Years before James Harden and Steve Nash took on the challenge of leading the Nets to an NBA title, Mike D’Antoni, who would go on to coach both, had a basic idea: Nash and Harden would work well together.
It was June 2016 and D’Antoni had just been hired as the head coach of the Houston Rockets, inheriting a franchise player in Harden. In Houston, D’Antoni looked to borrow elements from the “Seven Seconds or Less” style he deployed in Phoenix with Nash at the controls. The coach called his former point guard and offered him a consulting job focused on mentoring Harden, who D’Antoni envisioned turning into a floor general.
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Nash declined. He already had a similar gig with the Golden State Warriors. He enjoyed the short flight every few weeks from Los Angeles to San Francisco. A month later, those trips would involve workouts with a newly signed star, Kevin Durant.
Not until last year did D’Antoni finally get to see his vision come to fruition. As an assistant coach under Nash in Brooklyn, he watched the Nets trade half their roster and a bevy of draft picks for Harden. That move united his two greatest disciples.
Before the trade, Harden and Nash didn’t know each other well. They played against one another over the years, but the relationship didn’t go much further. With the Nets, D’Antoni’s idea quickly became reality. Harden and Nash hit it off immediately, seeing much of themselves in each other.
Now, with Kyrie Irving away from the team indefinitely, the Nets need both Harden and Nash at their best if they’re to live up to their championship expectations. Luckily for Brooklyn, Harden and Nash have long been on the same page.
“I just quickly gravitated to the type of person he is,” Nash said. “He has a great passion for the game. He works extremely hard. He’s dead serious about the game, but he also enjoys it, has fun, so that’s the type of person that I have a lot of time for. That’s the way I was. I was very, very focused, wanted to win, loved to compete, loved to be a part of a team, but at the same time, I liked to enjoy it and have fun and have a laugh. So we’re similar in that way, and I appreciate that. I think he’s had an incredible impact on the group off the floor, as well, and that’s important to me.”
Harden was a student of Nash’s long before Brooklyn came onto his radar. D’Antoni’s first meeting with Harden was very millennial: a binge watch. Their introduction came in Houston’s Toyota Center. Together, they devoured film of the coach’s teams in Phoenix with Nash as the focal point.
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As Harden watched his future coach run the offense, D’Antoni encouraged his new superstar to embrace his system and move from the wing to the point. The film showed Nash running a pick-and-roll-heavy offense while thriving as both a playmaker and scorer.
“James,” D’Antoni said. “You can do all of this.”
And he did. Harden went from averaging 7.5 assists per game to a league-leading 11.2, with his scoring numbers essentially unchanged. Houston went from being the eighth seed in the Western Conference to third. Coaches around the league noticed the change in Houston and compared Harden’s organizational impact to another floor general.
“You looked at this team last year and they were all fucked up,” an NBA head coach told Sports Illustrated in 2017. “You look at them now and they are completely aligned. James Harden has become Steve Nash — if Steve Nash were on steroids.”
When reminded of the quote four years later, Nash laughed. He also didn’t shy away from it.
“When he has the ball in his hand, he’s surveying the floor, I feel like I see what he sees,” Nash said. “I see what he’s processing, he’s thinking ahead, he’s watching angles, he’s reading the defense and he’s not only able to make the right decision, he can also take it a step further and manipulate the defense with angles, with timing and all those things. I can definitely relate to his game; we’re different players, but that aspect, the playmaking, making your teammates better, getting guys opportunities to thrive, we definitely share that as part of our game.”
Both made their name in Phoenix, Nash as a Sun and Harden at nearby Arizona State, but in Brooklyn, they quickly found common ground. Both won MVPs under D’Antoni. Both are minority owners in Major League Soccer teams, Harden with the Houston Dynamo and Nash with the Vancouver Whitecaps.
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On the court, they process the game quickly. Both have led their team to the top of the Western Conference only to fall short in the playoffs undone by injuries or dynasties. Both possess a feel for which other players’ games fit with theirs and which do not. In Houston, former Rockets assistant Kelvin Sampson said Harden coached the team as much as the staff. That’s reminiscent of Dick Davey, Nash’s college coach at Santa Clara, who once said, “I was the head coach. But Steve did as much coaching as I did.”
“We are twins,” Harden said. “We’re just different colors.”
But even twins have their own distinctions. Harden’s beard rivals Santa’s, while Nash’s face is as scruffless as a New York Yankee. And as Nash alluded to, Harden (6-5, 220) is built like a linebacker, while he (6-3, 178) looks more like a shortstop.
“Steve had to do it by his vision and by setting people up with agility more than James has to,” D’Antoni said of his two proteges. “Because James can just go right through you.”
Just like he was a coach on the floor as a player, Nash has given Harden the freedom to do the same. The 32-year-old guard was playing like an MVP candidate last year before a hamstring strain derailed his season. Nash said his priority with Harden has been getting him healthy for this season because his greatness won’t be on display unless he’s fit for an extended time. Then they can talk about what to refine, if anything, with his game.
But when they are together, Harden said they’ve found each other to be subconsciously on the same page. As they say, twins share a brain. Harden was on a road trip with the Nets last May when Nash had a team film session. It stuck with Harden the rest of the day. He called Nash that night to talk it over, only to discover his coach was still pondering the film session. They talked about it for 15 to 20 minutes, and Harden said the calls continued into the offseason.
“He sees the game at a different level,” Harden said of Nash. “Like summertime, he calls me, I call him and we’re just talking about how can we be better. He just has that constant communication with me like I know you saw this, but maybe look at this next time. Just things like that to where somebody has a second eye all the time of what’s going on and things that I can do better, and ultimately, that’s going to better our team.”
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For Nash, he picks his spots when talking shop with Harden because his basketball mind is “brilliant,” and as a coach, he tries not to teach just for the sake of it. It’s become a part of his philosophy to learn when to speak up and when his players evolve on their own, a tactic he got from D’Antoni. Harden’s playmaking is crucial for the success of the team. Nash doesn’t want to overcoach and end up having a negative impact on his point guard’s decision-making. It’s the same approach Harden takes when giving advice to his teammates.
“For me, it’s like everything with a purpose,” Nash said. “What are we trying to get out of this clip or this action or this scenario? Because sometimes you might be like, it’s too random or it’s too negligible to add an element to someone’s thought process. Let’s stay away from that. Sometimes you might be like, well this is an important point. I think this angle is more important than this angle. This is a different play than that. This creates a totally different scenario for the defense than this one.
“There’s no template … It’s really important to think, put yourself in the athlete’s shoes. How can I affect him positively instead of overburden them, confuse them, open debates up in gray areas? I think that’s a part of coaching that is really important.”
While Harden looks at himself and Nash as twins, those who know them describe them as similar but different. To Durant, both are “orchestrators” for their ability to dictate a possession and manipulate the floor. Durant said Harden and Nash speak point guard to each other and to him, “they’re kind of cut from the same cloth.”
D’Antoni doesn’t talk about his two most famous proteges in terms of similarities or differences, but rather their respective greatness.
“The similarities are that they’re two unbelievable talents,” D’Antoni said. “They’re the best at the game, they’re some of the best who ever played that position and best have ever played.”
The Nets’ preference is that their greatest similarity comes this June. An NBA title would give both Harden and Nash a long-awaited championship.
(Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)