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Sporting News, The, Dec 6, 2004 by Sean Deveney

Strange transition. One day you're an unencumbered bachelor living in Dallas, playing with the team you joined when you were an apple-cheeked 24-year-old the team you helped lead from the tumult of 20 wins to the triumph of 60, and ... well, just like that, you're 30, the father of two, living in Phoenix and the veteran leader of a bunch of whippersnappers who were in the tater tot line at the high school cafeteria back when you were starting your NBA career. Steve Nash, this is your life.

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In July, Nash left the Mavericks after signing a five-year free-agent contract worth more than $60 million with the Suns. He then took over the role of team leader with his young Phoenix teammates, helping build chemistry by putting together preseason workouts in September. To top that, he watched his longtime girlfriend, Alejandra Amarilla, give birth to twin daughters in October and says the only time he gets regular sleep now is when Phoenix is on the road.

"When you think about it, it is really weird," Nash says. "I was just part of a bunch of guys in Dallas who came in together and helped change things. Now, it's a different role for me, all of a sudden. I can handle it, I understand it, but it is definitely different. I'm the old man here."

Nash certainly has handled it. He has been the driving force behind a Suns team that is the youngest in the NBA (average age: 24.3 years) and has undergone almost as many fundamental changes recently as Nash. Last January, the Suns made an eight-player trade with the Knicks that sent franchise cornerstone Stephon Marbury to New York and helped Phoenix save more than $30 million in salaries and luxury tax penalties. Marbury is an All-Star talent, but he is a halfcourt, pick-and-roll point guard. The Suns had a young core of Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson and Amare Stoudemire, athletic players who work best in a fast-paced transition game.

Nash's niche always has been his ability to push the ball--when he was in college at Santa Clara, he would dribble a tennis ball around campus to hone his ballhandling. That skill made Nash the natural centerpiece of the Suns' free-agent plans. What the team couldn't say when it pulled off the Marbury trade was that it did so with Nash in mind. When NBA teams were allowed to contact free agents on July 1, the Suns made it a priority to be the first to contact Nash.

"With the athletes we already had on the team, we just needed a guy to get things going," Stoudemire says. "There is nobody better in the league at that than him."

Stoudemire should know. With Nash pushing the pace, the third-year forward is scoring a career-high 26.0 points per game. Stoudemire has honed his jumper, but the key to his 56.2 percent shooting has been the setups Nash delivers on the fast break--few big men are better at running the floor and finishing than Stoudemire. The Nash-Stoudemire combination has led to a scoring boom in Phoenix. Scoring has picked around the league, but no team has made a more thorough commitment to offense than the Suns.

Because of Nash's speed and ballhandling, he is an unconventional point guard, and the Suns use an unconventional lineup. Quentin Richardson is the shooting guard, with Johnson, Marion and Stoudemire up front, essentially leaving the team without a center. Defense? Rebounding? Yeah, those are problems. But Phoenix also is exploiting its scoring strength, leading the league in points per game at 106.4 after averaging 94.2 last season.

"We don't want to water down our product," says coach Mike D'Antoni. "They're going to out-rebound us. I know that. But that does not mean we are going to lose. We could go out and get a stiff who can't play but can get us some rebounds. But then we'll just get beat because we don't have enough shooting. I would rather have the scoring and the uptempo style. I think guys like playing this way, and people like watching it."

That's a concept NBA teams seem to be grasping. Defense still is dominant, and the league has not quite reformed to its high-scoring heyday, but through the first four weeks of the season, offense has made a nifty comeback after more than a decade of decline. Last year, teams averaged 93.4 points per game--this season, they are averaging 95.3 points.

The most obvious reason for the bump in scoring is a tweak in the league's rules. In the offseason, the NBA decreed that referees would start whistling defenders who hand-check offensive players above the free throw line, a practice perfected by the defending champion Pistons. The result has been a jump from 48.4 free throws per game to 53.8, as well as a clearer path for slashing wing men who cut to the basket. That helps explain the outstanding early performances of players such as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen and Dwyane Wade.

But focusing on the rule change and general scoring trends obscures more fundamental changes. Several teams have made shifts in philosophy that have resulted in big jumps in scoring--eight teams are averaging 98 points or more, compared with just four last season. For years, coaches have been hesitant to allow players to fast-break, choosing instead to limit mistakes by ordering halfcourt plays. That is changing, thanks in part to the success former Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown had last season in combining solid pressure defense with fast break offense. Tougher defense also is forcing coaches to gamble on getting easy offense in transition.

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Sporting News, The, Dec 6, 2004 by Sean Deveney

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