D’Antoni?
My Rant-
We all know who Mike D’Antoni is. He’s currently the head coach of the Phoenix Suns. He’s a guy who holds American and Italian dual citizenship. D’Antonis dual citizenship makes him the first Italian ever to lead an NBA team. He is fluent in both English and Italian.
He’s worked for the Phoenix franchise since 2003, and won the NBA Coach of the Year Award for the 2004-05 season. A plus in the Knicks eyes about him is in the 2004-05 season D’Antoni engineered the third-largest turnaround in NBA history. That is a huge selling point! That year, he directed the Suns to a club record-tying 62 wins. That was a 33-game improvement from the 2003-04 season!
He’s led his team to the Conference Finals. D’Antoni was selected to the coaching staff for the Team USA Olympic Basketball squad. He can use guys out of position with his scheme incase of injury as we’ve seen with small forward Marion playing out of position at power forward and power forward Stoudemire filling in at center. D’Antoni has a reputation of being an offensive guru. He orchestrates an up-tempo style of play known to increase scoring. D’Antoni honed his style over his Italian tenure when he led his teams to the playoffs each season and was twice voted the league’s Coach of the Year.
He will cost A LOT though! Right now he has two years and $8.5 million left on his contract with the Suns. D’Antoni wants to get fired so he can have his cake and eat it too and collect a new contract on top of his old one. The Suns don’t want to fire him or work out a buyout. They shouldn’t. They’d be stupid to. That’s why they are allowing him to try to land a new job so any new salary would then offset whatever the Suns owe him. Rumors have the Knicks getting ready to offer a five-year package falling in the $30 million range. Others say the deal will have high levels of annual compensation that are only exceeded by Hall Of Fame coaches such as Phil Jackson and Pat Riley.
Apparently, D’Antoni who just turned 57 years old, has had discussions with the Knicks about leaving the desert for Manhattan. Its serious! Donnie Walsh seems to be smitten with the idea of D’Antoni taking over our club. I’m not so sure. The other job he’s up for is with the Chicago Bulls. If I were him I’d go to the Bulls. He’d have younger players who are more prepared to run and much better cap room. I will say though that I can see Lee, Robinson Crawford, Marbury, Balkman and Chandler all improving in a run-and-gun system.
I do worry though that D’Antoni’s zone defense wont allow our players to improve defensively but instead cover will simply cover their flaws. I want our guys to increase their skill level. I know Avery Johnson can do that. I’m not sure if Mark Jackson could but I love the idea of giving him a shot. D’Antoni? Yeah, he’s a good coach. He’s a winner. I should be happy but truthfully I hope this deal falls through. Hire Jackson on the cheap or Johnson if he’ll take smaller numbers than D’Antoni and move on. But that’s me. What do you think?
Rant over.
This entry was posted
on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Mike D'Antoni, Shawn Marion, Avery Johnson, Renaldo Balkman, Phil Jackson, Wilson Chandler, Donnie Walsh, Bulls, Pat Riley, Amare Stoudemire, Knicks, Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford, Stephon Marbury, David Lee, Chicago Bulls, Knicks Coaches, Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks, New York Knickerbockers.
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13 Responses to “D’Antoni?”
May 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[…] post by Matt Agne This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Stephon Marbury, […]
May 9th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Before hiring this guy, you HAVE to as how many wins would he have were it not for the great Steve Nash? You or I could coach if we had him for a point guard. Was not that huge turnaround in wins, the same season that Nash came to the team?
May 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I don’t want him at all. The same year he turned the team around, Amare was finally playing full time and Nash was back with the team. Anybody can get that Suns roster to the playoffs. He doesn’t know defense and that’s what the Knicks need. I think Avery would be a much better choice.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
You guys are Nuts…. We need to get this team on the right track and this is how you go about it. As it stands the Knicks can’t get any players to come to NY unless they pay three times the amount it should cost.. this guy can make players wanna come play for the Knicks for once…
May 9th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I have been thinking about what the knicks really should do this offseason. I really would like the assistant coach from the celtics to get the job, Avery would be my second choice. As for players, i dont think we have enought draft picks and i dont think we can acquire enough draft picks to have a descent team so this is what i think the knicks should do (the salaries match):
1 Trade Marbury for Jermaine Oneil (pacers do it to get marbury’s huge contract off the books this year. Oniel’s contract is a year longer than Marbury’s.
2. Trade Curry, Crawford and Rose for Jason Kidd. I know Kidd looked like he has nothing left when he was in dallas but i think he thrives when he is the team leader and if not he will be in his last year of his deal (i think). Dallas might do this because they get a decent scoring center in Curry im sure he is an upgrade to Dampier, and Crawford is a good scoring optiojn off the bench for them.
