, the Spurs. The following year, Nash became one of 10 players in NBA history to win back-to-back MVP awards while posting a career high in points (18.8 per game) and leading the league again in assists.

More from Phoenix Suns

• 3 NBA superstars with legacies on the line heading into 2023–24
• Ranking the 4 riskiest boom-or-bust NBA teams in 2023–24
• 5 NBA players facing do-or-die 2023–2024 seasons
• Report: Phoenix is considering signing two former lottery picks
• Phoenix’s questionable Deandre Ayton strategy is worth the risk

But for the third time in his career, Nash fell short of the NBA Finals, this time at the hands of his former team, the Mavs, in the 2006 Western Conference Finals.

The following season, Nash averaged a career high 11.6 assists per game and the Suns might have finally broken through if not for a few controversial suspensions — which all began with the infamous Robert Horry hip check of Nash into the scorer’s table — in a playoff series against the Spurs. Phoenix bowed out in the Western Conference semifinals in six games, while San Antonio went on to win the title that year.

“It’s amazing to think about what we did,” Nash said of those Seven Seconds Or Less teams. “Obviously the goal is to win a championship and we didn’t do that, so there’s always kind of an asterisk there, but at the same time we changed the game in a way. People play that style of basketball almost throughout the league now.”

Following a midseason trade that shipped away Marion and brought Shaq to Phoenix, Nash wouldn’t reach the conference finals again until 2010.

Playing with Stoudemire, Grant Hill, Jason Richardson and Robin Lopez, Nash helped the Suns lead the league in scoring for the fifth season in a row. En route to the conference finals, Phoenix swept their rival Spurs and squared off against another rival for the right to a Finals appearance.

If it weren’t for Richardson’s missed box-out on Ron Artest in Game 5, Nash might have finally been able to reach a championship series. Instead, Artest hit a game-winner and the series slipped away. No one knew it for certain at the time, but that was Nash’s last legitimate shot at a title in Phoenix, which would ultimately lead to an awful lot of reflection on what could have been.

Next: Nash's Time For Reflection