by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni
At 37 years old, Steve Nash put the finishing touches on yet another assist title last night, his 5th in 7 years. And he plans on pulling off this baffling magic act for the next three years.
There’s just no telling in which city Nash’s act will take place going forward.
The Phoenix Suns failed to qualify for the Playoffs this season, a year after nearly making it the NBA Finals, and are clearly in rebuilding mode. It becomes harder and harder to envision Steve Nash wasting away the twilight of his career in orange and purple.
For the time being, Nash is saying all the right things about wanting to ride it out in Arizona, but also won’t rule out the possibility of playing elsewhere.
From SRI and ESPN:
If he’s considered finishing his career somewhere other than Phoenix: “I don’t know but I want to be a Sun. I don’t know what the scenario may be, and I’d never say never or be foolish enough to say there wasn’t any circumstances. Or who knows, maybe the team will want to move in a different direction, so I have to be open to that if that time came. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve been here a long time, because we’ve had a lot of success, I’ve got a touch of the old school in me. But I don’t really feel like playing with anybody else. I want to play with the Suns, and I want to get back to that place we were last year and try to turn the corner and get to the Finals and win it.”
“I have no reason to believe that I won’t be here next year. [Playing somewhere else is] something I really haven’t even thought about.” Suns coach Alvin Gentry, for his part, echoes that approach. Yet while Nash continues to insist that he will not push for a trade — even after a season he openly describes as “very tiring, draining and disappointing” — multiple sources close to the situation told ESPN.com that questions in the Suns’ locker room about “what’s going to happen with Steve,” as one source described it, have been frequent as the season wound down.
When they start playing hoops in Phoenix again, whenever that may be, the questions about Steve Nash’s future will only continue to grow in intensity.
