Why NBA hall of famer Steve Nash became a Champions League pundit

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/31/steve-nash-tnt-champions-league-tv-coverage-soccer-tottenham

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Steve Nash is too old to be crying over soccer on national television. But there he was, a 45-year-old father of four, an NBA hall of famer and part-owner of Spanish club Real Mallorca and the Vancouver Whitecaps of the MLS, shedding tears on the set of TNT’s Champions League coverage in the aftermath of his beloved Tottenham’s semi-final victory over Ajax.

The clip was viral before Nash, who is a pundit on the show, had time to dry his eyes. Looking back, he is embarrassed. But only a little. “I’m not a sentimental person normally, which was why it was so shocking. I had no idea I’d feel that way,” he says. “The more I thought about it, the more I realised it wasn’t just about me in that particular moment, it was about my dad, my grandad, my brother.”

.@SteveNash was in tears at full-time of Tottenham's win pic.twitter.com/ifEZEbinYR

Spurs and soccer run are imprinted in the Nash family’s genes. His father John, a former pro, was born within a mile of White Hart Lane. His brother Martin, capped 38 times for Canada, once played (and scored) for Spurs. Nash was a promising youth soccer player growing up in Canada but somehow got distracted by basketball. Before he knew it, he was an undersized NBA point guard picking improbable passes and making ludicrous three-pointers, establishing the template for rule-breaking geniuses such as Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving.

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Yet throughout the NBA years, soccer remained a big part of Nash’s life, from his pre-game warm-up, which incorporated very nifty soccer-style juggling with a basketball, to an annual charity event in New York, which continues to this day and has featured luminaries such as Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira.

Nash is now based in southern California, and his regular five-a-side game has attained almost mythical status locally, not that he would concede as much. “Occasionally it perks up,” he says. “There’s me, Stu [Holden, former Bolton midfielder and his partner on the TNT Champions League coverage], Landon [Donovan] occasionally, some ex-pros, college players. Del Piero has shown up in the past.”

Clearly, Nash is no soccer ingenue. But if his bona fides were good enough for Henry and Del Piero, they angered a certain type of American soccer purist. His appointment as one of TNT’s Champions League pundits was greeted with the kind of enthusiasm those purists might have reserved for the news that Fifa had announced it was changing the shape of the ball.

The criticism fell into two categories. Firstly that Nash, a basketball guy, had never played soccer for a living and therefore lacked the necessary insight and experience. Secondly that Nash, a Spurs fan, couldn’t possibly summon the required level of neutrality, especially when it came to analysing Tottenham games. “We want to redefine the culture of [soccer] in this country, not just with Champions League coverage but with coverage of the game as a whole,” a Turner Sports executive told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time, sounding both grandiose and defensive.

For his part, Nash is sanguine about the criticism. “I’ve been in professional sport a long time. I’m used to it,” he says. With respect to his role in the coverage, he says that he and the production team are constantly trying to find the right balance. “I can understand why a pure soccer fan – not that I think this was the case in reality – would say, ‘Come on, a basketball player talking soccer? Really?’ I think that’s a fair point. But I think it’s also fair for a media company that spent large sums of money on soccer to want to grow the audience; to make the coverage more commercially viable and exciting.

“As for my role – first of all, I don’t want to disrespect soccer. I am a massive fan of the sport. My aim has been to walk that fine line of wanting to prove an understanding of the game. But at the same time, I’m not supposed to be the analyst with deep and long-lasting credibility. We have other people who do that.

“We said at the start of the season the show was a start-up, a baby. Soccer in the States is basically at the same stage. The question is, how do we pull in the average viewer who might be described as mildly interested in soccer but who finds the traditional coverage too condescending, or way over their head? How do we grab them? That’s what’s at stake here.”

He’s right. US media companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in broadcast rights to world soccer (NBC paid a reported $1bn in 2015 for the rights to the English Premier League). But the game, and the coverage of the game, still sit on the periphery of mainstream American culture.

TNT, which will broadcast this Saturday’s Champions League final live across the US, is seeking a different tone from NBC’s and Fox Sports’ more traditional soccer coverage. Nash is supposed to be a part of that difference. The sense is that they are aiming for something closer to the award-winning TNT show Inside the NBA, which thrives on the relationship between host Ernie Johnson and former players Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal.

“I absolutely love those guys [on Inside the NBA] – and this is not a knock on them – but I don’t tune in so much for the analysis. I tune in for their unreal chemistry and the moments you feel like you’re in the living room with four mates talking about the game you’ve just watched,” Nash says. “They’re such an inspiration. Because no matter how in-depth you get with analysis, what ultimately matters are the feelings you generate and the relationships you build with the audience.”