MINNEAPOLIS — Just to the right of the Suns' basket, a lone sign waved during a fourth-quarter timeout on Monday night at the Target Center. It was the stuff of pastel colors, curly-q letters and teenage sentiment: a marriage proposal for a point guard.
Just a month ago, it would have been easy to guess at whom the sign was directed. It's not so simple anymore.
"Steve Nash, will you marry me?" the sign read, begged, pleaded. But this is no exciting rookie, no 20-something sensation. This is a 38-year-old, a veteran, an old man in NBA terms.
But distance and perspective do a lot for Steve Nash.
On a court teeming with players 6-foot-8 and taller, he seems small, child-like from just a few rows back. From that distance, just those 20 or 30 feet, it's hard to see the hints of wrinkles, the faint lines that reveal his 38 years, and there's no way to detect what 15 seasons in the NBA have wrought on Nash.
Because in some ways, he's still playing like he's 30.
He's not scoring like he was at the peak of his career — he averaged 18.8 points in 2005-06 and is down to 12.8 this season — but Nash is still hovering around his career-best numbers in assists. This season, he's averaging 11.2, and he's never topped 11.6. In addition, he's averaging 54.0 percent shooting from the field and 40.7 percent from behind the three-point arc; if he keeps those numbers above 54 percent and 40 percent, respectively, he'll become just the third player in NBA history to do so.
But Nash is about more than just the numbers. He's about energy and experience. He's accustomed to winning, and even on nights like Monday, when the Suns defeated the Timberwolves 114-90 and Nash had just five assists and 14 points, he's still a major factor.
"We follow him," Suns' coach Alvin Gentry said. "We follow him a lot. He's not a guy that has to score a lot or really even have a ton of assists to have control of the game."
And with some of the numbers his teammates are posting, it's easy to see why Phoenix's offense is structured around Nash. Center Marcin Gortat, though he got in early foul trouble and scored just four points Monday, is having the best year of his career. He's averaging 16.0 points and 9.9 rebounds, a marked improvement from his 13.0 points and 9.3 rebounds last season. Shannon Brown, who made his eighth consecutive start in place of Grant Hill on Monday, finished with 17 points, and he's been averaging 17.5 points over that stretch. Timberwolves' coach Rick Adelman credited Nash with some of that, saying that there's a reason players often have some of their best years while playing with the point guard. He gets the ball to them. He sets them up. He's a catalyst for improvement.
But the biggest improvement of all has come not individually, but for the Suns as a team. They've now won 11 of their past 16 games, and their 16-7 record since the All-Star break is second-best in the Western Conference. They now sit at 30-27, one game out of a tie for seventh in the conference standings. And to think, just two months ago, many believed that Nash wanted to be traded to a winning team.
Nash denied those claims, though, and he remained in Phoenix. It's as if in addition to his loyalty, he knew what was coming. He knew his team had a chance, perhaps because he knew exactly how much he's still capable of contributing.
"He's actually kept this team going," Adelman said. "This is a team that he's actually willed them to stay in this race. You've got to give him credit."
But on Monday it must have been hard for the Timberwolves to give that credit to either Nash or the Suns, no matter how much it was due. It's hard to find a bright spot or to be the bigger person in a 24-point loss, but Nash might just be that ray of hope for the Wolves. Not for what he's done to them this season — he's averaged 17.3 points and 10.7 assists against Minnesota -- but for the parallels that many have drawn between him and Ricky Rubio.
Sure, Rubio spent Monday's game hidden on crutches somewhere in the Target Center. And yes, he'll be out until next season. But when he was healthy, he was enough to power the Timberwolves, enough for Gentry to admit that the Suns' one loss to Minnesota was not a fluke. Nash complimented the rookie several times earlier this season, and though their relationship is nothing more than a quick hello at the All-Star game, though Rubio has yet to really prove himself over a sustained period of time, there's still a decent hope that the Timberwolves' point guard might have the Steve Nash effect on his own team someday.
"We're kind of looking for those same type of players (like Nash)," Adelman said. "I believe Ricky can be that kind of player, too. But you have to have players around them who will respond like their players have responded."
Nash is more than the players around him, but they're also a part of making him the player he is. And when Rubio was healthy, the Timberwolves were a different team. They responded differently, more acutely and explosively. They were a team with high hopes, a team that earned praise for the first time in years.
Still, there's a long way to go. The Timberwolves have faded from the playoff race. Even when they were contenders, no one used words like "a marvel" and "incredible" to describe Rubio, words that Adelman offered up without any hint of exaggeration to characterize Nash. He's a special kind of player — Adelman's favorite to watch and coach against, the coach said — and that might be the truest measure of Nash's greatness.
He defeats teams, destroys their defenses. Opposing coaches should hate him, but they can't. It's too fun to watch, too much the epitome of what any coach would want in a player. Really, there's no way to hate that.
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