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Commentary: Nash knows most valuable lessons
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Saturday, May 28, 2005
PHOENIX — John and Jean Nash are firm believers that everything you need to form your character, you acquire before you can read the black-and-white words on a page.
After their firstborn, Stephen, came into the world, they became attuned to the ways, both subtle and systematic, in which other parents in their community in Johannesburg, South Africa, were passing down the national DNA of apartheid.
The Nashes could see clearly what they were up against, trying to raise an open-minded child in a narrow-minded society.
"You do most of your teaching to kids when they're 5, 6, 7," John Nash said the other day by telephone. "That's when they learn you don't tell lies. You don't cheat. You don't judge people by the color of their skin or their religion."
In Johannesburg, the Nashes saw parents teaching their children that black people were inferior, the better to perpetuate a way of life that John and Jean found repugnant. So when Stephen was a toddler, they packed up their lives and moved to Canada.
John and Jean Nash were willing to go that far so that their children's world wouldn't be colored by prejudice.
The first of their three children grew up to be a terrific basketball player, which is how the Nashes came to a find out, sadly, that there's nowhere you can go, really, to escape race-based ignorance.
By the time he was a senior in high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Steve Nash had begun dreaming of playing in the NBA. To that end, he wrote to college basketball coaches in the United States, trying to drum up interest in his talents.
One of the letters arrived on the desk of then-Pepperdine coach Tom Asbury, who years later would relate to Sports Illustrated that dispatches such as Nash's arrived by the dozens.
"For a white guard from Canada," he said, "you're probably not going to do a lot of follow-up."
The white guard from Canada ended up at Santa Clara (Calif.) University, the only school that offered to bankroll his basketball education. From there, he surmounted the odds and the stereotypes to make it to the NBA.
This year, his ninth in the league, the Suns' 6-foot-3 point guard was voted the MVP, edging out Shaquille O'Neal after posting the highest assists average (11.5) in the NBA in 10 years. The Suns were 60-15 in games Nash played and 2-5 without him.
A stinging suggestion
And yet some people couldn't see his quickness and creativity and optic acuity for the color of his skin.
It was suggested in print by a South Florida columnist — and seconded by others — that voters might have been predisposed to choose "the little white underdog" over the giant black center.
Nash's parents were distraught. Hadn't they traveled almost to the ends of the Earth to create a colorblind world for their children?
The suggestion that race influenced the voting stung them worse than any slur could. It felt like a repudiation of their principles and a derogation of their son's achievement.
"It was in bad taste," John Nash, a former professional soccer player, said from the family's home in Victoria. "What a waste of energy, a waste of time, to think like that."
The controversy evoked something he had told his children when they were growing up: Hate doesn't destroy the person that is hated. It destroys the hater.
The controversy prompted his wife to check her calendar. It is 2005, right?
"I really couldn't believe it," Jean Nash said. "I thought, in this day and age, why would they bring race up? I thought it was a terrible thing to do. It means Stephen has to keep proving himself. It's ridiculous."
Their son took the slight in stride, his reaction further proof that his peripheral vision really is extraordinary. It extends way beyond the boundaries of the basketball court.
"That's OK," Nash said Thursday after practice. The Suns, down 0-2, will play the Spurs tonight in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals at San Antonio. "That doesn't bother me. I think that's a valid issue to raise. I'm not sure that (race) played a role in the voting. But, I mean, I'm not opposed to somebody thinking that."
Nash realizes that just wishing society was colorblind doesn't make it so. He appreciates that we live in a world in which wherever two or more ethnicities are gathered there is a potential for prejudice.
He understands why the Pacers' Jermaine O'Neal might question whether there's a racial element to the NBA owners' drive to impose an age limit on players entering the league.
He is not blind to how it can happen that a cousin of the Suns' Amare Stoudemire was granted a new trial last year in Orlando after a defense attorney admitted his racial prejudice might have played a role in his client's conviction.
Nash is in a league in which three quarters of the players are black. He has seen prejudice from both sides now.
"Yeah," Nash said. "Definitely." Then he added, "I think most people probably overdo that."
An uncomplicated life
Nash lives his life the way he plays basketball. He doesn't try to complicate things.
The 31-year-old is of a different century but the same mind as the 19th-century American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who once wrote, "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."
Nash stands on terra firma, not pretense.
"He's a simple guy," said teammate Leandro Barbosa, a second-year guard from Brazil. The warmth in Barbosa's voice left no doubt that he meant it as a sincere compliment.
"It's difficult in this business to be a simple guy," Barbosa explained. "We make a lot of money. You look at a lot of players with the diamonds and the designer suits. Steve isn't like that. He wears normal jeans. Normal shoes. I think this is nice."
A beautiful friendship was forged shortly after Nash signed with the Suns as a free agent last summer when he made the effort to converse with Barbosa in Spanish. One day he asked him if he wanted to come over and watch a soccer match on TV.
Barbosa, an undistinguished reserve as a rookie, was used to hanging out with the team trainers, not the marquee player. That's the way of the NBA caste system. That's how it used to be on the Suns.
