Obscured by the Ottawa Senators’ post-season aspirations (expectations?) and the Toronto Raptors’ post-season ambitions (hallucinations?) have been the post-season contributions to the Phoenix Suns’ scintillations by the finest basketball player in this country’s history.
We tend to take Steve Nash for granted nowadays. We underrate him. And we shouldn’t.
Nash, see, has been the NBA’s most impressive player this post-season. The B.C. native has led the Phoenix Suns past Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers, and oddsmakers figure he’ll do the same in the next roundagainst Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs.
Nash is setting playoff records with his assist totals. Because he has a full complement of healthy teammates accompanying him this post-season, unlike last year, it may just turn out that he’ll garner a championship ring for the first time but not the MVP award, which he received the past two seasons. That, it appears, will go to the Dallas
Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki.
“It’d be a bit of a jab if I didn’t win the award, but I wouldn’t care,” Nash said. “It’d be nice to win again but, if I don’t, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with all the publicity.”
• Oddsmakers favour the Nets by seven points to defeat (and eliminate) the Raptors in New Jersey tonight … I suspect T.J. Ford and Jose Calderon both will recover enough to play point guard for the Raps tonight but I can’t stop laughing at the homers suggesting Darrick Martin could replace them adequately. He couldn’t. He’s a has-been who’s stuck with the Raps only because he’s a friend of (and locker-room snitch for) coach Sam Mitchell… How is it that Mitchell gets praised by the homers for starting Morris Peterson the other night? I mean, wasn’t the same Mo Pete in Mitchell’s doghouse most of the year? … Portland’s Brandon Roy was the landslide choice as the NBA’s top rookie, but the Raps’ Andrea Bargnani gotone first-place tally from an irresponsible voter who, I hear, serves as the Raps’ TV voice and whose initials are C.S … And why did that voice call the Nets’ Vince Carter “awful” the other night? I mean, didn’tV.C. score a game-high 30 points? The adjective probably would have been more applicable to the Raps’ Chris Bosh, but somehow I can’t imagine C.S. calling C.B. awful. Not until Bosh joins another team, anyway.
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