The Nash Effect - Part 2 - The Fans

If you haven't heard by now, and you all should have, Steve Nash was named the General Manager of the Senior Men's National Team Tuesday. In what was long speculated and hoped for, Canada's golden boy has returned to the National Program that he grew up in and helped take to lofty height just at the turn of the century. So what does this mean for Canada Basketball? Can Ball Ray his look at three aspects that the Nash Effect will have on the program right here continuing with the fan support ...

The Senior Men's National Team has been in a sort of peak and valley situation in the last few years but the valley sure has been deep of late. The team has been underachieving, or at least disappointing, and that has had two effects: keep the program in doldrums and chasing the fans away in large numbers.

OK, maybe not chasing them away but more like turning them off or turning them against the program all together.

Enter Steve Nash.

Here is a guy that is nothing but a people magnet. He's clean, well kept, polite, an environmentalist and incredibly personable. AND he's been an NBA All Star while also being named NBA MVP two years in a row. This Canadian is the THE CANADIAN that will be the guy to draw the masses back to the side of Canada Basketball.

The National Program is now in a type rebuilding phase but, I think, from every possible standpoint. Of course the players and the organization can stand an upgrade but the biggest and probably the most important thing that will need to be given an overhaul is the program's image.

There have been shadows cast on the program that can be traced to when Jay Triano left the program. Since then, Canada Basketball has been increasingly looked at as a little on the disorganized, or under organized, side. Whispers and accusations from lots of places abouts lots of things over the years compounded by individual situations have cast a further shadow.

The confidence of the public in the program has seemingly been undermined but now we have a high character guy with the star power to pull the program up to the stars. Well, not the stars just yet but at least pulling the program in the right direction.

And the biggest group of people that will be pulled first towards the light that is Steve Nash is the fans.

And by fans I mean all fans. The hardcore group of people, such as myself for instance, who have always kept tabs with the National Program over the years are obviously elated that he's a part of the program because we are aware of what he can do for the program. And I for one an just as excited that we Nash's involvement he'll be able to pull in the other 95% of fans, the casual basketball fans, to the support of the Senior Men's National Team and the National Program in general.

This is a the one of the biggest things that I'm most excited about.

All you have to do is Google search Steve Nash in the news and count how many stories have been written about him becoming the GM of the SMNT. They number in the hundreds now and all this means is that there hundreds of people excited enough to write about it. That reach adds an exponential amount of people who have the potential to be as excited I am about Nash bring up the program.

Nash will no doubt be able to draw the players in to help improve the team on the court but he will also draw in the fans once again. His presence alone will have fans believing that the program is making progress. This new found support will bode well for the program overall.

There have been many who have lost faith in the program and all but left it for dead but Nash can be seen as the Pied Piper to help draw that them back giving the die hard supports and casual fans alike the what we've all been needing all this time: a figure to rally us together. And after that last run we've had in the international stage and the seemingly polarized state of the program has been in, this is the adrenaline shot that the basketball gods have ordered.