Mike D'Antoni Effect Overstated in Steve Nash's Success

In 2008, after watching scrub Chris Duhon slice the Warriors defense for a Knick record 22 assists, the esteemed Bill Simmons had seen enough. He was convinced that Nash was perhaps the most undeserving two-time MVP in NBA history. In his view, you could not—in good conscience—vault a man (Nash) into super-duper legendary status if another man (D'Antoni) was mostly responsible for his success in the first place. Simmons rants:

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...Mike D'Antoni, the Coors Field of coaches, the guy who screwed up our beloved offensive numbers a little too much, swung consecutive MVP votes and turned a borderline All-Star into an NBA icon. Had he taken Chicago's job last summer, we'd be calling Derrick Rose "Magic 2.0" and Ben Gordon would be averaging 29 a game on his way to juggling monster free agent offers next summer. Play a few seasons of SSOL ball, and people will eventually believe that you're better offensively than you really are. Coach Mike has the magic touch.

One of those players was a forever-grateful Nash, who was slightly better than Mark Price and now goes down for eternity as an all-time great. Another is Duhon, who gets to hold his own record in something...

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On the contrary, the figure above tell us a drastically different story. The picture plots assists per 36 minutes in each season of Steve Nash and Jason Kidd's career. What is remarkable about Steve Nash is his steady rise during the first eight years of his career. In his second season, Nash averaged nearly 3.6 assists less than Jason Kidd, but gradually improved each year until he finally closed the gap completely by year eight. The importance of this upward trend cannot be emphasized enough. In the year before Nash combined forces with D'Antoni in Phoenix, his passing ability rivaled one of the best point guards of the modern era in JKidd. Nash was already elite without D'Antoni.

Of course, Nash reached an even higher level in year nine. Paired with D'Antoni, Nash's assists per 36 minutes jumped from 9.5 to 12. To most observers, this jump of 2.5 assists provides strong evidence in favor of a Mike D'Antoni effect. For skeptics, there are still more questions to be asked.

For one, if combining forces with D'Antoni was such a boom for Nash's career, why wasn't D'Antoni's departure equally a bust? In Nash's 13th and 14th seasons, he played for Alvin Gentry, not Mike D'Antoni, and even still, Nash managed to out-assist Jason Kidd by 1.4 and 2.1 each year.  Put another way, there was no significant drop-off in Nash's productivity after D'Antoni left.

Second, D'Antoni's effect on Chris Duhon is largely overstated. While Chris Duhon’s assists per game jumped to a respectable 7.2 in his first season with D'Antoni, the increase was largely due to a gain in minutes more than anything else. Duhon’s assists per 36 minutes only increased from 6.4 to seven—hardly much of a deviation at all.

This is not intended to undermine D'Antoni's offensive genius. Not at all. When Chicago was in contention to hire him in 2008, I was ecstatic. And when they pushed aside D'Antoni in favor of the cheaper Vinny Del Negro, I was equally upset. Nonetheless, given Nash's ability to improve, it's possible that he reaches super-duper-star status even without the help of Coach D'Antoni. While D'Antoni and SSOL clearly expedited that process, the truth is that Nash's transformation into a top-flight point guard was long underway.

I can see it clearly. Twenty years from now, Bill Simmons will be in his backyard back in Boston debating the merits of Nash's second MVP with his all-grown CEO. As for myself, I'll be telling my kids stories of a real-life example of the Little Engine That Could. The scrappy, persistent, and unrelenting Steve Nash, who was an NBA afterthought early on, then gradually scratched and clawed his way to the top.

- Ken is a regular writer for NBA Analytiks www.nba-analytiks.com