All-time starting five: Dante
Basketball is a game of moments, and each moment has a player attached to it.
Over the next week, The Deep Two is taking a look at our all-time favourite players and some of the moments that define them. These are the players that cemented our love of basketball, dropped our jaws and redefined what we thought was possible inside the painted lines.
Sean, Lukas and Dante will lay out their favourite at every position and talk you through what made them so special.
PG: Steve Nash
Steve Nash’s impact on the game can’t be measured in career accolades or statistics, although two-time MVP, five-time assist champ and third all-time in assists says a lot. Nash’s true legacy doesn’t come from three Western Conference Finals appearances, almost a decade straight of championship contention or being one half of the most devastating pick-and-roll duo since Stockton and Malone: it comes from the seismic stylistic shift that he ushered in.
The captain of Mike D’Antoni’s Seven Seconds or Less offence, Nash was a preternatural passer and the most efficient scorer of the 2000s. He piloted the offence that charted the course for the fast-paced, three-point heavy league we see today, lifting his team out of the rock-fight contests of the 2000s.
Those Suns teams were a cavalcade of dunks and threes with Nash conducting the rampaging, high-flying orchestra. He made every single teammate better, averaged over ten assists seven (!!) times and still maintained almost 50/40/90 efficiency.
There have been twelve 50/40/90 seasons in NBA history, and Nash has four of them; nobody else has more than two. He also had two more seasons where he missed that storied statistical mark by less than one percent. He is quite literally the epitome of efficiency.
His precision pocket passes in the pick and roll and whirling, twirling assists to trailing big men were quite literally the reason I fell in love with the game. He came from complete anonymity, picked 15th out of Santa Clara in the loaded 1996 NBA draft and went on to win two Maurice Podoloff trophies and usher in a revolutionary new style of play. Not bad for a guy who came into the league looking like this.
SG: Kevin Johnson
I’m cheating and including two point guards, nay, two Suns point guards. Kevin Johnson was the engine behind the 1990s Phoenix Suns, and alongside Charles Barkley led the team to the 1993 NBA Finals, just the second time the franchise had made it to the Big Dance. Like Nash a decade after him, Johnson was an omniscient passer surrounded by shooters and elite athletes. Barkley, Cedric Ceballos and ‘Thunder’ Dan Majerle were the beneficiaries of incisive lead passes while Danny Ainge spotted up around the arc.
KJ unlocked Barkley during his 1993 MVP run and threw down the greatest jam in Suns history over two-time Defensive Player of the Year Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994.
The mid-90s Suns had so many integral NBA characters in the same place. Barkley and Ainge were movers and shakers who have extended their basketball careers by becoming indispensable media figures and front office fleecers, respectively.
Majerle, Ceballos and Tom Chambers were All-Stars, and Lakers stalwart and future Minnesota Timberwolves head-coaching nightmare Kurt Rambis graced the team’s bench with his ass. The team was coached by Paul Westphal, five-time All-Star as a player and one of best coaches in the league at the time.
KJ was at the epicentre of all of it. His midrange mastery, passing vision and determination united these Suns teams under a singular focus, and while these proto-run and gun teams didn’t last, Johnson’s legacy does! His leadership was so legendary that he pursued a career in politics after an early retirement, becoming mayor of Sacramento and quite literally single-handedly saving the Kings from being moved to Anaheim in 2011.
SF: Grant Hill
One of the great what-ifs in NBA history, Grant Hill was on track to be Michael Jordan’s heir before a series of injuries changed the trajectory of his career. The archetypal point forward, he was a smooth athlete and a constant triple double threat, notching 29 through the first five seasons of his career.
G-Money was unstoppable driving to the hoop, strong enough to hang and hit in a crowded lane and able to match up with the best of them on the other end. He was a playmaking wing in the mould of Lebron, and the Pistons of the late 90s ran their entire offence through him, making him the alpha and omega of their entire offensive setup.
He lost the best part of four years of his prime when he was regularly putting up ridiculous lines, but found new life as a tertiary scorer at the tail end of the Seven Seconds or Less Suns era, finding a kindred spirit in basketball magician and point guard on my team, Steve Nash.
It’s a basketball tragedy that we didn’t get to see Hill healthy for longer, but he left us with a legacy of getting it done against the absolute best.
PF: Lebron James
I’ll never forget where I was when I heard the iconic “blocked by James” sequence tumble out of Mike Breen’s mouth. I was sitting in the Sporting Globe in Geelong with my girlfriend at the time. We’d gone down to the coast for the weekend. I’d made those plans when the Cavaliers were down 3–1 to the Warriors in the 2016 Finals, and a game seven looked impossible. But, like he’s done so many times before, Lebron made the impossible happen. He willed his team back from an insurmountable deficit, pinned Andre Iguodala’s layup against the backboard and gave the moribund Cavs franchise a ring they’ll never stop celebrating.
Whether you rank him ahead of MJ or not, Lebron has done what few players have ever done to this degree. He had so much individual and team success, established a monopoly on MVPs and First Team All-NBA forward spots and established himself as the elder statesman of the league.
His career has spanned the 2004 Pistons championship to the Warriors dynasty and beyond, he has transcended narrative to the point where he has become the narrative.
There will never be another Lebron; he is a basketball treasure.
C: John Henson
There isn’t a greater step down in quality from one spot to the next in any of The Deep Two’s favourite-five lists than Lebron James to John Henson.
My affinity for the former North Carolina Tar Heel began in college, where he raked in two ACC Defensive Player of the Year awards before being snagged by the Bucks with the last pick in the 2012 lottery. In college, he graced the floor with future NBA stars Harrison Barnes, Kendall Marshall, PJ Hairston, Reggie Bullock and James Michael McAdoo.
Henson has never been more than okay, but he’s the sort of uncanny player who brings up ineffable positive emotions whenever I think about him. I watched him mature in college and grow into a dominant force, and maybe whenever I think about him in the league I’m smiling through rose coloured glasses. Whatever it is, Henson and his career 1.4 blocks per game will always make me smile.
