Aging Nash is riding into the L.A. sunset
TORONTO — Steve Nash looked like a theatre director, in a black wool turtleneck under a black suit.
He stood in the corner of the Los Angeles Lakers locker-room, which is the smaller of the two stages they perform on.
His locker was next to Kobe Bryant’s, across the room from Metta World Peace’s and Dwight Howard’s and Pau Gasol’s.
Nash’s hair was combed back in its youthful lopsided fashion. He had an organic salad and three bottles of water on the bench behind him. The Lakers had lost to Toronto, 108-103. Just another day.
“I thought our effort was very spotty, a little bit lazy, cutting corners,” said Nash, 38. “I know we flew across the country and played a very early game by West Coast time, but for me that’s not an excuse, that’s a sign. You’ve got to come ready to play early and I didn’t feel like we came ready to play.”
He was right. The Lakers fell behind 25-9 to start the game and spent the rest of the afternoon bumping into one another as they tried to come back.
Howard picked up two technicals for the first time in his career and was tossed. The previously forgotten Gasol was terrific in his absence, which was a welcome change that didn’t change much.
Bryant looked like a 34-year-old in his 17th season who is being played far too many hard minutes and who was at the arena shooting nearly three hours before the game. (He arrived from the hotel in a cab.) He hit the front rim over and over, shot 10-for-32, with six turnovers, and stood there asking for blame.
He has been surprisingly efficient this season, but this was a bad one.
The Lakers defence, meanwhile, was basically a series of stationary posts of varying height. Nash, our boy from Victoria, got picked on defensively by Landry Fields and Jose Calderon, and was otherwise OK — 16 points, nine assists, three turnovers, 5-of-11 shooting and so forth.
But after he opened the scoring on a nifty backdoor layup, the Lakers never led again. They are 17-23 with half a season gone — and they are nowhere close to being a good team.
“I don’t know if it’s hit home enough that we’ve got to make ground up and we’ve got to do it quickly,” Nash said.
So, Nash talked about sticking to the system instead of abandoning it too early and Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni talked about the ball sticking on offence. When asked what it was like to play with Kobe, who is quite fond of having the ball in his hands, Nash offered a diplomatic solution, as he tends to.
“Obviously, Kobe is used to playing one-on-one, but I’ve got to say, it’s been a pleasure to play with Kobe,” Nash said.
“I know he’s extremely competitive, he prepares, he fights and I think there’s room for both styles at times. I think he can really benefit and we can take a lot of pressure off him if we just run the system and he doesn’t have to come down and go against the other team all the time.
“But if we don’t get to our spots and take care of the details offensively, he’s going to be stuck getting the ball with a guy on him, the whole team loaded up and everyone standing and watching him. And it’s not going to yield high percentages for our team when he has to take on everybody.”
It’s not a fight. Kobe says of Nash: “I love him. Like, I wish we could have played together when we were both a little younger. He’s incredible. ”
But it’s a debate and nobody is too comfortable, even if it’s the defence that needs more work than anything, which the stiffer, smaller Howard can’t or won’t fix.
Nash, for his part, admitted he isn’t all the way back after sitting out for nearly two months with a shin fracture and nerve problems. He looks old more often now, rather than just slower than some of the other guys. He secondguesses his decisions when watching film and attributes it to rust. It’s not what Nash expected when he signed with L.A. last summer.
Nash said he was close to becoming a Raptor, but he also admitted he might have retired, too, “if I didn’t like the situation and if I didn’t have that proximity to the kids, there was a chance” — which would seem to have eliminated Toronto.
That doesn’t matter now, really; the Raptors are on another, younger path and Nash is on his. He would do it again.
“I realize I have a long life ahead of me and this opportunity allows me to see the kids (twin girls, Lola and Bella, and son, Matteo) and do what I love to do,” he says.
The rest of the time, he says, he is trying to maximize whatever he has left.