Basketball Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash talks about the ‘disease of sitting’ after coming off the bench at the Manhattan Beach Tennis Open
by Paul Teetor
Steve Nash followed the bouncing tennis ball as it skipped past him and went all the way to the back fence. As he went to pick the errant ball up, he addressed the small crowd that had gathered to watch him play Friday afternoon in the Manhattan Beach Open Tennis Tournament.
“I’ve completely forgotten what the score is,” he said out loud. “Anyone know the score?”
Like many great athletes caught up in the heat of competition, he was so focused on playing his best that he was lost in the moment. The surprised spectators looked at one another for a couple of seconds before a helpful woman wearing a white T-shirt, white shorts, and a white sun visor called out “40-15, he’s up.”
The rest of the crowd murmured in agreement and the second-round match resumed with Nash eventually falling to 12th seeded Ryan Johnson in the Open Division, 6-1, 6-2.
But before the match ended, the same thing happened again: Nash forgot the score and had to ask the crowd for help.
The pleas for help were a surprising reversal of the usual help-others dynamic that has followed the 49-year-old Manhattan Beach resident all throughout his life.
When Nash was an unknown Canadian point guard at Santa Clara University from 1992-96, he was focused on helping his teammates play better because that is the point guard’s natural role – setting them up to take their favorite shots from their favorite spots on the court.
Similarly, when Nash was a superstar point guard in the NBA, he emerged as one of the best shooters in NBA history, a 3-point marksman before Steph Curry came along and took it to the next level.
Nash used his shooting prowess to help his teammates like Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudamire play better by getting them open shots while he probed the defense and drew defenders to himself.
He did it well enough to win back-to-back NBA Most Valuable Player awards in 2005 and 2006, which was the key to his being voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.
When he set up the Steve Nash Foundation in 2001, it was focused on helping underprivileged children around the world get out of poverty and get an education.
When he was the coach of the Brooklyn Nets from 2020 until last fall, he again focused on helping his team get better. He did it well enough to guide them to the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2021.
Every NBA coach, except San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, knows they are going to be fired sooner or later. It happened to Nash last fall amid team turmoil caused mainly by the NBA’s biggest knucklehead, Kyrie Irving.
Asked about Irving’s role in his dismissal, Nash demurred. “I don’t want to talk about individual players,” he said.
A New Goal
Now that he is no longer coaching or playing in the NBA, Nash is focused on a new goal: making the second half of people’s lives better and healthier.
We all know what a life span is: the length of time between birth and death. Average lifespan in the United States of America: 77 years. Breaking it down by gender reveals that it is 79 for women and 73 for men.
But Nash is more focused these days on a concept less well known: your healthspan.
That’s the length of time from birth until all the chronic diseases – cancer, diabetes, heart troubles, etc. — that will eventually kill you kick in.
“The life span in America is 77 and climbing because of medical advances,” Nash said in an interview after his first match Friday morning – a match he won 6-2, 6-2. “But the average health span is 63 and plateauing. That’s the problem we’re trying to address.”
Last year Nash co-founded Block Training with partner Kit Hawkins. It is directly aimed at narrowing that 14-year gap between the average lifespan and the average healthspan. The new business now has nine employees.
“We define healthspan as the healthy, relatively pain-free years you have in life. I’m obsessed with showing that everyone can use movement to extend those years,” Nash said. “We want to get people out of the culture of sitting and get them moving. Block training will help people move better, feel better and live better.”
The company has an app, available at the App Store, which offers a short, eight-minute workout – called the Daily 8 — to get you in the habit of moving.
Once the daily habit of movement is established, there are longer, 30- and 50-minute workouts on the app to take you to the next level, with a focus on power, strength, endurance and recovery. The exercises are scientifically designed to target areas of the body used for mobility.
“Eighty percent of Americans are not active, so it’s hard for them to get in the habit of being active. We try to help people get away from the disease of sitting,” Nash said. “Purposeful movement and good sleep are the pillars of a long healthspan. Science tells us that the best way to impact your quality of life is to focus on quality movement.”
Nash himself is the best advertisement for the block training approach. Although he has a serious back issue thanks to decades of pounding on indoor and outdoor basketball courts, he manages the pain through a series of exercises designed to mitigate his spinal discomfort.
Nash just took up tennis a few years ago, but he is already able to play Open Division players half his age.
Friday morning he played a 22-year-old Ambrose Trean, from Arcadia, who is so ripped he looks like a football player who spends half his life training in the weight room. Although he hits the ball a ton and has a killer serve, Nash was able to move him around, exploit his backhand, and eventually take the match in straight sets.
It was Nash’s first singles match in a tournament, and he said he was thrilled just to be able to play at that high a level.
Trean said he did not know who he was playing – “He just introduced himself as Steve,” he said. He was stunned to learn he had just played an NBA Hall of Famer.
“I thought Steve Nash was a lot taller than this guy,” he said. “But he moved like a great athlete out there on the court,” Trean said.
Local kids shining
There were plenty of other players competing for $6,000 in prize money at the four-day event – Thursday through Sunday – in divisions ranging from 3.5 all the way up to 5.0 and the Open Division.
Much of the spectator attention focused on former Mira Costa star Kelly Giese and the Brady girls, Kiana and Quinn, who hail from Hermosa Beach.
Kiana Brady, who plays for Redlands University, thrilled her fans with a spectacular comeback in her Open Division quarter final singles match. After splitting the first two sets, instead of a third set they played a 10-point tie-breaker in which she fell behind 6-3.
But instead of getting discouraged, she became a human backboard, refusing to miss a shot, and won long rally after long rally. In the end she won 7 of the last 8 points, and took the match, which would have gone the other way if she weren’t such a tenacious fighter.
She lost in the semifinals to top seeded Leyden Games, but had every reason to be proud of her memorable comeback. Games went on to win the title, beating defending champion Marissa Markey in the final.
Meanwhile her sister Quinn Brady teamed up with Isabella Bringas to take the Women’s Open Division Doubles title, winning the final in straight sets.
But it was Giese, who graduated from Mira Costa in 2022 and spent his freshman year playing for Lubbock University in Texas, who nearly pulled off the rare double crown: winning both the Open Division singles and Doubles.
He and partner Max Wuelfing took the doubles final in straight sets Sunday afternoon under a blazing sun just an hour after Giese had played an incredible match in the men’s Open Division Singles Semifinals.
Going up against the top seed, Tim Kpulun, Giese lost the first set 6-3, took the second set 6-3, and was trailing 6-5 in the third set when his legs cramped up. Refusing to quit, he hobbled around the court like a wounded warrior.
He ended up losing the third set 7-5 but his family and friends could not have been prouder of his courage and resilience – especially after Kpulun won the final in straight sets. The conclusion was obvious: It could easily have been Giese prevailing in the Finals if not for those leg cramps.
Fairytales can come true
On a weekend when many Beach City residents were dreaming about winning a $2 billion power ball prize, the tournament proved that dreams can come true on a smaller, more human scale.
Friday night Sam Ashbrook’s partner in the Open Division Men’s Doubles had to drop out. Ashbrook asked Tournament Director Michael Hudak if he knew of anyone who was available at the last minute and still good enough to step in and play at the Open Division level.
Hudak could think of only one name: Steve Nash.
Nash eventually agreed – “He had to check with his wife first,” Hudak said – and a new doubles team of Ashbrook and Nash was born.
They lost their match Saturday morning, but they were still winners all around.
“Sam now has a story he can tell for the rest of his life, and Steve Nash just added to his legend at Live Oak,” Hudak said. “I think he just likes helping people.”
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER
