Steve Nash was one of the greatest point guards in NBA history. He won two MVP awards, made eight All-Star appearances, was voted first team All-NBA in three seasons, and led the league in assists for five seasons. Nash was drafted by the Phoenix Suns (a pick booed by the team’s fans), became a star as a Dallas Maverick, but peaked when he returned to Phoenix, where he became the maestro behind the team’s high-octane offence.

Nash the Passer

When I visualise Nash’s highlight plays I don’t think of passes, but what happened in the seconds prior to the pass. A Nash drive looked counter-intuitive—while other players would shoot soon as they neared the hoop, Nash would wait. He’d skate baseline, then, as if he’d forgotten the rules, turn back out again. Nash would probe, waiting for the pieces to move, sucking in help defenders. Only once he’d moved the pieces around—when he’d escaped Parker, forced Duncan to help and teased Ginobili into watching the ball—only then would he deliver a pass to a team-mate rolling to the hoop or spotting up for a three. And what passes too: behind the back while in mid-air, under the arms of a flailing center, a shovel-pass to a baseline creeper. Nash had the confidence to know he could create a play and the composure to let it develop while being hounded by defenders.

Nash was an all-time great passer, but he was much more than that. What follows are three aspects of Nash’s career that challenge the simplistic way we fans often pigeonhole players.

Nash The Shooter

When I think of great shooters I imagine Reggie Miller and Ray Allen popping open for threes; Larry Bird hitting a mid-range jumpshot with a defender draped all over him; Steph Curry pulling up from thirty feet. My initial thoughts link great shooters to the perceived difficulty of the shots they make. Nash could make difficult baskets—odd-looking runners; wild, twisting layups—but his points often came in more seemingly-mundane ways. He’d knock down a three if his defender went under a ball screen, or a mid-range pull-up if the defender went over it. Nash’s points came from making shots other NBA players routinely hit. So why consider him a great shooter?

Accuracy. You can’t be a great shooter without it, and Nash was one of the most accurate of all time.

Six players in NBA history are members of the famed 180 Club (averaging 50% on field goals, 40% from three, and 90% on free-throws for a full season). Nash is one. Only Nash and Larry Bird accomplished this more than once. Bird did it twice, Nash four times. In fact, if not for a 49% field-goal average, Nash’s entire career would qualify. Despite preferring to pass first, Nash, quietly, was one of the greatest shooters in NBA history.

Nash The Athlete?

You couldn’t look at a player like Nash—6ft 3in; white; built unremarkably; not fast or explosive—and consider him athletic. But isn’t there athleticism in the ability to evade three defenders, jump in the air, then accurately throw the ball behind your back to someone thirty feet away? Could the man who orchestrated Phoenix’s famed 7 Seconds or Less offence not be athletic?

Nash’s athleticism was more organic, like the kid at school that’s good at every sport. If mobility, balance and hand-eye coordination factor into your definition of an athlete, then Nash should be in that group. Look outside basketball and see a man as comfortable dribbling a football at a New York Red Bull as a basketball at a New York Knick, someone as casual riding a skateboard as running a fastbreak. Nash’s physical make-up was miles removed from Russell Westbrook or Derrick Rose. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t an athlete.

Nash the Loser?

For all of Nash’s success you can’t discuss his career without mentioning that he never won an NBA championship or made a trip to the Finals.

Was he just not good enough? Did his team let him down? Did he just not have a winner’s mentality? During Nash’s peak there wasn’t a team like Jordan’s Bulls dominating the Finals and stealing all the rings. So why did Nash fail?

Playoff success often comes down to small factors that shift a team’s chances one way or the other. Luck, good and bad, can regularly come into play. Here are a few aspects that affected Nash’s title hopes:

Joe Johnson’s eye: Phoenix’s third-leading scorer fell and fractured a bone in his eye socket after being fouled during the second round of the 2005 playoffs. He returned to help Phoenix finish the series, but Johnson missed the first two games of the Conference Finals due to the injury. By the time he returned, Phoenix were down 0-2 to San Antonio, and would lose the series in six games.

Amar’e Stoudemire’s knee: the following season, with Johnson recovered, Phoenix expected to build on the previous year’s success. Then Stoudemire, the team’s leading scorer, was felled by a knee injury and played in just three games. The Suns exceeded expectations and made the Conference Finals, but lost to Dallas in six games.

