D'Antoni on Hall of Fame: 'The league plays like my Suns'
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- Mike D'Antoni is entering the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend with 672 career wins (top 25 in NBA history) and two Coach of the Year awards, but he tells ESPN the honor is for his philosophical contribution to the sport, not his résumé.
- 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 have ranked just 26th twenty years later, showing how every team now plays the style he pioneered.
- D'Antoni says he took the Lakers coaching job primarily because Steve Nash was going to be there; Nash never fully recovered from injury and D'Antoni called the tenure 'doomed from the start.'
- D'Antoni coached Jeremy Lin during 'Linsanity' with the Knicks, and looking back he notes the franchise missed drafting Steph Curry by one spot and fell short in its bid to clear cap space for LeBron James.
- D'Antoni's 2017-18 Houston Rockets went 65-17 and won him Coach of the Year, built around James Harden at point guard and an analytically driven embrace of 3-point shooting that let him push the envelope further than he had with the Suns.
- In Game 7 of the 2018 Western Conference finals against Golden State, D'Antoni's Rockets missed 27 consecutive 3-pointers (going 7-for-44) and lost after Chris Paul pulled his hamstring; D'Antoni says that team would have won a championship had they advanced.
Why it matters: D'Antoni's Hall of Fame case is less about his 672 career wins than the fact that his 2005-06 Suns' offensive style — 111.5 points per 100 possessions — is now how every NBA team plays. His candid reflections on the doomed Nash Lakers era, 'Linsanity,' and the Rockets' 27 straight missed 3s in the 2018 Game 7 add color to a career that reshaped basketball more than it won titles.
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