Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash had an illustrious 18 seasons in the NBA, winning a pair of MVP awards, earning eight All-Star nods, finishing his career with a free-throw percentage over 90 percent (the second-highest in NBA history), and leading the league in assists five times.
Since Nash retired in 2015, the game has changed drastically. One of the trailblazers for the change in how basketball is played is the man Nash trails in all-time free-throw percentage: Golden State Warriors future Hall of Famer Stephen Curry.
Nash mentioned to Curry on the Mind The Game podcast, a show he hosts with fellow future Hall of Famer LeBron James, that Curry’s game actually played a part in him deciding to retire from the game of basketball.
“You might know this, but you deserve a little bit of credit for putting me out to pasture,” Nash said.
“It’s not something I like to talk about. We went to play these guys preseason, like, Ontario, California, or somewhere, I don’t know if you remember this,” Nash continued. “We came out, I’m guarding Steph. I think they put up like 50 in the first quarter, maybe it was 45, but it felt like a 50-piece. He’s running everywhere, I’m like, ‘back is broke, everything’s jacked,’ I couldn’t have stopped him if I were 100 percent. And I’m like dragging around [Warriors head coach] Stevie Kerr’s putting me in every action, I’m looking over at Steve like, ‘come on Stevie, I think that we know.'”
Nash later revealed more of the timeline regarding his decision to leave the game of basketball after the game.
“Like three more, four more days of thinking about it, I was like, yeah,” said Nash while shaking his head, eliciting quite the laugh from James and Curry. “I think it’s time, and that was it.”
Nash played his final game at the end of the 2013-14 campaign, and Curry won his first MVP award and NBA title the next season. Both will forever be remembered as two of the greatest point guards the game has ever seen, but Curry certainly appeared to take the torch from Nash and lead the next generation on the hardwood.
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