Mike D'Antoni: Career Suicide in NYC

Mike D'Antoni is a very happy man right now. 

A very happy, very rich man. 

D'Antonie was presented with two very attractive options this weekend: go to a team in Chicago with a great young nucleus ready to win now, or follow the money and end up in Manhattan coaching one of the marquee teams in the league.  D'Antoni followed the money, as I believe most of us would.  However, when one stops to consider the two situations in detail, the future for Mike D'Antoni and the New York Knicks might be a lot bleaker than most expect, because there were factors involved in this decision far more pertinent and than simply following the money.

Mike D'Antoni is an offensive coach. 

D'Antoni's teams love to score, and they usually find themselves in the triple digits thanks to an ungodly amount of fast break points and shots taken early in the shot clock countdown. 

This was the biggest knock on the Shaq deal earlier this season: that the addition of the Diesel would be far more inhibiting to D'Antoni's breakneck style of basketball than beneficial, and hindsight tells us those fears were absolutely founded.  Pheonix looked lost with Shaq and lost the swagger and intensity that they had carried over after the sham that was the Spurs series in last year's playoffs.  Shaq then proceeded to get absolutely served by Timmy D in the playoffs as D'Antoni's Suns lost the spring in their step that had defined that team for the past few years. 

D'Antoni is phenomenal with the right group of players to fit his system, this is a group of players that can hit outside jumpers early in the shot clock and get up and down the court on the fast break.  Without those players, D'Antoni's teams look sluggish, every possession a laborious effort to find some way to score in a set half court offense. 

Now try to find another set of players that embody that antithesis of the players D'Antoni needs to succeed better than the 2008-09 New York Knicks.

 If Shaq slowed down D'Antoni's offensive flow, I cannot even fathom how D'Antoni will try to work in Eddie Curry and Zach Randolph.  If Eddie Curry won't even run to McDonald's, how do you expect him to be flying up and down the court on a fast-breaking team trying to score in the 100's every night?

Taking shots early in the shot clock shouldn't be a problem for the Knicks, because that has been a staple of New York basketball since Isiah Thomas haphazardly threw together this group of underachieving and overpaid losers.  However, D'Antoni's system needs his players to shoot a good percentage on those shots early in the shot clock, otherwise he'll end up with a win-loss record that looks like, well, the New York Knicks'.  Now factor in the fact that they won't have a shred of cap room until after the 2009 season (see: Starbury, Curry, Randolph, and Crawford), short of a Pau Gasol-esque grossly one-sided trade, D'Antoni will be working with this roster for at least another two seasons.  D'Antoni will need to completely re-invent himself as a coach, and will need to completely re-invent his system and philosophy to have any semblance of success in New York.

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