Pressure Is Off Mike D'Antoni...For Now

Mike D’Antoni might not be as crazy as we think—at least from a basketball standpoint.

In fact, I would consider the guy more brave than crazy, especially when you consider the wretched mess he’s volunteered to clean up over at Madison Square Garden. It’s been five months since he was announced as the Knicks’ new head coach, and with opening night just a few weeks away, one’s got to wonder if D’Antoni truly realizes the severity of the situation he walked into.  

Apparently, the guy loves a challenge. But so did George Custer at Little Big Horn. Catch my drift?

Native New Yorker Donny Walsh, himself just a few weeks on the job before hiring the former Phoenix bench boss, brought D'Antoni to New York in a bold but anticipated move that might very well decide the future of both the franchise and the Knicks' new President and general manager.

The former Suns coach, fresh off a short stint in Phoenix where he averaged 58 wins but zero NBA titles the last four seasons, was brought to New York to cure the ills created by an incompetent front office. As for the previous coaches and players behind the Knicks’ seven straight losing seasons—well, they didn’t do too much either.

Now, with upheaval in the coaching staff but little to none in player personnel—over 75 percent of New York’s roster from last season has returned for training camp—optimism hasn’t returned like expected.

D’Antoni, who became New York’s fifth head coach in four years, is clearly qualified for the challenge. No, he can’t (and doesn’t) take all the credit for the Suns’ transformation from Western Conference doormat to a perennial NBA powerhouse in less than a year.

However, his reluctance to add a low-post defensive wrinkle to the up-tempo Blitzkreig the Suns used to terrorize opponents—a reason behind his firing—may not sell to the fickle New York fans reared on past generations of blue-collar, lunch pail-type Knicks teams who prided themselves on toughness, rebounding, and ball hawking.

Knicks fans, ever the authors of volumes on cynicism, took D’Antoni’s hiring and subsequent philosophy with a grain of salt. It didn’t take long to realize Steve Nash, a key cog in the Suns’ offense who signed with Phoenix before the start of D’Antoni’s first full season, will not be running New York’s offense.

Moreover, many wondered, if he was vilified in Phoenix for not guiding a 60-plus win team to the NBA Finals, how the heck is he going to handle New York and its laughingstock of an NBA franchise? I mean, since when did a city in the state of Arizona become such an NBA pressure cooker that it sends its castoffs to New York? I guess they must have Frank Sinatra’s lyrics all mixed up.

Knicks fans are tired of empty promises. They don’t want to hear about what kind of organization is operating out of the garden. They don’t want to hear about history, and pride and tradition. To them, all that junk is dead and buried.

Around these parts, nobody in their wildest estimation could have ever imagined that the Knicks, thanks to Charles Dolan and Isiah Thomas, would busily find a way to embarrassingly humanize misery and defeat. But somehow they did—and now Walsh and D’Antoni are charged with moving the franchise in a different direction.

Dantoni’s edict demands an up-tempo offense and pressure defense.  Both worked wonders for the athletic Suns. With the steady Chris Duhon taking over at point guard, Jamal Crawford will be the centerpiece of a new offense that many feel just might work for the undersized Knicks.

Years of being labeled too small and passive for the rough-and-tumble eastern Conference, the Knicks will now follow D’Antoni’s offensive-minded doctrine, which is already catching on with the players.

Even with Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry publicly sulking over the prospect of being moved to the bench or out of town, D’Antoni has been a staunch believer that if he can’t turn New York into winners, he can at least make them entertaining to watch.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of optimism around MSG these days. After all, it can’t get any worse for the Knicks, and D’Antoni has already made a series of smart, calculated moves, the first of which was not predicting or guaranteeing anything over the nest 82 games. All he can do is tell us what he knows, and what is clear is that this year’s version of the Knicks will be a high-octane, in-your-face buzzsaw.

You certainly can’t say that the decision to hire D’Antoni is the beginning of the end of basketball futility in New York City. It is more like the end of the beginning.