3. Trade Zach for Atest and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The kings do this for much needed help in the front court. Knicks do this to get rid of Zachs contract and give D lee some more playing time
4 Big board should look like this : Rose, Beasley, OJ, Bayless,Brook Lopez.
The starting lineup should look like this at the start of the season:
PG Kidd
SG Artest
SF Chandler
PF Lee
C Oneil
May 9th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
how is rose on the team if u traded him. Even though to get kidd would be one of the stupidiest decisons ever made
May 9th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Andew- He was talkin about Malik Rose(who is a veteren Pf on this team)
Personally I like the idea of Mike D’antoni becoming head coach. I also like Tom Thibedou as head coach. I don’t like the idea of Avery Johnson…he’s just a loud mouth. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to handle the Ny media.
May 10th, 2008 at 12:51 am
MJ/Dan S–I agree. I dont like it either. I think D’Antoni is a good coach but I’m much more for Jackson or Johnson. I really love the idea of Mark Jackson having assistant coaches who are all retired players. (ptssssss…Ewing, Ewing…)
Ivan-You do have a point when saying he’ll bring players in. He is talented and well known so players will like coming to his high powered offense. Like I wrote, I can see a bunch of our guys working out well in a run-n-gun system but I really want a coach with a strong defensive mind.
jay to the son-/you broke that down, kid! That was bonkers! I love the Marbury/O’neil trade. Thats one of the very few trades I’d give Marbury up in. You guys know I’m not a Marbury fan but we NEED his $22 million to come off our books at the end of the year. I think we should keep him unless we can land someone big for him.
Andrew Ganeev-jay to the son was talking about the vet Malik Rose AND the prospect (and the guy I want us to get in this years draft) Derrick Rose. Just to clear that up.
KFFL-Thanks for tring to help Andrew Ganeey. Good looks. Anyway, I like D’Antoni too he’s just not my ideal choice. Tom Thibedou is gonna be a successful coach somewhere but I dont think it should be here. I disagree with you about Avery Johnson. I think he’s a ten-times better choice. Defense, defense, defense! I think he’d be fine with the media and I think his ‘loud mouth’ would only make him fit in with all of us. Besides, most people (not all, but most) like a loud coach because he seems on top of the team and it shows he’s in charge. I always felt that was one of the million things I hated about Thomas as our coach. He’d yell sometimes but he’s a punk. Most of the time he sat there and never changed emotions like he’s Phil Jackson or something. You’re not a guru you Philly Goon! Sorry, I guess I still have some anger issues…
May 10th, 2008 at 12:54 am
jay to the son-I forgot to say I hate your Kidd trade. I wouldn’t do that. And for the record I definitely want to trade Curry but I’d like to keep Randolph. I guess I’m one of the few Randolph fans in NY.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Here is my shot at a little “out of the box” thinking regarding our next coach. Hire DiAntoni as head coach and Thib as assistant head coach defense. If we could pay LB 50 mil we could pay Mike D 30mil and Thib 20mil. This way we get the best of both worlds, great offense & great defense. As we have seen with the Nets when they were good, good defense sets up the run and gun offense better than taking the ball out after a made basket by the other team. Just a thought.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Paul, if D’Antoni is coming here, I think in the end it would make sense because if we can land Derrick Rose in the draft, he would make perfect sense to build around for D’Antoni’s style of play.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
D’Antoni is an interesting choice for the Knicks coaching job. While I do believe that he is a great coach that has proven his ability to make a team turn around, I am somewhat skeptical about how his coaching style might play out for the Knicks. As it is 100 percent obvious, the Knicks have a dismal defense that needs a lot of work and should be the number one priority in helping the current roster improve. That being said, I don’t if know if D’Antoni’s offensive prowess would be suitable for orchestrating such a transformation. However, I do believe the team would improve to a certain extent. I think this was mentioned earlier, but I could see several players, such as Balkman and Crawford, benefiting from the run and gun style D’Antoni utilized in Phoenix. Ultimately though, I would have preferred Avery Johnson or Tom Thibodeau to get some defense working in New York. And what is the deal with Ewing?? Can we finally show the greatest Knick ever some respect and at least offer him an assistant coaching job or in management? Just make the guy some kind offer and talk to him, even if he doesn’t accept.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Gianthinker- The kidd trade i like because even tho he migght be done he comes off the books at the end of the season, and i think he looks worse in dallas than he really is, i also think he is better than any PG we have now, he would just be a stop gap and salary dump, we could get Rose in the draft or even Bayless and these guys could learn from kidd.
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