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NEW YORK — One summer evening in 2008, a 26-year-old named Tarek Pertew left his office in Manhattan and walked over to Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a strip of green on the Lower East Side. Pertew wore a suit. He had no plans. He only wished for some fresh air, so he stumbled over to a soccer field, noticed a game, and gripped the chain-link fence.

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A group of New Yorkers were playing pickup, sweating through their shirts as the golden hour sunlight reflected off windows in the neighborhood. There was no crowd, no onlookers, only a group of friends, a ball and the sounds of soccer. And then, as one of the guys delivered another on-target pass, Pertew realized what he was watching.

“I was like: ‘Holy shit, that’s Steve Nash.’”

Out on the field, Nash presented like you might expect from a Hall of Fame point guard: good pace, great feet, a surplus of creativity and vision. “NBA vision,” Pertew recalled. He roamed from box to box. He helped back on defense. He looked like someone who grew up playing the sport in Victoria, British Columbia, then became the NBA’s biggest soccer fan. There was only one surprise. It was how anonymous he looked. Nash was still in his prime with the Phoenix Suns, still seven years away from retirement and more than a decade from returning to New York to coach the Brooklyn Nets. He resembled a Manhattan advertising exec out for a post-work kickabout.

“It was clear he knew the fellas and they said: ‘Hey, let’s go play pickup,’” Partew said.

If you have spent any time around a New York City soccer field in the last decade, chances are decent you’ve seen Steve Nash, or played against him, or know someone who has.

Once, in the summer of 2014, a 30-something New York native named Joe Franquinha showed up at a park in Manhattan to be a guest goalkeeper for a squad from an ad agency. As he warmed up, Franquinha noticed an athletic looking guy wearing green shorts, green shoes and a white jersey repping Miss Lily’s, a Jamaican restaurant in lower Manhattan: “Is that fucking Steve Nash over there?” Franquinha asked.

It was. According to Franquinha, Nash balled out.

A few years before that, Kyle Martino, a retired MLS player living in New York, was coaxed by a friend into joining a team from Phebe’s, a bar in the East Village. The squad was known for its ringers, so Martino wasn’t surprised to see some former pros warming up. He was, however, shocked by what he saw on the field at Pier 40.

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“I looked over and I was like, ‘Is that fucking Steve Nash?’” Martino recalled. “(My friend) was like, ‘Yeah, man, he plays on our team, too.’”

The game went on, Nash almost got into a scrap with an overzealous opponent, the boys went out for drinks after the game, and Nash and Martino became fast friends. Martino learned that Nash loved the rhythms of the city and the ability to disappear into a pickup game. He realized Nash was maybe the most competitive man he’d ever met, spending his NBA offseasons on the hunt for the next game, the next challenge, the next opportunity to compete, whether it be with Thierry Henry or the guys from Phebe’s.

“That guy has a work ethic, a discipline and a focus unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Martino said. “But really, when I distill him down to what makes him special, it’s the childlike competitor that’s always there. Everything’s a game.”

More than a decade after they first met on a soccer field in Manhattan, Nash is back in New York, albeit in a different borough (Brooklyn) and in a slightly more high-profile role. Hired in September to lead the Nets, he is a first-year NBA coach with a roster that includes Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, and expectations that exceed any in franchise history.

Nets general manager Sean Marks said the franchise was looking for “a connector, a communicator and a cultural driver.” Nash was one of the most respected (and well liked) stars of his era.

“Maybe more importantly than anything is the joy with which he played the game,” Marks said, “and the joy with which he led his teams.”

If you have ever watched Nash play basketball, his long hair flowing, his eyes up, his legs always moving with such effortless control, you have seen the joy. But if you wish to know where it came from — if you want to know why Steve Nash came to fall hard for New York City — it’s best to ignore basketball for a moment.

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It’s best to start with soccer.

When Nash was in Grade 11 at Mt. Douglas Secondary School, he showed up to soccer tryouts with an odd question: Did anyone have any extra boots? This, at least, is the version of the story told by Jeevan Manhas, one of Nash’s close high school friends. Even then, it seemed a little strange. Nash had grown up in a soccer-mad home; his father John was a well known youth coach. Nash, though, was calm and nonchalant, never one to worry about trivial matters such as proper footwear. He told the guys he hadn’t had a pair in forever. He found some to borrow. “Can I just hang onto these?” he asked.

Fast forward to the first game, a showdown between big schools. Mt. Douglas was talented, and expectations were high. The players were eager and excited. “Steve pulls out someone’s old boots,” Manhas said. “I’m like: ‘You still don’t have your own cleats?’ He’s like: ‘Nah.’

“We won four-nil and he scored three. So, that was just how it went. He just rolled out there, casual, not even worried, ‘I don’t have cleats,’ and off he went, and he would just dominate.”

Nash was the best soccer player at Mt. Douglas. That was no surprise. He was also the best basketball player and excelled at baseball, hockey and rugby, among other sports. Still, nothing compares to your first love — and for Nash, the love was deep. “Soccer will always be in Steve’s heart,” Manhas said.

