Sidelines
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IT started, he says, when he was 2, but it probably began even before that, before he could possibly even remember. It began when they said, "It's a boy!" It began when he first grabbed a baby basketball and people looked at him and saw his father. Nash living under his
dad’s shadowIt never stopped. They still do. It's perhaps at its peak now, in his junior year at Iolani, as he makes all those traveling teams and preseason lists and recruiting blue books, since he's grown just a little bit between seasons and 23 was too tight and he takes the court now in that hauntingly familiar No. 33.
You can see it yourself now, too, it isn't hard at all. He has that same heavy eyebrow when he plays, so that he looks the way the old man looked in the old days -- that determined expression his fabulous dad wore to tell the whole world that every rebound was his.
And the name. They had to give him that name! There's no mistaking it now, of who he is or where he's going or what he's going to do.
You don't even need to see him. You just hear that name and you know.
Since he was 2, he says. He wasn't Joe Nash or Kimo Nash or Ignacio Nash, no. He was Bobby. Bobby Nash. Fabulous Bobby Nash.
"It's always hard," he says. "My dad's a good player, role model, person in the community and I know that I'm under a microscope. Everybody expects me to be ... like my father. But people have to know that I'm not him. And like, I will make mistakes and I'll try to cut down on them, and be who I am."
And so he is.
BOBBY NASH SEEMS brave somehow when he says this. Like he is not afraid of carrying this enormous legacy and all the weight it brings. He faces it, even when surrounded by heavy and daunting expectations, even when everyone wants him to be just like his dad.
He is not his father. He tells you that emphatically, and more than once. But neither does he run from it. The name, the comparison, is simply a fact of his life, for as long as he could possibly remember, and so he lives with it, he takes it in stride.
He knows why you're asking about it, too. He knows it all, the history, even if his father has hidden it all away, so as not to raise expectations for his son. Bobby has heard the stories and watched the old movies, seen the old games of the Fabulous Five, the best team ever, the guys who played old-style and took a state by storm.
"You can learn a lot from watching how hard my dad hustled around, and how hard he played and how hard he played defense, how hard he went for the rebounds and that's why he got those 30 rebounds in that one game," Bobby says. Yes, he knows all about the 30 rebounds.
"He set the standard," Bobby says.
Bob Nash was, in those fabulous days, one of the best ever to play basketball at Hawaii. And he hasn't faded much through the years. He's stayed here, returning after a tour through the pros. He has become Mr. Rainbow, the man who bleeds kalakoa and green. The man who still stands tall and looms large in local basketball, the man who has been an assistant coach at UH for 20 years. His is a demanding moniker to share for a boy who grows up playing basketball too.
But Bobby loves his father, and loves who his father is, even as he strives to become his own man.
EVERY DAY THERE are 16 pieces of mail in homeroom addressed to Bobby Nash. They come from everywhere and everyone -- Duke, North Carolina, everyone. And Bobby reads them and his mom files them, and every day they keep coming. And he ignores them, puts them aside and works harder, because he says if he doesn't then next year they might not keep coming.
But it's all irrelevant, isn't it? You know where he's going, don't you? He's a Rainbow already, signed, sealed, delivered, he's already yours.
He is a Rainbow, no matter what or where he signs. He was on the day he was born. He grew up green and white, a ball boy, knew every player, saw every year, runs the plays in his sleep. He works out with Savo now, tries to guard Carl English, has known Riley Wallace his whole life.
And so of course everyone already knows that Bob Nash's boy is going to UH. They tell Bobby all about it, asking the question as if it's already a statement. But the truth is the kid just doesn't know yet what's going to happen, until he waits to see who's serious, until they wait to see if he really is that good.
"Really, I'm just trying to get out of my junior year," he says.
He's a coach's kid, and he's seen all this happen from the inside 100 times. He knows the reality of what he's talking about. He knows that's enough for now.
BOB NASH AND "Jelly Bean" Bryant know each other from the pros, and so Bobby and a guy named Kobe sometimes talk. The Kid tells the kid about What it Takes and Keeping Your Head on Straight and Giving Your All Even When Nobody's Looking and even more personal things.
"With his dad, too," Bobby says. "He has kind of the same problem."
Well, he used to. And Bobby would like that, too, to learn from his dad and then make his own way. Find his own game and his own name. Bobby plays outside, on the wing. He's not a rebounding machine. He shoots 3s.
"I'm not my father," he says. But he has the same dream. "I hope someday that I could be better than him," Bobby says. "Get to the point where he was."
And so he knows having Bob Nash as your father is a great resource when you have chosen basketball, and it has chosen you. The elder Nash says he's tried to stay a step back when it comes to athletics, to just be a dad, to let both his kids find their own journeys of discovery. He talks with Bobby in general terms about passion and principles and hard work and academics and loving to play the game.
His mom is the real coach, Coach Nash says, she's the one who drills Bobby about basketball.
"I just put the bait out there and let him figure out how to get to the end result," the father says. "He's a clever kid about figuring out things."
He is, indeed. "The thing is, I bring him in," Bobby says. "Because I know what he's been through and I know he's been to that level that I want to achieve someday," he says, "and hopefully be better than him."
There it is again, better than him. But Bob agrees.
"Hopefully he'll make it better than I did," the famous father says, speaking of the famous name.
AH, THAT NAME. There is no escaping it, not when you play basketball in the shadow of UH, not when you're a prep prospect in Hawaii and your dad was one of the Fabulous Five.
"Bobby Nash, Bobby Nash," the kids in the stands whisper, as he hangs for just a split second after an alley-oop dunk. The letters are still coming. He is still working. The UH fans are still waiting, still quizzing him on his future plans at every stop. He's on lists and in camps and everyone everywhere knows who he is. They always have. Since he was 2, he says. They hear his name once, and they know.
"I think my dad put that on me," says. "It's all my dad's fault. I guess he liked the name Bobby because he was named after his father. I'm his lineage, so I'm named after him."
The younger Nash stops for just a second. He's had his whole life to think about this. Bobby Nash knows who he is, too.
"And it's a good name," he says. "I've enjoyed it very much."
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com