Nash changed the locker room culture simply by being himself.
"He's nice to everyone," Barbosa said, emphasizing the last word. "He's a special guy."
Affectation is like Hugo Boss; it's a label you'll never see hung on Nash.
In December, the Santa Clara basketball team played a road game at Arizona State. Nash met the players for dinner the night before. At one point during the meal, Broncos coach Dick Davey glanced over at Nash, who was engrossed in conversation with one of the Broncos.
The college kid, mind you, was the one doing all the talking.
Davey smiled to himself. Nash's hair and popularity and bank account have grown considerably since Davey coached him. But in the ways that really matter he hasn't changed one bit.
"He's a door opener for people who are supposedly below him," Davey said.
Hundred-dollar haircuts and fancy things don't impress Nash much. He broke down recently and traded in his soccer-mom SUV for a Mercedes sports car, but only after his father convinced him that he deserved it.
"He was almost embarrassed to buy this car when there are people starving in the world," John Nash said. "He kind of feels like the fame and fortune's not real."
Or at least not real important.
"Things don't mean that much to Stephen," his mother said. "He could live in a barn and he wouldn't care. People mean more to him than things."
Thinking of others
With every cut to the basket, every assist he carves out of the thin air, Nash is engraving the family name in NBA lore. The kid from Canada is keeping company these days with the Bob Cousys and Oscar Robertsons and Magic Johnsons of the league.
"I kind of laugh at it," Nash said. "I don't see those names and go, 'Oh, yeah, I'm in their company.' That's not really the way I think."
His parents couldn't be prouder. They feel like architects who designed a house but never could have imagined how beautiful it would end up looking on the inside.
A few years ago, John Nash said, he counted up all the money his son had given to charity. It added up to a half-million dollars. He called Stephen and told him, "Do you know how much money you've given away?"
When Nash heard the figure, his response was, "Dad, think how much more we can give away to people." A gold nugget-sized lump formed in John Nash's throat.
"I thought, 'My son has passed me as a human being,' " John Nash said. "It was humbling."
The other day, Steve Nash's mother was in a salon in Victoria getting a pedicure. There was another woman seated next to her getting her toenails done. At one point, the young woman working on the other customer bemoaned the dearth of prominent athletes who hail from Victoria.
"You're kidding, right?" her client said. "Don't you know about Steve Nash?" The customer turned to Jean Nash. "You know who Steve Nash is, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah, I do," Nash's mom demurely replied.
"I had a smile from ear-to-ear," she said. It's hard to blame her.
Original Article
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Saturday, May 28, 2005
PHOENIX — John and Jean Nash are firm believers that everything you need to form your character, you acquire before you can read the black-and-white words on a page.
After their firstborn, Stephen, came into the world, they became attuned to the ways, both subtle and systematic, in which other parents in their community in Johannesburg, South Africa, were passing down the national DNA of apartheid.
The Nashes could see clearly what they were up against, trying to raise an open-minded child in a narrow-minded society.
"You do most of your teaching to kids when they're 5, 6, 7," John Nash said the other day by telephone. "That's when they learn you don't tell lies. You don't cheat. You don't judge people by the color of their skin or their religion."
In Johannesburg, the Nashes saw parents teaching their children that black people were inferior, the better to perpetuate a way of life that John and Jean found repugnant. So when Stephen was a toddler, they packed up their lives and moved to Canada.
John and Jean Nash were willing to go that far so that their children's world wouldn't be colored by prejudice.
The first of their three children grew up to be a terrific basketball player, which is how the Nashes came to a find out, sadly, that there's nowhere you can go, really, to escape race-based ignorance.
By the time he was a senior in high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Steve Nash had begun dreaming of playing in the NBA. To that end, he wrote to college basketball coaches in the United States, trying to drum up interest in his talents.
One of the letters arrived on the desk of then-Pepperdine coach Tom Asbury, who years later would relate to Sports Illustrated that dispatches such as Nash's arrived by the dozens.
"For a white guard from Canada," he said, "you're probably not going to do a lot of follow-up."
The white guard from Canada ended up at Santa Clara (Calif.) University, the only school that offered to bankroll his basketball education. From there, he surmounted the odds and the stereotypes to make it to the NBA.
This year, his ninth in the league, the Suns' 6-foot-3 point guard was voted the MVP, edging out Shaquille O'Neal after posting the highest assists average (11.5) in the NBA in 10 years. The Suns were 60-15 in games Nash played and 2-5 without him.
A stinging suggestion
And yet some people couldn't see his quickness and creativity and optic acuity for the color of his skin.
It was suggested in print by a South Florida columnist — and seconded by others — that voters might have been predisposed to choose "the little white underdog" over the giant black center.
Nash's parents were distraught. Hadn't they traveled almost to the ends of the Earth to create a colorblind world for their children?
The suggestion that race influenced the voting stung them worse than any slur could. It felt like a repudiation of their principles and a derogation of their son's achievement.
"It was in bad taste," John Nash, a former professional soccer player, said from the family's home in Victoria. "What a waste of energy, a waste of time, to think like that."
