Steve Nash pens a heartbreaking, needed letter to angry Los Angeles Lakers fans

Pretend that you have your dream job.

Pretend that you accurately identified your dream job in your early teens. Pretend that you spent the entirety of your high school years preparing for your dream job through unorthodox means; like, say, dribbling a tiny tennis ball in your school halls between classes. Pretend that, despite setbacks and limited exposure, you eventually made it to the pinnacle of your dream job. Pretend that you were lauded as the top practitioner of such dream job-y-ness for the bulk of your 30s.

Pretend your dream job was taken away from you, not because you didn’t put the effort in, or because your attitude changed, but because your body failed you. Yes, you should have been past your prime while working at your dream job for years prior, you were expected to decline at some point, but you were so good at your dream job that age didn’t matter. The decline of your contemporaries wasn’t a pattern to pay attention to. Nothing at your age seemed to point to the swift and unfair fall from the top.

Cruelly, you didn’t just fall from the top, either. Pretend that you weren’t just precluded from participating at your dream job. Pretend that you weren’t even allowed to participate in an amateur version of that dream job, the same sort of work that made you want to do this for the rest of your life to begin with.

If we’re lucky enough to take in that dream job, there are expectations that we’ll likely have to face as we enter into old age. Into the typical retirement age, when most bodies and minds start to fail us.

Steve Nash might be the NBA’s oldest player on contract, but he’s just 40. He’s out for the season due to nerve damage that spreads from his neck down to his calves, and though he’ll make $9.7 million this season from the Los Angeles Lakers, this is no such comfort to the two-time MVP.

Nash was far from comforted by his supposed fans – followers on Instagram – when he posted pictures of himself hiking on Halloween (exhorting his followers to “be safe” on a night that sees too many people do too many stupid things) and a video of himself (since deleted) hitting a golf ball. Those posts were met with an untold (and, do yourself a favor, heretofore unseen) amount of nasty responses from Laker fans critical of Nash for having a life outside of the grueling rehab that he’s underwent in the two years since breaking his leg during a Lakers game against Portland.

Due to the nastiness, Nash decided to pen an open letter on his Facebook page, briefly and barely digging into what he’s had to deal with daily while attempting to work his body into NBA shape. The word count might be too long for the troglodytes that decided to litter Nash’s Instagram page, but because this is his Facebook site (and not an ad-based newspaper), we’re re-printing every word of the letter:

I definitely don’t want to be a distraction, but I felt it best everyone heard from me in my own words.

id=”paragraph5″>I have a ton of miles on my back. Three bulging disks (a tear in one), stenosis of the nerve route and spondylolisthesis. I suffer from sciatica and after games I often can’t sit in the car on the drive home, which has made for some interesting rides. Most nights I’m bothered by severe cramping in both calves while I sleep, a result of the same damn nerve routes, and the list goes on somewhat comically. That’s what you deserve for playing over 1,300 NBA games. By no means do I tell you this for sympathy – especially since I see these ailments as badges of honor – but maybe I can bring some clarity. id=”paragraph6″>I’ve always been one of the hardest workers in the game and I say that at the risk of what it assumes. The past 2 years I’ve worked like a dog to not only overcome these setbacks but to find the form that could lift up and inspire the fans in LA as my last chapter. Obviously it’s been a disaster on both fronts but I’ve never worked harder, sacrificed more or faced such a difficult challenge mentally and emotionally. id=”paragraph7″>I understand why some fans are disappointed. I haven’t been able to play a lot of games or at the level we all wanted. Unfortunately that’s a part of pro sports that happens every year on every team. I wish desperately it was different. I want to play more than anything in the world. I’ve lost an incredible amount of sleep over this disappointment. id=”paragraph8″>Competitiveness, professionalism, naiveté and hope that at some point I’d turn a corner has kept me fighting to get back. As our legendary trainer Gary Vitti, who is a close friend, told me, ‘You’re the last to know’ – and my back has shown me the forecast over the past 18-20 months. To ignore it any longer is irresponsible. But that doesn’t mean that life stops. id=”paragraph9″>This may be hard for people to understand unless you’ve played NBA basketball, but there is an incredible difference between this game and swinging a golf club, hiking, even hitting a tennis ball or playing basketball at the park. Fortunately those other activities aren’t debilitating, but playing an NBA game usually puts me out a couple of weeks. Once you’re asked to accelerate and decelerate with Steph Curry and Kyrie Irving it is a completely different demand. id=”paragraph10″>I’m doing what I’ve always done which is share a bit of my off-court life in the same way everyone else does. Going forward I hope we all can refocus our energies on getting behind these Lakers. This team will be back and Staples will be rocking.

If the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t want to pay Steve Nash $9.7 million this season, they didn’t have to. They could have waived him, lopped two-thirds of his salary off of their books, and continued in their fruitless chase for a free agent star to play alongside Kobe Bryant. Instead, the team’s front office decided that Kobe would have a better chance luring a star to Los Angeles in 2015 without Nash’s $2.3 million (per NBA rules) still sticking on the cap.

It is somewhat understandable for Laker fans to be upset with the team’s winless season thus far, even if the franchise hasn’t had to endure as much this deep into the season since the Eisenhower Administration.

Acting like complete and total pillocks on Steve Nash’s Instagram account – ranting at him because he’s making the sort of money Laker fans once were giddy that he signed to, acting as if the Lakers themselves weren’t culpable in keeping him around at that price, and criticizing a man for having a life outside of more painful procedures in working around his nerve damage – is the height of idiocy.

And, as Nash points out, the sorts of people that don’t understand a brisk and square-bodied run up a hill or a twisting golf club swing as compared with actual basketball play (much less NBA basketball play) are the sort of non-athletes that probably deserve their lot in a pathetic, anonymous, misspent life spent leaving poorly-worded comments on a celebrity’s website. Good luck with all that, kids.

Get better soon, Steve Nash. Keep taking pictures along the way.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops