I’ve never been a writer before, but you know what?
Before this season I’d never really been a point guard, either. So let’s do this.
The other day Trevor showed me the article that he wrote and it really got me thinking about this team and our season and everything my teammates have done for me.
Not only my teammates. Coach, too.
In a way, this whole ride started back last summer with Coach D’Antoni’s crazy idea.
After Coach took the job, we immediately got on the phone — talking about what went wrong last season, talking about our roster, talking about changes we could make. Normal intro-type stuff. It was clear he was smart as hell about basketball, but laid back, too. He was asking questions and listening, instead of acting like he already knew everything. I liked his vibe right away.
And then before we hung up, he stopped and just said straight up: “Honestly, we need you to be the point guard.”
I heard him … I mean, I heard the words he was saying. But it’s like they didn’t register right away.
After the call, the thing that stuck in my head was the way he’d said it, not even what he’d said.
“We need you to be point guard.”
Need.
Not want. Not would like.
Need.
It wasn’t a random choice of words, either. I knew I had to at least hear him out.
But there was one thing that bugged me about it, though I didn’t tell him right away what it was.
We met up a number of times over the summer. Coach is big on film, and we watched a lot of it. Sometimes it was a Rockets game but mostly it was older stuff — from those run-and-gun Suns teams he coached. Basically, we watched a lot of Steve Nash running the point. Coach said he wanted me to study one of the great scoring point guards in the history of the game.
It was some of the most fun I’ve had in a film room. I can still see Coach pointing at the TV, getting excited about something Nash had done in a game. He’d pause the film, and we’d talk about Nash’s ability to change pace, or how he was reading the defense, or how he always seemed to get guys the ball who hadn’t touched it in a few possessions. Coach talked about how Nash was a vocal leader — something I’ve tried to improve on more and more each year. And he kept telling me how much Nash evolved as a player each season.
Read more at The Player’s Tribune.