The controversy evoked something he had told his children when they were growing up: Hate doesn't destroy the person that is hated. It destroys the hater.
The controversy prompted his wife to check her calendar. It is 2005, right?
"I really couldn't believe it," Jean Nash said. "I thought, in this day and age, why would they bring race up? I thought it was a terrible thing to do. It means Stephen has to keep proving himself. It's ridiculous."
Their son took the slight in stride, his reaction further proof that his peripheral vision really is extraordinary. It extends way beyond the boundaries of the basketball court.
"That's OK," Nash said Thursday after practice. The Suns, down 0-2, will play the Spurs tonight in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals at San Antonio. "That doesn't bother me. I think that's a valid issue to raise. I'm not sure that (race) played a role in the voting. But, I mean, I'm not opposed to somebody thinking that."
Nash realizes that just wishing society was colorblind doesn't make it so. He appreciates that we live in a world in which wherever two or more ethnicities are gathered there is a potential for prejudice.
He understands why the Pacers' Jermaine O'Neal might question whether there's a racial element to the NBA owners' drive to impose an age limit on players entering the league.
He is not blind to how it can happen that a cousin of the Suns' Amare Stoudemire was granted a new trial last year in Orlando after a defense attorney admitted his racial prejudice might have played a role in his client's conviction.
Nash is in a league in which three quarters of the players are black. He has seen prejudice from both sides now.
"Yeah," Nash said. "Definitely." Then he added, "I think most people probably overdo that."
An uncomplicated life
Nash lives his life the way he plays basketball. He doesn't try to complicate things.
The 31-year-old is of a different century but the same mind as the 19th-century American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who once wrote, "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."
Nash stands on terra firma, not pretense.
"He's a simple guy," said teammate Leandro Barbosa, a second-year guard from Brazil. The warmth in Barbosa's voice left no doubt that he meant it as a sincere compliment.
"It's difficult in this business to be a simple guy," Barbosa explained. "We make a lot of money. You look at a lot of players with the diamonds and the designer suits. Steve isn't like that. He wears normal jeans. Normal shoes. I think this is nice."
A beautiful friendship was forged shortly after Nash signed with the Suns as a free agent last summer when he made the effort to converse with Barbosa in Spanish. One day he asked him if he wanted to come over and watch a soccer match on TV.
Barbosa, an undistinguished reserve as a rookie, was used to hanging out with the team trainers, not the marquee player. That's the way of the NBA caste system. That's how it used to be on the Suns.
Nash changed the locker room culture simply by being himself.
"He's nice to everyone," Barbosa said, emphasizing the last word. "He's a special guy."
Affectation is like Hugo Boss; it's a label you'll never see hung on Nash.
In December, the Santa Clara basketball team played a road game at Arizona State. Nash met the players for dinner the night before. At one point during the meal, Broncos coach Dick Davey glanced over at Nash, who was engrossed in conversation with one of the Broncos.
The college kid, mind you, was the one doing all the talking.
Davey smiled to himself. Nash's hair and popularity and bank account have grown considerably since Davey coached him. But in the ways that really matter he hasn't changed one bit.
"He's a door opener for people who are supposedly below him," Davey said.
Hundred-dollar haircuts and fancy things don't impress Nash much. He broke down recently and traded in his soccer-mom SUV for a Mercedes sports car, but only after his father convinced him that he deserved it.
"He was almost embarrassed to buy this car when there are people starving in the world," John Nash said. "He kind of feels like the fame and fortune's not real."
Or at least not real important.
"Things don't mean that much to Stephen," his mother said. "He could live in a barn and he wouldn't care. People mean more to him than things."
Thinking of others
With every cut to the basket, every assist he carves out of the thin air, Nash is engraving the family name in NBA lore. The kid from Canada is keeping company these days with the Bob Cousys and Oscar Robertsons and Magic Johnsons of the league.
"I kind of laugh at it," Nash said. "I don't see those names and go, 'Oh, yeah, I'm in their company.' That's not really the way I think."
His parents couldn't be prouder. They feel like architects who designed a house but never could have imagined how beautiful it would end up looking on the inside.
A few years ago, John Nash said, he counted up all the money his son had given to charity. It added up to a half-million dollars. He called Stephen and told him, "Do you know how much money you've given away?"
When Nash heard the figure, his response was, "Dad, think how much more we can give away to people." A gold nugget-sized lump formed in John Nash's throat.
"I thought, 'My son has passed me as a human being,' " John Nash said. "It was humbling."
The other day, Steve Nash's mother was in a salon in Victoria getting a pedicure. There was another woman seated next to her getting her toenails done. At one point, the young woman working on the other customer bemoaned the dearth of prominent athletes who hail from Victoria.
"You're kidding, right?" her client said. "Don't you know about Steve Nash?" The customer turned to Jean Nash. "You know who Steve Nash is, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah, I do," Nash's mom demurely replied.
"I had a smile from ear-to-ear," she said. It's hard to blame her.
Original Article