Stoudemire and Boris Diaw’s suspension: in the Conference Semifinals the next year, Phoenix were finishing a series-tying Game Four against the Spurs when San Antonio’s Robert Horry knocked Nash to the ground. From off court, Diaw and Stoudemire moved towards their fallen guard. While neither player was involved in an altercation, the NBA followed their rules to the letter—Stoudemire and Diaw had left the bench area, which earned both a suspension for the next game. Horry was banned for two games, but the fallout weighed heavier on Phoenix. The short-handed Suns lost a close Game Five, and the Spurs won the series in six.

Perhaps no series better encapsulates Nash’s agonising proximity to playoff success. Nash was also a victim of bad luck in Game One. In the game’s closing minutes, Nash and Parker collided, the Suns guard bursting his nose. NBA rules forbid a bleeding player from being on court. As Suns medical staff were unable to stem the bleeding ,Nash was forced to miss the game’s final, critical 45 seconds. San Antonio would win by five.

It’s hard to not play What-If with that series. Nash’s nose injury may have cost Phoenix a game; an unfair suspension may have cost them another. San Antonio went on to win the title that year. If Nash hadn’t reached in on Parker, if Horry had missed on that hip-check, could that title have gone to Phoenix instead of San Antonio?

Robert Sarver’s tight pockets: the Suns’ owner is known for keeping his team’s salaries below the luxury tax threshold. Which, as many an angry Suns fan will tell you, is one thing when you’re a struggling mid-division team, quite another when you’re a sniff from the NBA Finals. With the team in title contention Sarver failed to offer the money required to keep Johnson and Stoudemire in Phoenix. He dumped important role players and traded away draft picks Luol Deng and Rajon Rondo, often simply for financial reasons. While Sarver is an important part of what the Suns did accomplish, was he also the foe standing between them and a title?

Nash’s unwavering loyalty: while Sarver was making those moves, Nash seemed to be content in Phoenix. As other players made trade demands through the media (to fan criticism), Nash stayed quiet (to fan criticism). Gradually, Nash’s passes found the hands of players less able to finish the play. Yet he stayed, loyal to the team and the city. When Nash finally jumped ship for the Lakers, he was 38, his body unable to keep up with his title aspirations.

Those damn Spurs: of all the obstacles Nash had to contend with during his career, none were greater than San Antonio. During his peak years Nash had his playoff hopes ended by the Spurs three times. Include his Dallas days and the Spurs defeated Nash in the playoffs five times. Nash finally got his revenge when Phoenix swept San Antonio in 2010, but by then his window of opportunity was closing.

The question you’re obviously asking is, if San Antonio had been sucked into a trans-dimensional wormhole when Nash was at his peak, would Phoenix have won a championship? Let’s look at 2007 again. San Antonio needed six games to defeat Phoenix. They then needed five to beat Utah in the next round and just four to pass Cleveland in the Finals. With the Spurs floating in the inky black of space, could Phoenix have been champions that year? Or other years? As my experiments in both time-travel and wormhole creation have fallen frustratingly short, I guess we’ll never know.

You could look at Nash’s career and see those second and third round exits as proof of relative success, that his teams were among the elite in a stacked Western Conference that dominated the NBA. I used to take a simple view of the playoffs—the best team lifted the title, the second-best lost to them in the Finals. Then I realised that viewpoint punishes teams for what conference they play in. Losing in the Conference Finals to the eventual champion is the equivalent of losing to them in the Finals. If the Suns played in Milwaukee instead of Phoenix they would likely have made at least one trip to the Finals. Would Nash have a better reputation as a playoff performer if Phoenix lost there instead of the semi-finals? Probably, even though that makes no sense.

Nash the Forgotten?

You may have noticed this article is written in the past tense, but Steve Nash is still an NBA player. At least at time of writing. He’s on the cusp of retirement, having played in just 11 games this season. He’s got a year left on his Lakers contract and admits he wants that money. He’s also admitted he doesn’t want to play elsewhere—his kids are settled in LA—and would retire instead of leaving. Many Lakers fans that cheered Nash’s arrival now just want him gone to free up salary space, while the rest of us have moved on to debating the merits of other point guards. Nash’s career is likely to end the same way it has for many greats, wearing a suit and watching from the bench while a player with a fraction of their talent plays their position.

We fans will probably watch a few Youtube videos of Nash’s prime Suns years in the days after he retires. Five years later we’ll fondly recall him when he’s inducted into the Hall of Fame. The time in between? We might not think too much about him. But we should.