Mike D'Antoni dishes on Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant and 'Linsanity'
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- Mike D'Antoni enters the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend, saying his enshrinement is for his philosophical contribution to the game rather than his 672 career wins or two Coach of the Year awards.
- D'Antoni's 2005-06 Phoenix Suns ranked second in the NBA in offensive efficiency at 111.5 points per 100 possessions — a mark that would rank 26th in today's league, illustrating how the entire NBA has adopted his pace-and-space approach.
- D'Antoni took the Lakers job primarily because Steve Nash was joining the team, but Nash never fully recovered from injury, and D'Antoni said the partnership was 'doomed from the start.'
- D'Antoni recalled the famous photo of himself, Kobe Bryant, and Dwight Howard as an off-the-cuff joke to counter rumors of their conflict, taken by trainer Gary Vitti.
- D'Antoni said his New York tenure was defined by Linsanity and two heartbreaks: missing out on LeBron James and drafting Steph Curry by one spot.
- D'Antoni won 65 games with the 2017-18 Houston Rockets and helped James Harden win MVP, finally feeling empowered by analytics to push the system to its limit.
- D'Antoni said the Rockets' 2018 Game 7 loss to Golden State — when they went 7-for-44 from three-point range with 27 consecutive misses — cost Chris Paul a championship after Paul injured his hamstring.
Why it matters: D'Antoni's admission that he 'didn't maximize what we could have done' with the original Suns reveals the league's pace-and-space revolution was held back by doubt even from its inventor. The 111.5 offensive rating that was revolutionary in 2005 would rank 26th today — his system is no longer ahead of the league, it's the baseline.
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