Steve Nash compares '7 Seconds or Less' Suns to current team, praises Chris Paul

Steve Nash is in his second season as the Brooklyn Nets head coach. But to NBA fans and historians, he'll always be remembered as one of the greatest Phoenix Suns players ever.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a Sun in 2018 after he retired in 2015 to end his 19-year career.

In Nash's first return to Phoenix as a coach Tuesday, he was asked in the pregame media session about his nostalgia for the Valley before the recently struggling Nets (29-21) lost to the Suns, 121-111, dropping their fifth straight game.

"Of course, this is a very, very special place for me," Nash said. "The (Phoenix) community is somewhere I lived for 10 years and the team, having played for them for 10 years.

"Sometimes you forget life moves fast and when you come back and you realize, 'Wow, I spent a lot of time here. A lot of incredible years working with incredible people. It means a lot to me and it's always nice to come back to kind of feel the vibe of the Valley again."

Nash was drafted by Phoenix in the legendary 1996 draft that produced fellow Hall of Famers Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, and the late Kobe Bryant.

He played two stints for the Suns. The first was for two seasons before Nash was traded to the Dallas Mavericks in 1998.

He was traded back to Phoenix in 2004. His second time with the Suns, he led their memorable "Seven Seconds or Less" high-flying team that was highly influential on today's small-ball schemes.

The Suns reached the Western Conference Finals three times in 2005, 2006 and 2010 with Nash as their point guard, and he earned two consecutive MVP honors in 2005 and 2005.

Nash drew a comparison between the current Suns team, which has the NBA's best record at 41-9 and an 11-game win streak, to the electrifying Suns team of the 2000s.

"They have a lot of depth and balance on these Suns teams," Nash said about Phoenix's current roster. "We were smaller, didn't maybe have the same depth that this team has. I think they've done a great job assembling this team and putting together the pieces. The depth is there, but it's the balance of the depth. They got so many pieces that fit well together on both sides of the ball that's allowed them to be very successful."

He credited Suns General Manager James Jones for his tremendous job constructing this current Suns roster, but "didn't know he would be a GM at the time" when they were teammates from 2005 to 2007.

The biggest similarity is that both of those Suns teams have 'point gods' running their ship.

Like Nash in his second arrival in Phoenix, Chris Paul immediately turned the Suns into a championship contender after they won the Western Conference Finals in his first season with the team.

The 37-year-old Paul is the league's assist leader at 10.3 points per game in his 17th season. He has remained in the MVP conversation since last year, averaging 14.8 points on 49% shooting, 4.6 rebounds and 1.9 steals.

"There's not a lot of things you can do to stop him. He's a master of this craft. He has such an incredible IQ and his ability to read the game, on top of his skills. I think he's playing at a very, very elite level still at this stage of his career," Nash said to The Republic.

"It's a testament again to his passion and dedication and his competitive spirit. He's definitely someone who is playing well ahead of the years on his resume, and is finding ways to impact the game with his intelligence and skill level that are historic in a way. Not many players have a lot of the impact that he has at this stage of his career."

Nash and Paul were named to the NBA's 75 all-time greatest players list in October to celebrate the league's 75th anniversary.

Suns coach Monty Williams was grateful for Nash's commentary about the Suns' roster. Williams also cited the Suns winning culture Nash helped revive in the early 2000s.

"He's a culture unto himself," Williams said during the postgame. "When you think about Nash, you just say the name Nash and everybody knows who you're talking about. And for him to say something like that is really cool.

"We feel like we're developing our own thing, but we also are respectful of the players like Steve and Amar'e (Stoudamire) and Charles (Barkley) and Dan (Majerle) and all the guys, Eddie (Johnson), you can go on and on, and we want to build on that. But we have a ways to go before we can even start talking that way."

Have tips for us? Reach the reporter at dana.scott@azcentral.com or at 480-486-4721. Follow his Twitter @iam_DanaScott.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Steve Nash reflects on his Suns career, heralds Chris Paul's longevity