Mike D’Antoni officially coached his first game with the New York Knicks last night, and came out with a 120-115 victory over the Miami Heat on a night when Dwyane Wade posted 28-7-9.
Following the game, Shawn Marion, a mainstay with the Suns during D’Antoni’s years at the helm in Phoenix, said, “They remind me of us a few years ago. He doesn’t have the personnel he had in Phoenix. But it’s close to how we played. He’s got them going 100 miles an hour, playing loose and free.”
“Mike’s philosophy is to go out there and outscore teams,” Marion said. “Regardless who his personnel is, whether he has the same personnel he had in Phoenix or not, all he wants is to get people to go out and play hard and put up shots. They’re gonna do that. He wants his guys to go out and shoot without hesitation. Then go back and try to play defense. But the main thing is to try to outscore the other team.”
So Marion, who has significant experience playing for D’Antoni, is able to highlight his coaching philosophy as:
1. Outscore the other team
2. Play hard
3. Play loose and free
4. Put up shots without hesitation
5. …oh, and outscore the other team
Unfortunately, the New York media (who are actually rather basketball savvy) has already seen fit to take issue with this philosophy. Mitch Lawrence, a New York Daily News columnist writes:
The Knicks were way too loose at the defensive end, but for anyone who saw the best of D’Antoni’s teams out in Phoenix, this is familiar territory.…D’Antoni will be here to drive old Knicks fans up the wall with his style. Marion suggests that fans need to forget the days when New York teams shut down opponents in the fourth quarter…
So get used to the Knicks hanging on for dear life in a game like Wednesday night’s. Get ready for some fourth-quarter choke jobs. This is what D’Antoni’s system produces, thrills and spills.
“The style we play, the game is never over because we add so many extra possessions to the game,” said Chris Duhon. “This is a lesson to learn for us. We’ve got to close the door on teams.”
They never did that in Phoenix, so why should these New York Suns?
Now, over 4 years in Phoenix (including his first season, when he took over an 8-13 team), D’Antoni’s teams managed to “close the door” an average of 58 times per regular season. That’s a 70% winning percentage in the most competitive basketball league in the world. I guess that’s not good enough for Mr. Lawrence, so he, predictably, moves on to his post-season argument.
The Knicks were way too loose at the defensive end, but for anyone who saw the best of D’Antoni’s teams out in Phoenix, this is familiar territory. In their playoff wars with the Spurs, they’d surrender 40 points in the fourth quarter without so much as batting an eye, and D’Antoni, in his post-game autopsy, would always bemoan his team’s shortcomings at the offensive end.
(Coaching note: I would hope that D’Antoni bemoans his lack of offense in those games…it speaks directly to his philosophy).
Of course, the Suns under D’Antoni went 26-25 in the playoffs and lost twice in the Western Conference finals (it should be noted that there would likely be only one Western Conference Finals loss if not for one of the most notorious officiating debacles ever in the 2007 play-offs). Many in the media love to fall back on this in their anti-D’Antoni as the basis of their argument, as taking a team to 2 of 4 possible NBA “Final Fours” is surely a failure.
Some, like former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy, offer a different perspective. When D’Antoni was criticized for not stressing defense and for not developing a bench, Van Gundy replied “I don’t buy that. They lost to better teams, plain and simple. As for developing players, he’s done a pretty good job with Nash, Marion and Stoudemire. Their best years came with Mike coaching them.”
Others can offer a more complete perspective on the coach, like Maurizio Gherardini, VP of the Toronto Raptors, who hired Mike D’Antoni as a coach in the Italian League and has known him for more than 30 years.
“The guy would tell you there are never problems, only solutions. He knows how to find something positive in every situation, and how to transfer that optimistic view to the people around him.”
And as to winning in the post-season, well, D’Antoni has done that too. He coached in Italy from 1990-1997, and again in 2001-02 leading his teams to the play-offs every season. He led Philips Milan to the 1993 Korac cup, and Treviso to the 1995 Cup of Italy and Cup of Europe, as well as the Italian league title in 1996-97 and 2002. Oh, and he was the lead assistant on the 2008 US Olympic team.
In summation, I guess that while there are those of us who advocate and support a coach who preaches “scoring more that the other team,” playing hard, fast, loose, and confident, who remains positive and optimistic in most situations, who develops players and allows even those at the league-all-star-level to reach their potential, who sticks to his coaching philosophy rather than wavers from it in the face of adversity, and who has seen success after success in the both the regular and post-season…
…there will always be the Mitch Lawrence-club of writers, who will always compare eveything to the green grass of perfection on the other side of the fence (you know – not that they’ve ever really been over there), but who will, unfortunately, likely never appreciate good coaching.
