[grndmstr_c]

Originally Posted by Epitome22

Last year everyone blamed it on the fact that he had such an amazing supporting cast, and that the REAL MVP was Amare Stoudamire. After he plays a full season without Stoudamire, He has an even better season and the Suns still had a good year. Does anyone want to talk about the amazing talents of Boris Diaw, & other chumps that suddenly become good when playing with a PG who knows how to run an offense?

Steve Nash played an entire season without the team's most talented & gifted player. The other Star on the team, Shawn Marion, is completely incapable of creating his own shot & relies on assists to aquire the majority of his field goals. Other Suns stalwarts are a former point guard playing center(Diaw), and a 10th man on a good team playing Small Forward (Raja Bell) and with that cast, the Suns win 54 games, thanks to Nash.

This season, Nash had career-highs in points (18.8 points per game), rebounds (4.2 per game), field goal percentage (51.2 percent) and free throw percentage (92.1 percent -- best in the league). He was also the league-leader in assists (10.5) and shot nearly 50 percent from three-point range.

Some other choice Nash facts from 82games.com

Not only was his FT% .913% a league best, but he also had the fourth highest Clutch FT Percentage in the league (.923%) Dirk was 13th.

Four of the top 20 most effective pass-scorer combos in the league feature a man named Steve Nash.

The two players in the league most dependent upon a key assist in order to score a bucket both play with Steve Nash (Kurt Thomas & Boris Diaw)

In the passers most reliant on one scorer measure (I.E. easy assist gravy train player) Nash, who led the league in assists, and plays with multiple players who are dependent on him to score, did not even register. Basically, he has no gravy train player (ala Stockton to Malone) to beef up his assists, he spreads the ball around evenly to a bevy of mediocre players, who become better when playing with him.

"Nash has also led from his point-guard position the three greatest offenses since the NBA began tracking turnovers (2003-04 Dallas, 2004-05 Phoenix and 2002-03 Dallas), as measured by differential between the team's Offensive Rating and league average. Here is how I have them, defining possessions as .96*(FGA + (.44*FTA) - OR + TO):

Team Year ORtg League Diff
--------------------------------------
Dallas 2003-04 114.1 104.2 9.9
Phoenix 2004-05 116.6 107.4 9.2
Dallas 2001-02 114.0 105.8 8.2
Denver 1981-82 116.3 108.5 7.8
Chicago 1996-97 115.8 108.0 7.8
Dallas 2002-03 112.7 104.9 7.8 "

"An 82games study last year showed Stoudemire, along with Marion, was one of the NBA players most dependent on a single teammate (Nash, natch) for an assist. How much credit does Nash deserve for Stoudemire going from promising youngster to MVP candidate? A lot, I would say."

"If we look at all these different players, some very clear patterns emerge. For the most part, players tend to shoot better when Nash is on the court. The more important and more subtle effect, however, is that players slashed their turnover rate. (No regular improved their turnover rate alongside Nash the last two seasons; Jacobsen's was unchanged.) As I touched on in the discussion of Stoudemire, the reason for this is that Nash delivers the ball to players in position to shoot and without them having to do virtually any work for their shot besides getting open, as opposed to shooting off of a dribble or two."

"If there is a common thread amongst Nash's recent teams, besides their ultra-efficient offenses, it is that they rarely if ever turn the ball over. The 2002-03 and 2003-04 Mavericks recorded the two lowest turnover rates since the league began tracking turnovers in 1973-74, and the 2001-02 incarnation ranks fourth. (The 2004-05 Suns are also in the top 25 of all time.)"

Since this will be heated, I'll just go ahead and say it. Even accepting for argument's sake that Nash, while great these past 2 seasons has none the less been overrated; In My Opinion, in the last 2 seasons, Nash>Dirk

I appreciate the stats even if I disagree with your conclusion. Still, a few things I'd like to add to the conversation:

1) Re: Marion's and Diaw's supposed dependence on Nash for their superior statistics, the assisted fg% argument kind of falls apart once you realize that both guys had a superior efg% with Nash on the bench this year than they did with Nash on the floor (see 82games' player pair stats for the relevant data).

2) Re: clutch play, it's worth noting that Dirk holds a sizable +/- and winning percentage advantage over Nash in this respect going off 82games, stats. Nash's on-court +/- in clutch situations was +6.4 per 48, and his winning percentage was 52.5% (21-19). Dirk was at +16.6 and 68.3% (28-13), respectively. That clutch winning percentage, by the way, is the best of any of the MVP candidates, Billups included.

3) Regarding TO's, it should be noted that not only was Dirk's personal TO ratio considerably better than Nash's (see knickerblogger.net), his net TO +/- was superior to Nash's as well (with Dirk off the court the Mavs turned the ball over 16 times per 48, and with him on the court only 12 times per 48, whereas Nash was at 13 off-court and 12 on-court; see 82games for those numbers).