Personally I think Ding is full of it with this one. I mean I know we as fans can't help but have a lot of resentment towards Nash, but I don't give a flying hoot if he IS retired. If we're PAYING HIM 10 MILLION DOLLARS HE SHOULD EFFING BE HERE! Help the damn kids learn at practice. How hard is that? F*** do it twice a month! That's a better retirement than most people these days!
I hold no bitterness nor resentment toward Nash anymore; what's done is done. I hope he continues his work with JC and follows through mentoring Randle.
I appreciate him not retiring so we could attempt to trade his NBA corpse. I'm glad he's finally working with JC and if he follows through with working with Randle, that's fantastic. The kid is a sponge, so he'll be giddy at the chance to learn even more this year. I'm with Real though. I get that coming to terms with your career being over might take some time. Take 2-3 months, but he should have been around the team from Feb. 1-the end of the season at the very least. That's only 3 short months with the All-Star weekend and season ending in mid April. Hell, don't even come to the games if you don't want. Laker fans don't aren't exactly the biggest Nash supporters, so maybe he doesn't want to put himself in that environment...the heckling, boos, media trying to talk to him. But PRACTICE?! You can't even make it to PRACTICE?! We talkin about PRACTICE! Show up during practices and show these guys some s***. This is one of the greatest PGs in the game's history. He possesses some of the best court vision I've seen in a long, long time. He was an excellent QB and offensive coordinator for his team before his body quit him. Share. Share. Share. Share. The scattered texts, the one video session, and the occasional 30 minute (pathetic) workout with JC is a good start. But that's all it is in my book, a start. We're paying you a ridiculous sum of money to vacation in LA. You weren't successful as a trade pawn. What else ya got? Now if JC and Randle make great progress that they credit specifically to Nash (JC has with a couple things) and he can lure one of his friends here -- Durant or Dragic, then all is forgiven. That $10m was well worth it. Jury is still out on both of those things though. Currently, I don't think what he's done is enough.
Nash's only chance to redeem himself is to groom Clarkson as his protege. Not just some casual texting and s***, but like...making him the Robin to his Batman.
So....Ding who seems to crap on everyone this season finally decides to defend someone and its Nash? Whatever.....I'm with Real on this one too.
Not buying it. I like Ding a lot, but this seems like fluff, to make fans feel guilty, almost as if he was instructed to write it by the front office. Nash is secretly retired? Fine, he's still making 10 million dollars and should have been working with clarkson and whoever else wanted the tutoring for months, not on vacation. Seems like a piece written to make Nash and the Lakers front office both look really good. Like, Nash did as he was asked, and the front office did him a favor all while trying to improve the team and get him more money via a trade, uh-huh.
My first thought is if he knew he was done during training camp he probably knew last spring too, when he could have medically retired, gotten paid, AND given the Lakers another $10 million to work with in free agency. Not retiring so that your contract could be traded was the least he could do.
I am also over the Nash disappointment because it's all mushed together with an assload of disappointment the last two years. I also happen to like Nash the player and person (what I've seen) quite a bit. But that article is complete b*******. How do you honestly expect fans of any team to react given the knowledge we have and the stuff made public that we see. Nash showed some pretty poor judgement with those tweets especially at a time when laker fans were seeing things go from bad to worse with the org. So if he realizes that his public behavior could have enhanced some of the undesirable response he received, good, if he doesn't care, ok. But don't blame the fans. If he wants to, he can publicly do more to present the side of himself that is helping our team. I'm pretty sure most fans around here would show him a little more love.
...also there is the fact that Nash pretty much said he was finishing out his contract to get paid...
