There are 4 guys on that starting lineup who don't need an ounce of defensive coaching, Kobe, Artest and Howard all know how to defend, and God himself couldnt teach Nash how to defend.
^Riley has a stake on the Heat. He has complete control over everything. That's why he left the Lakers and Knicks, 2 teams who wouldn't give him that and went to Miami. Phil has already asked for ownership stake for the Magic and Blazers when they were reported to contact him before. Phil isn't into coaching at all. He just wanted to use it as a mean to get power in FO and part ownership.
Interesting hire... This could work. D'antoni coaches the pick & roll better than anyone else and the Lakers have three excellent pick & roll players in Nash, Howard, and Gasol. I don't think they have the horses or shooters to do the run 'n gun offense they had in Phoenix, but if they focus on a half court attack with Nash controlling the offense, they could be good. I don't think Artest has a role in this offense at all and I'm not sure how Kobe is going to fit in as he will have the ball much less (and isn't much of a spot up shooter, see the Olympics). But if Nash & Howard are healthy and the offense goes primarily through them, they will be hard to stop.
Phil Jackson might be one of the best coaches ever. But he's not the next Riley GM wise. If I were Lakers, I wouldn't give him that power either. Also you are supposed to be a coach, why the hell would you want to have a say on who is the next coach after you.
The ability to override your own boss, Mitch Kupchak--a top 5 GM in the league if not the best one--is a curious thing for a career coach with no management experience to want, even if that coach is Phil Jackson. It reads like an overstep.
Antoni's opposing teams points allowed, from basketball-reference.com: 05-06 Suns- allowed 102.8 pts per game ranked 28/30 teams* 06-07 Suns- allowed 102.9 pts per game ranked 23/30 teams* 07-08 Suns- allowed 105 pts per game ranked 25/30 teams* 08-09 Knicks-allowed 107.8 pts per game ranked 28/30 teams* 09-10 Knicks-allowed 105.9 pts per game ranked 28/30 teams* 10-11 Knicks-allowed 105.7 pts per game ranked 28/30 teams*
Can't tell if you're misguided or trying to be deliberately misleading. Since you called him "Antoni" it's probably the latter? These numbers are absolutely meaningless due to pace of play. What you want are point differentials at the very least, which are actually pretty reasonable for each of these teams. Since D'Antoni has won a lot of games in his career, it's not surprising that his teams would literally score more points than the other team.
He was scrutinized in PHX and he was fired in PHX & NY cause his teams couldn't play defense. Woodson has done a hell of a lot better job with NY than he did. Also, PHX lost 3 of the 5 games Amare played in. They weren't beating the Spurs that year.
The thing about D'Antoni is that I don't really think he's that good of an OFFENSIVE coach either. He will be, in the short term. I predict that the Lakers will start off very strong under his leadership for 20-35 games and everyone will crow about what a great hire it was. But he rides his players into the ground (ask Amare and to a lesser degree, Lin) and I don't trust his ability to handle egos. It's a great short term move to prevent panic among the fanbase, but I honestly think even Brown's a better coach than D'Antoni.
to be fair, the Spurs had the best player and the deeper team. I think their best chance was in 05, when they still had Joe Johnson. But they were new together and Joe Johnson got hurt in the playoffs. If he doesn't get hurt, I think they win.
That's some interesting historical revisionism. Here's what actually happened instead: Mike D'Antoni's contract was up for renewal in Phoenix after he just finished posting a 55-27 regular season record with the team. Suns ownership are notorious cheapskates, and intimated to him that while a deal was on the table for him to return to Phoenix, it wasn't going to be for much. D'Antoni was offered a more lucrative job with New York at $6 million per. That's great money, and it was a chance for a fresh start, so he took it. And regarding the second, oft-repeated falsehood, Phoenix's problem was never defense. I understand that fits in with this whole revisionist's notion about how D'Antoni "isn't a defensive coach" that the Internet and especially the worst fans in the universe--Knicks fans--sharpened into a blade to use in their voracious criticisms of D'Antoni, but it's just not factual. It's just not true. Feel free to actually peruse the defensive rankings of those Suns teams, or better yet the Knicks up until the point D'Antoni got fired. I can wait. Go check. You done? Good. You'll notice that they're not bad. They're not good, either, but not bad. Very middle of the pack, defensively. "Buh buh...how can this be?" the Internet would say. "My preconceived notions!" Well it's because what was actually wrong with the Suns was they were a terrible rebounding team. Typically last if not near the bottom in the league, season after season. You'll recall that this was a problem that then-GM Steve Kerr attempted to solve with the infamous band-aid approach of enlisting the services of Shaq. It helped but not as much as you'd think. Why were those Suns teams so bad at rebounding? I'm not sure. I have my theories. The most likely cause is that Stoudemire and their other bigs were cupcakes on the glass, and that their rebounding stats were misleading due to pace of play, and stat-padding. A stat-padding rebound would be something like an uncontested defensive board, where all other players have already leaked out past the half court line, and all players on the other team are way out of sight because they want to get back and guard against transition baskets (a popular way of scoring in D'Antoni's system.) Those kinds of rebounds can be grabbed by anybody. The point guard. Small forward. Whatever. The point is that their bigs weren't stepping up in situations where possession was actually being contested, which is sort of the entire point of rebounding to begin with. You see echos of this to this day, in the form of Knicks fans whining about how STAT doesn't crash the offensive glass like he should, or let's other bigs just take the ball right away from him on the defensive end. I believe their complaints in this case are valid, and that Stoudemire is the same player he was in Phoenix, always reluctant to bang down low. Just a theory, anyway. Your thoughts?
It will be very interesting. I'm glad for Nash, tbh. I've never been a huge fan of those other guys, but I felt sorry for Nash and how they've been using him.
I feel like D'antoni won't succeed with this group. While he has a shooting big man in Gasol, Howard can't shoot from anywhere outside of 4 ft. I figured their D would be their strongest asset, but with D'antoni that will be put on the backburner. Even with Nash and an aging Kobe, having Howard in the back with a defensive minded coach would have been ideal imo. I don't think this is going to work out in LA...at least I hope it won't.
I still can't believe that Phil Jackson tried to manhandle Buss into an ownership stake in the Buss family's own team, in exchange for what...2 years of coaching, half of which would be spent lounging by a pool at an undisclosed location during away games? I'm not sure that man actually wanted to be hired. Maybe it was enough to know they wanted him as coach and to sabotage the coach they would go on to hire should he not insta-chip this year. Which is really a shame, that Jackson has used the media to turn the Buss family and Mike D'Antoni into potential heels like this. Even if the Lakers make it to the Finals and lose a game 7 by a single point, the narrative will be "See? Phil Jackson could have won this." It's just unfair to everyone involved.
Cool. Its definitely going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Could back fire too, you never know.
