STAR POWER
ROCKETS COACH MIKE DA’ NTONI HAS LET FATE GUIDE HIM THROUGH A REWARDING LIFE IN BASKETBALL
LOS ANGELES — Having come to a crossroads in his career, which under the circumstances meant in his life, Mike D’Antoni decided to let fate lead him. He would go where it demanded, confident the universe knew better than he where he belonged.
D’Antoni had played one season in Italy but desperately missed home. It was time to return to Milan, but West Virginia called to him. He could give up basketball, study medicine, live a happy life without the frustrations of chasing hoop dreams.
Late for his connection to an Air Italia flight to return him to a life he was not sure he wanted, D’Antoni was sent to the wrong gate at Kennedy Airport for his connection to Milan. Told that to make it in time to the far end of the airport, he would need to move at fast-break speeds, D’Antoni decided to take his time. He would stroll like a tourist. If he missed the flight, it was meant to be and he would never look back.
He kept his promise to himself. He crossed JFK as if there was nothing waiting for him at the other end, only to discover his flight was delayed as if it — and everything that has happened since — were waiting for him. Fate knew what it was doing. In Italy, D’Antoni became a basketball legend, the celebrated “Il Baffo.” He met Laurel, a fashion model in Milan. He became a coach, won championships, mastered Italian (though with a bit of a West Virginia drawl), became a citizen. And along the way, he embraced and mastered a way of playing that changed the NBA and his life forever.
If wife knows best, make it ‘two’
To Mike and Laurel D’Antoni, what is meant to be is no more than for them to question than within their power to change, as if everything that happened along the way led him to this time and this team when the tumblers could all finally click.
“I certainly hope that everyone sees it in their heart of hearts that there are special situations,” Laurel D’Antoni said. “It’s like falling in love. You can’t make it happen. It just happens. I guess that’s karma. We believe in it.
“His number should be two instead of eight. His favorite number is eight, but he served on two Olympic cycles, he’s been two times the Coach of the Year, now he is two times an All-Star coach.”
In the second month of the year and his second season as Rockets coach, D’Antoni returns to Los Angeles and to the NBA All-Star Game with the best record in the league. He had gone through impossible situations in New York and Los Angeles, became associate head coach in Philadelphia and thought after that, he would call it a career with no regrets. Yet, there is a sense the experiences along the way were needed to make the success now possible.
“He was perfectly happy in Philadelphia,” Laurel said. “He had a three-year contract. He really liked coach Brett (Brown). Bryan Colangelo was coming in (as general manager). It was ideal for him. What led Leslie Alexander to say, ‘I want to talk to Mike?’ Mike is fatalistic. He works. He does his job. But he believes if it is meant to happen (it will).”
That’s why he coaches the way he does, with confidence that if he is true to what he believes and follows his “gut” it will work. He was not trying to be rebellious when he changed the game with an offensive style now common in the NBA, any more than when he proposed it in Treviso in 1996, taking a team with a six-game losing streak and sending it to wins in 19 of 21 games and giving him a conviction that remains. The Rockets’ rise to contender status and his return to Los Angeles as an All-Star coach brings affirmation of his way.
“It makes you feel good,” D’Antoni said. “You want to be successful in what you do. I think I’m old enough to know, if you get good players, there are a lot of coaches that can have good records. But at the same time, I’m not screwing it up. That’s good to know.”
Even now, with the Rockets shooting more 3-pointers than any team ever has, D’Antoni does not particularly enjoy being thought of as the NBA’s mad scientist offensive mind. He has no particular taste for being contrary. If anything, he privately cheered Golden State’s championships, using elements of an offense similar to his, as vindication, and a reminder to never again doubt his convictions.
It’s not being stubborn if you’re right
“I’m sure I could do something here pretty soon that can make somebody think I’m crazy,” D’Antoni said. “I just had a way I thought we should play and tried to stick to my guns all the way through, although I’ve taken some hits. You got to carry on.
“I’d rather hide out with the masses. I just didn’t think that was the right way to go. I never have. As a player, as a young coach, as an old coach, I just think it’s the way to play. Now, we’re going even further than what I even thought. We’re taking a lot of 3s. You just try to make sure you’re on the right path and then go for it, not deviate because it doesn’t work today.
“Some people accused me of being stubborn all those years I didn’t change. I didn’t think I was being stubborn. I thought that was the way to do it. Why should I change if I know it’s the right thing to do?”
It was right for the Phoenix Suns because he was the right coach at the right time, with a point guard, Steve Nash, ideal to run his style, and frontcourt players, Amar’e Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, suited to his small lineups. That could not work in New York when four starters were traded for a post-up player, Carmelo Anthony, to fit into an offense without postups, or Los Angeles, where the Lakers were breaking down rapidly.
With the Rockets, he found James Harden to be a superstar not only gifted at triggering his offense but that would respond to D’Antoni’s determination to empower his players. He could not have known how his coaching style would mesh with Harden, but Harden needed a relationship with a coach as much as he needed a center rolling to the rim or shooters firing 3s around him.
“He gives his players freedom to communicate and to go out there on the court and be who we are,” Harden said. “Everybody is going to make mistakes, but if you are playing with that mindset that you can go out there and play free, you’re going to be that much better. I needed that. I needed it.”
‘After a while, life just happens’
D’Antoni needed one last chance to lead a team built for his coaching style and not just his offense.
“There’s a lot of great coaches I played for that I couldn’t coach their way, getting on people, locker-room speeches and all that stuff,” D’Antoni said. “I couldn’t be that way. No use trying to be someone I wasn’t. As you get older, you try to figure out what works for you and, hopefully, that works for the team. I will try to change things up to fit personnel. I don’t like the midrange shot, but guess what? We’re shooting midrange shots.
“You have to be who you are. If you act like somebody else, players will see through it. I think I always felt that. I always had a fatalistic view. Hey, this is what I believe in. If I go down, I go down. I can live with it.”
He long since decided he could live with any results if he gave his best. He questioned himself in Phoenix but not again. The other stops were not right, but they brought him here.
Destiny can be changed, but sometimes, it knows what it’s doing. For D’Antoni, it even held up a flight to a life and success he could not imagine.
“I thought I wanted to do something else outside of basketball,” D’Antoni said. “I didn’t want to spend my whole life in basketball. I would do other things. I was a pretty good student. My mom wanted me to be a doctor so I went to pre-med. But what I do best is coaching. After a while, life just happens.
“I just try to be who I am, try to do what I need to do. If I’m doing the best I can do, I can live with whatever happens.”