He may have fallen short of the sport's ultimate prize, but he helped revolutionize the way the game was played. His exploits helped turn the entire NBA into an up-tempo, spread pick-and-roll league in which nearly every offense vaguely resembles that of the Seven Seconds or Less Suns. What made Nash such a deadly pick-and-roll operator was the number of different ways he could decimate you in two-man actions: as a lethal pull-up shooter from deep or from mid-range, as a deft floater artist, as a sneakily crafty at-rim finisher (thanks in part to his early adoption of the one-handed gather), and, of course, as a passer who could toss pinpoint lobs or hit rollers on the bounce from any angle. There have been only 10 other such seasons in league history, and no one else hit those benchmarks more than twice. Though he'll primarily be remembered as the best distributor of his generation, he was also a terrific (if low-volume) scorer an all-time great shooter who hit 42.8% from 3-point range and 90.4% from the free-throw line for his career and a member of the ultra-exclusive 50/40/90 club four times, with a fifth season in which he came up just one made free-throw short. Nash was an indefatigable, improvisational genius who made everyone he played with better. The other two? The 2015-16 Warriors and 1996-97 Bulls. Nash captained four of the six most efficient offenses in NBA history when adjusting for league average (the 2001-04 Mavericks and the 2004-10 Suns), per Basketball Reference. The lone exception during that run was a second-place finish in 2007-08, when his Suns scored 0.1 fewer points per 100 possessions than the Jazz. If watching him run and pass circles around opposing defenses wasn't enough to convince you, consider the numerical facts: Over a nine-season span between 20, the team for which Nash ran point led the league in offensive rating eight times. Why he's here: Though he never reached the Finals, never cracked 20 points per game, remained a minus defender his entire career, and didn't pile up the eye-popping counting stats some of the other legends on this list produced, Nash was one of the greatest offensive engines we've ever seen. Nash averaged 30.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 12 assists on 63.9% true shooting in a thrilling six-game victory that secured the Suns' first conference finals berth in 12 years. Then, in the second round of the playoffs, he ran into his former team, which had declined to match Phoenix's contract offer the previous offseason but remained a 58-win juggernaut. In the first season of his second go-around with Phoenix (which originally drafted him in '96 before trading him to Dallas), Nash led the Suns to 62 wins and won his first of two straight MVP awards.

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