Steve Nash is an outstanding NBA basketball player and also is a very unique person off of the basketball court. Steve Nash has accomplished many great things throughout his career. He has won MVP awards and has been close to winning championships.

Steve Nash was born on February 7th, 1974 in South Africa. He did not grow up in South Africa though. Instead his parents moved to Canada where he spent most of his childhood. The reason they moved was his dad was going to play some professional soccer there. Nash as well liked to play soccer and he played it all throughout High School. Steve Nash obviously was also a good basketball player as we all know now, and he decided to play basketball instead of Soccer in college.

Steve Nash attended Santa Clara University in California. Steve had a breakout career with them. During his freshman year he helped his team receive a bid to the NCAA tournament, and he led them to another two bids to the tournament over the course of his career there. He won the WCC ( West Coast Conference) player of the year award three times. Steve had such an amazing career there that he is considered one of the best players ever to play basketball at the University of Santa Clara.

Because of Steve's outstanding play in college, he entered the 1996 NBA draft. Steve was taken 15th overall by the Phoenix Suns. Steve did not do to great his first couple of years with the Suns, and he was traded to the Dallas Mavericks in 1998. Steve was playing very well with the Mavericks and they were a pretty decent team at the time. Although he never won an NBA championship with the Mavericks, he still did do a very good job and he even became an NBA All Star for the first time in his career.

At the end of the 2004-2005 season, Steve Nash became a free agent. The Mavericks offered him a decent contract but the Phoenix Suns offered him a much better one. Steve decided that it would be best if he signed back with his original team that he was drafted from because there was a lot more money for him, plus the Phoenix Suns were a very young and talented team and seemed to have some very good potential.

If you watch the NBA games now a days, you know that Steve Nash made a pretty good decision to go and play for the Suns. He won the MVP(Most Valuable Player) award back to back years in a row. He has not won a championship yet with the Suns, but I think that they are very capable because they have added a few great players.

Steve is also a great player off the court. He has started a foundation called the Steve Nash foundation. This foundation is working to help kids get healthier, help them get an education, and pretty much just help kids that are having rough childhoods. I think that is really unique that Steve is such an amazing basketball player and a great person off the court. He is an extremely good role model for young kids around the world to look up to. Here is what he had to say about the foundation on his website. www.stevnash.org
"I started this Foundation because I really felt the need to try to help people. As a professional athlete, you are in a position and given the opportunity to really have an impact on more than just your immediate surroundings. For me to be able to do that is something that's sometimes challenging, but always worthwhile.
Everyday, all of us - together and as individuals - have an opportunity as citizens to contribute to the vision of what we want to see in the world. And how best to do that but through children. We know that kids run the world; we know that they will grow and walk and run the world. They need from us now the tools to help them grow. They need from us now those things that will position them to think for themselves and become their own guiding forces that will shape our communities, locally and globally, down the road. What we are trying to do with this Foundation is to actuate our collective hope by helping to grow health in them.At the Steve Nash Foundation, we believe strongly that every child has the right to be healthy, to have a good education, to live in an environment that contributes to her well-being, to his personal development.'

I hope that you can see from this that although it's great to play a game you love for millions of dollars and receive lot's of attention, it's also really great to help the people who really need it. Steve Nash is an amazing basketball player and just an all around great guy.