He had grown up in what he once called a “British” household on the West Coast of Canada. His father, his first coach, hailed from North London. He collected posters of Tottenham Hotspur, his father’s club, and idolized Glenn Hoddle, the Spurs legend. To this day, he says soccer makes him feel like a little kid.

John Nash had played football semi-professionally in England and South Africa, and once the family landed in Victoria, he offered his knowledge to the kids in the neighborhood, including Nash and his two siblings. At the heart of the wisdom was a simple idea: The true gift of soccer was to make others better, an assist could be more valuable than a goal, to empower others was the secret to success. “Our city was really lucky to have John mentor so many kids,” said Steph Steiner, a local soccer coach who grew up playing with the Nash boys.

Nash came to embody his father’s ideals, and back in Victoria, many still believe he had the talent and drive to be the best Canadian soccer player ever. (His younger brother Martin was no slouch, playing professionally for second-tier clubs in England and North America.) Nash had a deft touch, natural instincts and a prodigious will to win. (When he was a kid, the competition among the local clubs was so fierce that one year a coach had two teams ceremoniously bury a hatchet in the field behind the Nash’s house. “We actually dug a hole and we shook hands,” Manhas said.)

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If Nash’s soccer dream eventually died, we can lay blame at the feet of at least three culprits: Michael Jordan, Spike Lee and a group of basketball-obsessed friends at Arbutus Jr. High. It was His Airness (with the help of Mars Blackmon) who charmed a young Nash. It was a junior high friend group that provided the ideal incubator for his talents. Open gyms. Tournaments. Friends bonding over ball. “In the span of a couple years,” Manhas said, “the legend just exploded.”

Back then, the local police department sponsored an annual basketball tournament, with the MVP winning a pair of Air Jordans. Nash became so good, so quick, that the myth was that the shoes were pre-ordered in his size. By Grade 11, he was primarily focused on basketball, looking toward college and drawing attention from the Canadian national team. Yet he could never leave soccer behind. He loved the sport too much. The same year he opened the season with borrowed boots, he led Mt. Doug to a provincial championship, scoring both goals in the championship game. His coach called him the best athlete he’d seen in 20 years.

“Steven was just always so gifted and cerebral and just smarter than everybody,” Manhas said. “You always felt that in his head, no matter if it was before a game, middle of a game, losing or winning, that he had it figured out how we were going to win.

“To this day, that’s so infectious. I’ve seen him in pickup games with groups of people that have no right to be winning or doing the things they’re doing, but his leadership is just so crazy. He can turn to the guy next to him, who might be just not very talented at all, and turn him into believing and achieving above their means.”

In the moments after the provincial championship, after Nash had earned MVP honors, his coach at Mt. Doug, a man named Stu Barber, turned to a local reporter and noted that Nash “doesn’t really play soccer.”

It was a funny thing to say. It was also sort of true. By that point, he was already Steve Nash, basketball standout. But the reality was this: He wasn’t done with soccer.

On the night Martino first met Nash, the former midfielder with the Columbus Crew and Los Angeles Galaxy had two immediate thoughts: One was that Nash looked incredibly small for an NBA MVP. The second? “Holy shit, Steve Nash can fucking play soccer. Wow.”

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Martino had moved to New York in the late 2000s after injuries had abruptly ended his career. Nash was in his early 30s, spending more and more of his offseason time in Manhattan. Martino was trying to forget about soccer. Nash was dedicating his summers to it. “What we bonded about the most at the beginning is just how amazing this game is,” Martino said.

Nash, who would put down offseason roots in Tribeca, loved the culture of the city. He played soccer for Phebe’s (where he became close with the owner and ultimately opened a restaurant in Kips Bay). He found pickup groups. He befriended former U.S. national team star Claudio Reyna and organized an annual charity game at Sara D. Roosevelt Park (where the proceeds benefited children in underserved communities). Mostly, he reveled in the anonymity that comes with a city of eight million people and a soccer scene of like-minded lovers of the beautiful game.

“It very much is a world of he gets to see what life would have been like if he wasn’t a two-time NBA MVP,” Martino says, “when he comes out and plays pick-up with us.”

Nash could ride through the streets of lower Manhattan on a bike with Thierry Henry, a World Cup winner, and nobody would bother him. He could also play in a co-ed adidas tournament for a team from a Jamaican restaurant — where the owners doubled as soccer diehards — and help the team lift a trophy. If a future Hall of Fame basketball player could ever blend in seamlessly to his surroundings while also being the best player on the field, well, that was Nash.

“He definitely had swag,” said Tim Brodhagen, a founder of a New York creative agency and a former Nash opponent. “He’s not just a meat-and-potatoes, frat-guy type of player. He definitely makes it look good, while being extremely nasty.”

