Finalists for basketball hall include Canadian guard Nash
Two-time MVP could become this country’s first hall entrant when list is released in April
It is a storybook tale really, a lightly regarded teenager rising from nowhere to reach the pinnacle of his profession through a steadfast and unwavering belief that yes, he could make it and damn the odds.
Or, as Steve Nash put it on Saturday, proof that “passion and belief are monsters.”
Nash, the South African-born, Victoriaraised, socially conscious basketball star is a finalist for 2018 induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, an improbable end to an improbable journey for the six-foot-three point guard.
Nash, who had to sell himself as a high schooler simply to get a scholarship offer from tiny Santa Clara University, will get a chance to become Canada’s first Hall of Fame entrant when the final induction list is released in April.
Nash joins eight others for possible induction into the Springfield, Mass., shrine from the North American category.
Ex-NBAers Ray Allen, Maurice Cheeks, Grant Hill, Jason Kidd and Chris Webber join coaches Rudy Tomjanovich and college icon Lefty Driesell and former referee Hugh Evans are on the ballot.
It will take 18 votes from an anonymous 24-person honours committee to gain a spot in the Hall of Fame. Inductees will be announced March 31 at the NCAA Final Four, and there is no limit on the number of entrants who will make it to the induction ceremony in early September.
For Nash, 44, to even be considered for this induction is the culmination of a trek that began when he was a high school player in Victoria, sending out home- made videotapes to U.S. college coaches in the hopes of earning some kind of scholarship.
He parlayed that into one of the best careers in NBA history — by far the best of any Canadian player. He was a two-time NBA MVP, retired in 2015 with the thirdmost assists in league history (10,335) and helped revolutionize the game with the Phoenix Suns’ “Seven Seconds or Less” offence in the mid-2000s.
That Nash and Kidd would be up for induction in the same year is a testament to their ability to dominate a game as passers as much as scorers.
“Enhancers of the game, and made everyone else better than they probably were,” hall of famer James Worthy told reporters. “Jason Kidd had a flair that was like Magic Johnson; he just had angles. And Steve Nash was the same way.”
Aside from the North American male category, the hall of fame honours committee nominated three players and a team from the women’s category.
Kim Mulkey, head coach at Baylor University; two-time WNBA champion Katie Smith; four-time WNBA champion Tina Thompson and the Wayland Baptist University team, which won 131 straight games in the late-1950s, are also up for induction in September.