This is part of SB Nation NBA’s regular topical sereis, where the entire SBN NBA Network comes together to discuss a single topic. Discussion of the day: “What if…?” »
The line between glory and disaster is often thin. In no sport is this concept better summed up than in basketball. When that orange leather sphere passes through that red brick hoop, we don’t really think about how small the margin for error is, geometrically speaking. Basketball is truly, truly, and in no way metaphorical, a game of thumbs. Thumbs decide whether each shot goes in or not. Thumbs can decide a game, which can decide a series, which can decide an entire season.
But centimeters can decide much more than just a shot. Thumbs can decide whether two people running across the field in roughly the same direction collide or not. Thumbs can decide where a man’s knee touches another man’s leg and whether the force exerted by that action can cause significant damage. This too can decide a season. Or at least it can define one.
There is no other term for the Los Angeles Lakers“2012-2013 season without counting the disaster. They started the season as one of the favorites to challenge for the title, and by mid-season it seemed almost impossible for them to even qualify for the playoffs. They did make it to the playoffs, but any merit that achievement might have had was lost because of what the playoffs cost them and how they ultimately bowed out without leaving a scratch on their opponent. in the playoffs. NOW, Dwight Howard is gone, Kobe Bryant is recovering from one of the most serious injuries an athlete can suffer, and the Los Angeles Lakers will once again be in a position where they have to fight and give up just to qualify for the playoffs (although at least this time it won’t be unexpected). But was the line between glory and disaster thin for last year’s Lakers team? Could the season have played out very differently without a single random event?
What if Steve Nash had never broken his leg?
Nash was injured after a seemingly harmless collision with Damien Lillard during the second game of the season. Getting back on defense and trying to be a nuisance, Nash half-placed his body in the way as Lillard ran down the court, and Lillard’s knee hit Nash square on the leg side just below the knee , and somehow, despite all the skin. and the muscles, cartilage, and veins that could have absorbed the contact, somehow the force of the collision managed to break Steve’s leg without even moving it. A non-displaced fracture, an injury I had never heard of in a long career as a sports spectator.
Even though we knew Nash’s injury was a big blow, we had no idea how much it would hurt. In a season where everything went wrong, Nash’s injury was first, and the snowball effect was quick and all-consuming. The initial report indicated that Nash could only miss 1-2 weeks. He ended up missing 2 months. At the time, Mike Brown was fired, Steve Blake also missed significant time (causing the Lakers to play a large portion of games with Darius Morris And Chris Duhon teaming with the point), Mike D’Antoni was hired after Phil Jackson was flirted with, Paul Gasol also dropped, the first rumblings of “locker room trouble” were heard, and perhaps most importantly, the Lakers lost a lot of games.
By the time Nash returned, the team was already locked in a death spiral that they couldn’t really recover from. They might have won more games at the end of the season, but even that feat was due to the insane will of Kobe Bryant, a will that saw Kobe take on too much before suffering a devastating injury that could linger for much longer a long time. than the failed abomination that was last year’s great experiment. Nash never looked himself, the team never felt comfortable letting him run the offense, and there was no time to allow Nash to integrate his game into that of team because every game was just too important as the Lakers tried to sneak into the bottom half. of the playoff bracket.
What if this never happened? What if Nash had made it through last season without a serious injury? The Lakers’ disaster of a season was the ultimate domino effect in which one thing led to another which led to another, so what would the season have looked like if the first domino had never fallen? Would the Lakers still have gotten off to such a horrible start that Mike Brown was fired after just five games? How much better would the team have been if they had Nash while Steve Blake was out with an abdominal injury? Could Mike D’Antoni (if he was hired at all) have integrated his offensive philosophies more easily with the star, ready and healthy, who made those philosophies famous in the first place? Would the Lakers, already well behind the eighth and desperate for some wins, have spent the necessary time learning how to run the offense through a Nash/Howard pick and roll?
What effect does a healthy and influential Steve Nash have on the team culture? Nash is known for being a great teammate, one of the most fun players to play with in the league, but last year’s team never looked like they were having fun. If Nash is on the field from the start, does he have a chance to infect the rest of the team with his selflessness. Do the problems between Dwight and Kobe persist? Would this rift in the locker room have been lessened, or even completely extinguished, if there had been a few more additions to the win column and a more even distribution of the Nash-orchestrated offense?
Maybe the Lakers are closer to expectations without having to rely on a D-league player and the league’s worst veteran at point guard. Maybe they won’t have to fight as hard in the second half of the season just to make the playoffs. Maybe Kobe doesn’t have to play 48 minutes a night for two straight weeks, and maybe he doesn’t rupture his Achilles, and maybe the Lakers enter the playoffs with a high enough seed to avoid San Antonio and OKC. , with their star power intact and properly integrated. Maybe they’ll win a playoff series or two, hell, maybe they’ll win them all (probably wasn’t likely, but a lot of people thought they had the talent). Perhaps the prospect of playing with the same group of characters seems promising to Dwight Howard instead of terrifying her. Maybe, as part of a winning culture, Dwight listens to the lessons Kobe is trying to teach him instead of ignoring him and making fun of him behind his back. Maybe he’ll sign a new contract with the Lakers in July, instead of leaving town on the first flight.
The Los Angeles Lakers had a lot of problems last season, and That of Steve Nash injuries and poor form coming back from those injuries (key word: coming back from… not getting over it) weren’t the only problem. Hell, Nash’s failure to live up to his All-Star name probably wasn’t even the biggest issue affecting the team. But that was the first problem, and it’s hard to look back on the season and not identify that moment as the start of all the problems. Nash’s injury was caused by the pin removed from the grenade. If this pin had never been removed, would the grenade still have exploded?
And if …