Manhas has been friends with Nash for 35 years and said he’s still not sure if he’s left or right footed. Charlie Davies, the former U.S. men’s national team player, believes that Nash could have been a sterling holding midfielder, a classic No. 8, the kind of attacking player who can link up play and shift the mood of a game. In that way, Nash’s soccer persona isn’t all that different from his basketball one. He is a connector, a man with friends all over the sport (and beyond).

Once, in 2004, Nash found himself outside Paris, meeting Henry and Zinedine Zidane as the French national team prepared for an international competition at Clairefontaine, its national training ground. Nash and Henry became close enough that he and his father visited Barcelona when Henry was there. (Nash, who wore No. 10 with the Lakers as a tribute to Zidane, also once told Sports Illustrated that the meeting with “Zizou” still gives him goosebumps.) The same year, Manhas and Nash traveled to Portugal to watch Italy play in Euro 2004, the tickets courtesy of Italian star Alessandro Del Piero, another Nash confidante. After the game, they were walking through a crowd of  supporters when Nash got a phone call and started discussing the game with someone on the other end. Moments later, Manhas realized it was Del Piero.

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“Steve is so creative, so free thinking,” Manhas said. “He’ll try to think about things that nobody will even dare to let their minds wander to.”

Nash has never been a head coach, but he often took an interest in the careers of younger basketball players, doling out advice or offering words of inspiration. Sometimes that happened in an NBA locker room. One time it happened, naturally, at the wedding of former U.S. national team player Stu Holden, one of Nash’s good friends.

It was the summer of 2015. Nash had retired from basketball in March. Davies, who was then playing for the New England Revolution, had traveled to Del Mar, Calif., for a wedding on the beach. The festivities included a pickup game with players from Europe and the States. (Marcos Alonso, now with Chelsea, was in attendance. According to Davies, Nash held his own.) As the reception took place just off the water, and the crowd filled up, Nash pulled Davies aside for an impromptu, 35-minute heart-to-heart. Davies had battled back from a 2009 car crash that threatened his playing career. Nash wanted to know how much longer he planned to play. When Davies answered three to four years, Nash started in on a long, winding conversation about maximizing the time, about sucking every last moment out of his career.

“It went all over the place,” Davies said.

They talked about eating right, about sleeping enough, about taking the time to laugh and pouring everything into the last few years. It was, Davies said, exactly what he needed. “When I did retire,” Davies said, “I felt a huge sense of relief.”

Nash, of course, understood what it meant to leave a sport behind. In the five years since he retired, he has kept plenty busy — and not just with Martino’s pickup soccer games, which migrated to Venice, Calif., after Nash and his family settled in Manhattan Beach. Nash has done soccer commentary for Turner Sports. He worked as a player development consultant for the Golden State Warriors. In 2016, he bought a stake, alongside Phoenix Suns owners Robert Sarver and Andy Kohlberg, in Spanish football club Mallorca. (Nash is also a minority owner in MLS’s Vancouver Whitecaps.)

Joined by Holden and Martino as minority owners at Mallorca, Nash received first-hand experience in the inner workings of a professional franchise, from the culture to player development methods to how the club utilized analytics. Earlier this summer, before anyone thought of Nash coaching the Nets, Holden told The Athletic that the friends were on a text chain in which they would share ideas and follow matches. Martino called it “basically a masters in sports management.” (Martino eventually sold his stake in the club to pursue other business ventures.)

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All the while, Nash never mentioned coaching. Not during pickup games with Del Piero and other former stars. Not when Holden and Martino met him for karaoke at Barney’s Beanery in Los Angeles (according to Martino, they crushed a version of “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe.) And not when Nash was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018, and one of his biggest priorities was tasking Martino with organizing a pickup soccer game of friends for the morning after at a park in Hartford, Conn. “At the end of the night,” Davies said, “it was like: ‘Everybody get your boots ready.’”

Nash never publicly expressed a desire to coach, but privately, it was always there. He was always thinking about the next game.

“I love to compete,” he said, when announced as the Nets coach in September. “I love to teach, to lead, and to be a part of a team.”

So now Nash is back in New York, in a job that requires creativity and a delicate touch. Amidst the stress of a shortened offseason and a new job, he also found the perfect way to unwind. One evening in October, a college soccer player named Jamie Becker arrived at a warehouse in Greenpoint for an invitation-only soccer game hosted by StreetFC, one of Martino’s soccer startups. There, in the middle of the action, was the new coach of the Nets, controlling the action and setting up teammates, his vision still clear.

“An absolute baller,” Becker said later.

“Soccer connects all of us,” Martino would add.

Martino was talking about Nash and his vast circle of New York friends, but perhaps he could have been speaking of something broader. When Nash, his wife, Lilla, and their children returned to New York, Martino sent a “welcome” text message, but he wasn’t sure Nash would have much time for soccer, so he held off on thinking about pickup.

“The first text I got from him,” Martino says, “was, ‘Yo, you want to come play?’”

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— Dermot Corrigan contributed to this report.

(Top photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images)

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