To win back-to-back MVPs in the Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan Era means you had major skills. Steve Nash had that and the fact that he’s white in a league that was 80 percent Black, also elevated his stature among NBA fans.
Steve Nash Won Back-To-Back NBA MVPs, Played Like A “Brother”
Nash never looked the part. The Canadian was an unimposing 6-3 with long, floppy hair and looked more like a soccer player than a basketball player. Looking back, one might wonder who Nash was able to win Most Valuable Player trophies in 2005 and 2006 while leading the high-flying Phoenix Suns offense, benefitting from Mike D’Antoni’s all offense no defense style.
Being the minority on the court didn’t cause Nash to back down. He talked trash and played with a flair that made it impossible to tell that he was a white kid who grew up in Victoria, Canada.
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Steve Nash Joins LeBron James On ‘Mind the Game’ Podcast
On an episode of the “Mind The Game” podcast, the product of Santa Clara discussed with LeBron James where his confidence came from. He also dropped a bombshell about wishing he was Black.
Supposedly, Nash always had a natural rhythm and played both hockey and lacrosse. During hockey camp at age 11 is when his agility, ability to move quickly, execute head fakes and cause defenders to be off balance started to shine through.
“It was the first time I realized I was even doing that. I was just trying to get him off balance, right? So I think there was something I always just innately liked about rhythm — about changing your balance, getting you to lean one way or the other,” Nash tells “The King.”
“Same thing in soccer, too. You show a little bit too much of the ball, but then don’t — right at the last second. And in lacrosse too — you’re just trying to get a guy on his wrong foot or whatever it may be. So I think it was already there, from a deception standpoint. And then I started playing basketball. Fell in love with it,” he continued.
Steve Nash Says He Wanted to Be Black
So as Nash began developing his game in eighth grade, Spike Lee was doing the classic “Mars Blackmon” Air Jordan 3s commercials, which featured Michael Jordan and Lee in these classic exchanges.
Nash was hooked.
“The first Air Jordan-Spike Lee commercial came out when I was in eighth grade — seventh grade going into eighth — and I was like, ‘This world’s amazing,'” Nash recalled. “And then — I mean — let’s also just be real…I wanted to be Black.”
His remarks stemmed from his admiration for the influence of Black athletes in basketball culture, particularly in the era of Michael Jordan. Let’s keep it real, Nash even had a Black nickname, “Nashty” because of how lethal he was on the court and how hard he was to defend.
Hip-hop culture was taking over the world and becoming a global phenomenon and Black faces were the guiding lights. Basketball and the explosion of hip-hop culture went hand in hand. So naturally, Nash got caught up in the culture of ball and beats which was driven by Blacks in inner cities across America and then spread internationally. If you played ball at a high level then you came in contact with Black culture —- from the music to the mannerisms — and often took a liking to it as a way to connect or reach that next level.
“Listen, all the best players in the world were Black. All the best rappers. You know? So I’m trying to emulate anyone who had something about them, right?” the Hall of Famer stated. “You want to emulate the greats. And for me, that was the most exciting way to play. Watching Tim Hardaway, the killer crossover… Kenny Anderson… These guys I grew up watching were wizards with the ball. Isiah was my hero. His handle was amazing. His ability to create space and get shots. That’s what I wanted to be.”
Nash wanted to encompass all of that beauty and incorporate it into his life. And with few white examples of this cultural magnificence on the court, he often wished he was Black, which is understandable. Although he’s found out by now that being white and sharing the talents of a Black person is actually 10-times better than actually being a Black, because who wants to deal with the nonsense.
Austin Reaves Reminds LeBron Of Steve Nash
From there, LeBron made the parallel between Nash and Lakers’ current prized white player Austin Reaves.
LeBron shared a moment, where Lakers players were joking around with Reaves, who has developed into one of the better guards in the NBA and a great third option to LeBron and Luka, insisting there’s no way that he can be from Newark, Arkansas, with the extensive hoops bag he flexes. From his ball-handling to his streetball confidence.
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“It’s so funny you say that because we say the same s**t about AR. We’re like, ‘There’s no way you learned that in f*****g Arkansas.’ It’s like, Markieff Morris — we call him ‘Smooth’ on the team — it’s like, ‘No, I’m not believing you’re from Arkansas. You got to be from New Jersey or whatever. All that — you got that bop, bop, bop. You didn’t learn that s**t in Arkansas,'” Bron revealed.
The NBA has never had an abundance of high-level white players, but Steve Nash is definitely one of the all-time greats. There are plenty of people who feel he shouldn’t have won back-to-back MVPs. They also feel he benefitted from some privilege when he was named the coach of the Super Team Brooklyn Nets with no prior experience.
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But when a white baller outplays the Black players of the NBA, his value to the league and non-Black fans increase exponentially. Nash was one of those guys. Larry Bird. Chris Mullin. Dirk Nowitzki. Steve Nash. Now, Luka, Joker and Austin Reaves.
