As I said above. NY didnt buy into his philosophy and neither did LA. Goran would have been perfect running Mikes system. He's a pure PG the same as Nash was and can shoot. The Warriors are running Mikes system with an emphasis on defense. Who better to run that system than the original architect. Id love to get back to those 50+ win seasons and in the playoffs where anything can happen. We could have been in the finals with Mike two different seasons if freaky things didnt happen.
I'm not locked into hiring D'Antoni back as head coach but the idea excites me. The Suns have been down for so long. IMO, the Suns need to cough up some money for a quality head coach rather than continually looking for one on the cheap (whether it be D'Antoni or someone else). At least the Suns know what they are getting in D'Antoni. When the Lakers hired D'Antoni, I was puzzled because Howard and Kobe where clearly bad fits. Nash had age and health problems going against him.
If D'Antoni were to be hired he would need to commit to playing defense and be more open to different ideas. I was really not into the Knicks situation so I will not comment.
If the Suns looked into hiring Tom Thibodeau or a lead assistant from a team like the Spurs I would be just as excited but I think D'Antoni can get the job done if he gets the right point guard to run the offense.
It goes beyond just not having an "emphasis" on defense. He went out of his way to avoid any attention to the defensive side of the ball, part of his philosophy was to get the other team to play a fast pace too, which meant playing this loose, terrible defense and gambling repeatedly for fast breaks on shots.
The Warriors are not "running his system", they do things extremely different. They crash the glass, they don't take wild gambles for fast breaks, they go deeeeep into their bench (something D'Antoni never ever did anywhere regardless of personnel) and they also happen to have Curry who is like the evolutionary Steve Nash. We don't have anything like that. He also made it clear his thoughts on player development, which he didn't feel was part of his job.
We didn't get the close to the finals because of Mike D'Antoni, we got close because of Steve Nash. We continued that success, getting as close as ever in 2010 without D'Antoni using the bench in ways Mike never even tried.
D'Antoni was a flat out horrible coach in every single place he coached besides a 4 year run in Phoenix with Steve Nash. He was fired by 3 different franchises, accumulating abysmal records, he even had an abysmal record here in games where Nash didn't play.
We would not be a 50 win team, we wouldn't be close to one. We'd be a horrible horrible team that despite being pathetic would still only use 8 man rotations and young players would end up in the dog house whenever they struggled. THAT is his MO.
I cannot believe anyone would consider it. Seriously, look up what this guy did outside of his run in Phoenix with Nash. He didn't just fail, he failed spectacularly.
