Free Steve Nash's Jumper

In a basketball world divided by allegiances to Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and Kevin Durant, Steve Nash provides an incredibly accommodating middle ground. Basketball fans of every ilk can get behind such a noble combination of altruism and flash. Even at age 38, Nash still holds a post as the patron saint of ball movement, and he figures to serve as the message board GM's solution of choice this offseason as he enters unrestricted free agency. 

Yet Nash's unique standing—and his status as a contemporary great without a title to his name—compels basketball fans everywhere to not only wish him well, but wish him into a situation with legitimate championship viability.

As Ethan Sherwood Strauss already articulated in this space, the "Free Steve Nash" movement is a very real thing, and the response to Nash's candid comments on The Dan Patrick Show on Thursday morning sparked many a daydream featuring the spectacular playmaker's immediate future.

Nash has played with some great teammates (Dirk Nowitzki, Amar'e Stoudemire, Shawn Marion) over the course of his career, but when he specifically entertains the possibility of joining the Miami Heat in the offseason, one can almost hear his freedom fighters swoon. Playing alongside scorers like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh would be a shot creator's nirvana, and with Nash, the aesthetic pleasures would almost trump the basketball benefits. It could be an idyllic pairing and exactly the kind of high-powered offense that such a stellar playmaker deserves.

But in hypothetically pairing with players like James and Wade, we would also be granted the possibility of seeing a different shade of Nash. Although the Suns have been one of the most effective teams in the NBA since the All-Star break, Nash kills himself nightly to extract points from the rest of Phoenix's roster. He spends the entire game probing and creating, leaving precious little time to display the underrated scoring skill we used to see in explosive bursts. Some of that is a natural byproduct of his age (even on a more talented team, Nash is still getting slightly slower as the months fly by), but the lack of shot creators around him has taken a sure toll on Nash's scoring opportunities.

As the season drags on and opposing defenses hone in on his movements more than ever, Nash's scoring output continues to slip. His one-point, 15-assist effort against the Clippers on Wednesday night serves as one particularly extreme example, but Nash has scored in single-digits in five of his last eight games, and truthfully hasn't been himself for the last two seasons. The trademark efficiency remains, but the opportunities to exploit swiveled heads and hesitant rotations have all but evaporated since Stoudemire's departure, leaving one of the league's most potent shooters with a disappointing dearth of open jumpers.

Watching Nash run a fast break with James on one wing and Wade on the other would be breathtaking, but we should be equally spellbound by the idea that Nash could return to his proper potency as a complementary scorer. That skill alone wouldn't radically transform the half-court offense of the Heat or any other team, but it could be a splendid callback to a buried element of a beloved star's game.