Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Steve Nash Profile from Sports Illustrated

Really good feature on Steve Nash in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.



The story is titled "The Genuine Point Guard" and interestingly (well, to me) was written by Charles Pierce. I first came across Pierce probably ten years ago via his book "Sports Guy" and have since seen him published (fairly regularly) in Esquire. Just a really good writer who penned the late 2008 essay "American Surprise: How Election Night Brought Us Home Again".

Back to the piece on Nash... what was so compelling about it was the rare combination of excellent writing about an interesting subject. I found particularly of note Pierce's description of Nash as "genuine" as opposed to "authentic". Authenticity is described as something packaged for the purpose of public favor, but genuine the much harder to find concept of someone who just is themself... and that being a good thing. Among other things, Nash founded the production company Meathawk... which is producing an upcoming ESPN movie on Terry Fox (that I posted about here with link to a Fast Company cover story on Nash.)

In Nash, there seems to be a really good guy who acts good without ulterior motives. An admirable concept that Pierce does a great job of bringing home to the reader through his usage of language and the meaning behind specific words.

In short, words they be might powerful things and are used really really well here by Pierce.