ADVERTISEMENT
Yeah thats where i see it different. Kidd and Payton werent as good at shooting as Nash, thats it. Sure those advance stats may say otherwise, but Kidd and GP were far from average when it came to running an offense and im not seeing this gap between them and Nash offensively.
I didn't say Kidd and GP were average, I think they are good, but Nash is a game breaker. When Kidd was the primary offensive engine he basically never had a truly elite offense. most of the time they were below league average, often well below. Usually in the 20s.
This is over multiple franchises, multiple sets of teammates,
I think it's fair to say that despite Kidd's passing, his limitations as a shooter and scorer made so you probably weren't generating elite offense.
GP was better, drove more elite offenses. But again the scale of impact is just wildly different. GP had top 5 offenses, Nash had top 5 all time league history offenses.
Its evident by both of them leading there teams further than Nash did with arguably less talent to work with. If Nash is leading 6 of the 10 greatest offenses of all time, according to some out of context metric, maybe that defense mattered a little more than your pretending it did if he couldnt get his teams as far as the "good" offensive guys from Oakland did. Not to mention both were able to contribute to a ring once past their prime. Nash left Phoenix and fell apart. So team wise and it is a team game, both accomplished more as both the main guy and role players.
We are talking about the greats off all time. Literally who cares about whatever they did as ring chasing old players.
I care about at their best who was better. Not who managed to hang on. And grab a ring at the end.
Also how far they led them in the playoffs is a much smaller sample and far more contextual, Kidd and GP plays in weak conferences at the time.
The fact that Kidd was able to get to the finals in some of the weakest eastern conferences in history means very little to me. And the west was weaker in GPd era.
Defense matters, but PG defense matters but so much. It's just fundamentally an offensive position.
Im not a Nash hater either. Im one of the few who thinks he fully deserved both his MVP's. But im going with the more complete players. GP ill admit its more a matter of preference, id rather not have to hide a guy on defense if i dont have to. Kidd its a no brainer. I recently was shocked to learn lebron in 20 seasons still hasnt caught him in triple doubles. After Magic no one ran the break as well. Kidd gets slept on.
Yah it's a PG tho, it's just not that hard to hide a PG.
Suns were league average defense despite playing Amar'e at Center. I just don't think there's much evidence that Nash was such a huge liability.