THREE FOR ALL
D’Antoni’s fast-paced style once was an outlier, but rest of the NBA is catching up
On off nights, when Mike D’Antoni checks out NBA League Pass, remote control in hand and the teams on the big screen moving rapidly from end to end, he can enjoy the sight of his kind of basketball. He might even indulge in a sense of vindication years after he was so criticized for having his teams play the way nearly the entire NBA is now.
Game nights are not nearly as fun. The Rockets still take their style, particularly the use of 3-point shooting, to extremes beyond the rest of ae now 3point-mad league. But they are no longer outliers enjoying the math advantages that come with that.
The NBA is playing fast, shooting 3s and scoring like crazy.
D’Antoni, who reintroduced and popularized the style, has been left balancing the entertainment value of his preference with the loss of some of his edge on a league once resistant to change but now embracing it.
“I hate it because I think it’s an advantage for people that play fast,” D’Antoni said. “Now, everybody is playing fast. So that’s one thing gone. We’ll think of something else. I like it personally just to watch it. Some of the games … were unbelievable, up and down. It’s a good brand of basketball.
“I’m amazed. I watch TV like everyone else. Whoa. They’re going up and down. I think it’s great. It’s a fun game. Every game is. Before, I’d watch some games; some games I’d just fall asleep. Everybody’s game’s exciting. It’s great. I think it’s good for basketball. We’ll see if everybody can keep up that pace. I like that. I think fans will love it.”
The opposition to the style D’Antoni brought back to the NBA as Suns coach is long gone. Styles still vary, from the Warriors’ constant movement to the Rockets’ iso-heavy attack. But 3s are valued more than ever. Few teams work to post up big men. Pace-andspace rules.
“Every team in the NBA is playing like he changed the game,” said Nets coach Kenny Atkinson, an assistant under D’Antoni with the Knicks. “It’s unbelievable. A lot of teams are copying what he was doing 10, 15 years ago. That is the biggest compliment of a guy that was ahead of his time. That was before analytics, which is a credit to him.
“Of course, typical Mike, he’s taken
it to an extreme. He’s a smart guy, and he’s not afraid to take risks. That’s what I love about him. He doesn’t care what the rest of the crowd thinks. He does his own thing.”
He does that by encouraging 3-point shooting more than ever, even with at least one of his high-scoring guards out for seven of the season’s nine games. The Rockets take and average 41.9 3-pointers per game, the most in the NBA. But nine teams are within 8.5 3s attempted and 3.3 made of the Rockets’ 14 3pointers per game. The Bucks lead the NBA in 3pointers, averaging 15.6.
Two seasons ago, D’Antoni’s first with the Rockets, they led the league by taking 40.3 per game. That was 6.5 more than the next most.
“Everybody’s playing much faster, spreading the floor,” D’Antoni said. “The DER, the defensive effective rate, will go up. The athletes, the way the game is being called — they allow not much physical stuff — you will see an increase in scoring. It’s a better game, more fun. It kind of takes our edge away we had for years. We have to be careful. The league has changed the last couple years.”
Points aplenty
The Warriors and Pelicans have scored 149 points in a game this season, the Kings 146. Eight teams have scored at least 140, as many as all of last season combined. The Warriors and Celtics have hit 24 3s, one shy of the NBA record, the Hawks 22. Barely oneeighth into the season, five teams have set franchise records for 3s in a game.
Nine teams are averaging more than 115 points, all averaging more than the Warriors did last season when they led the NBA in scoring by averaging 113.5. Five seasons ago, the top scoring team, the Clippers, averaged 107.9.
When D’Antoni hit the accelerator on his celebrated “Sevens Seconds or Less” teams, the 2004-05 Suns averaged 97.37 possessions per game and won 62 games. That pace, considered madness at the time, would rank 28th in the NBA this season.
“In our league now, if you don’t score 100 points on a night, you probably shouldn’t be in the NBA,” said Rockets guard Chris Paul, the engine on that high-scoring Clippers team. “Seriously. Every night now, it’s 120, it’s 130. I’m cool with it. We play like that anyway. But now, it’s not just us that plays like that. Now, I think everybody else is going to, too.”
D’Antoni said the Warriors’ run offered proof that some of the basics of his style worked. As different as much of Golden State’s offense is to the Rockets’ or D’Antoni’s Suns, they share the use of 3-point shooting and spacing and the shunning of post-ups, so much so that when the Warriors won the 2015 championship, then Golden State associate coach Alvin Gentry shouted, “Tell Mike D’Antoni he’s vindicated!”
“Everybody said you couldn’t win that way,” D’Antoni said. “Everybody said they will burn out by January, they’ll be so tired they couldn’t go. Any kind of negative you can throw out there, they just chipped away at our guys’ confidence. Guys were kind of out there by themselves.
“To win in this league, you have to have confidence and believe in what you’re doing and believe in the system without any doubts. Just the kind of chipping away eroded it just a little bit here and there, just enough, to not be quite as good as you could have been.”
D’Antoni said he even doubted himself, an affliction he long since-conquered. The extensive use of analytics in the years since, he said, has offered evidence to back his beliefs but also convinces players.
Sticking to their style
The Rockets entirely bought in last season and still value 3s, layups and free throws over all other shots, even with longtime mid-range practitioners Paul and Carmelo Anthony. According to Basketball-reference.com, only the Bucks take a smaller percentage of their shots from beyond 16 feet and inside the 3point line, and no other teams come close.
Still, though the Rockets are charter members in the club of pace-and-space and 3-point shooting, membership is growing rapidly.
“I’m not loving the NBA right now,” D’Antoni said when the Rockets were still stuck on one win. “I guess, you know, whoopee. I’m really happy. It is up there. There are people running up and down. It’s great. I do like it.”