D'Antoni Can't Replicate His Success in New York

Mike D'Antoni has an impressive international coaching resume. While coaching in Italy, D'Antoni led his teams to continued success in a variety of tournaments. D'Antoni has had glimpses of success in the NBA, but has been unable to replicate that in New York, and according to some internet fan pages, now that they see his style up close, some fans are starting to doubt whether or not D'Antoni can replicate his success in the Big Apple.

Part of the reason the D'Antoni's success in Europe has to do with how his style of play compliments the European rules. After completely exerting yourself on offense, getting back on defense is a lot more practical in a league where you can play zone. The three-point shot that D'Antoni's offense relies on is also much more effective in the international game where the line is over three feet closer in some places.

D'Antoni sustained some success in Phoenix, though his NBA career has encompassed as much losing as it has winning. During his four most successful years in Phoenix, D'Antoni posted a regular season record of 232-96 (.707 winning percentage), but was only 26-25 (.510 winning percentage) in the playoffs and failed to make it past conference finals in any of those campaigns. In his other four NBA seasons, D'Antoni has posted a dismal record of 91-170 (.349 winning percentage).

D'Antoni had little success in other NBA positions as well. As an assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers in 2000-2001, D'Antoni suffered through the team losing 17 of their last 25 regular season games before being swept in the opening round of the playoffs by the Los Angeles Lakers. In the 2000 NBA Draft, with Mike D'Antoni on their scouting team, the San Antonio Spurs selected Chris Carrawell with their second round pick instead of Michael Redd, who was selected two places later. Carrawell never played in the NBA.

If you take a deeper look into D'Antoni's years of regular season success in Phoenix, you'll see that he had a level of talent on his roster that most coaches would die for. During the 2004-2005 season in which D'Antoni won the NBA Coach of the Year Award, he had Steve Nash, Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire, and Joe Johnson all on his roster. Nash and Stoudemire ran the floor during each of D'Antoni's winning seasons in Phoenix and when Marion wasn't there, it was only because he was replaced by Shaquille O'Neal.

D'Antoni's regular season success in Phoenix was an obvious example of the perfect storm. He had the most talented running point guard in the league along with a supporting cast that could run and shoot from long range. When that talent started to disperse, D'Antoni decided to get out because he knew that he couldn't adapt his style of coaching to make his updated cast win.

Replicating this perfect storm in New York will be nearly impossible. The Knicks have cap room to buy talent this summer, but if they can acquire the star power that D'Antoni needs, they may not have enough room to pick up the role players. If they acquire Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson, as several sites have suggested recently, who will play the role of Steve Nash? He was, after all, the true leader of that team. D'Antoni had no success in Phoenix until he acquired Nash.

Nothing D'Antoni has done in New York yet has made sense. He hasn't played player combinations that could win games. He hasn't showcased players that need to be traded. He seems to have gone out of his way to bury players with whom he has had personal differences instead of actually coaching them.

I was never impressed with the acquisition of D'Antoni. According to Knicks fan boards, quite a few fans are starting to lose their faith in D'Antoni as well. While publicly, all of the big name players are saying that D'Antoni is going to do great things in New York, I don't know if they're being honest. If off-season New York resident Steve Nash believed D'Antoni was going to turn the Knicks around, he probably would have signed with New York this summer.