Offense of Houston’s D’Antoni, Harden is familiar to Kerr.
West finals coaches were together in Phoenix
While watching video this week of the Rockets, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr experienced a bit of deja vu.
There on the screen were variations of the same play — a pick-and-roll on one side of the court, two shooters stationed on the other — that had comprised much of the Suns’ offense a decade ago when Kerr was Phoenix’s general manager.
It was no coincidence: These Rockets and those run-andgun Suns share the same offensive mastermind, Mike D’Antoni.
“I think what they’re doing in Houston, in terms of the schemes, is almost all the same stuff that we did in Phoenix,” said Kerr, whose Warriors open the Western Conference finals against D’Antoni’s Rockets in Houston on Monday. “The personnel and the focus on three-point shooting are a little different, but the actions are the same. It’s still high screen, high screen, high screen.”
Ten years after D’Antoni bolted the Suns to become the Knicks’ head coach amid a reported rift with Kerr, the two coworkers-turned-conferencerivals insist that they harbor no ill will toward each other. Their biggest regret is that they couldn’t work through their differences to bring Phoenix its first NBA title.
Not that D’Antoni or Kerr dwell on what-ifs. With Houston and Golden State, respectively, D’Antoni and Kerr have found situations that maximize their strengths. After being on a collision course for at least seven months, they enter their conference-finals matchup as leaders of the West’s top two teams — and, in all likelihood, the NBA’s top two teams.
“I sense no animosity between Steve and Mike,” said Warriors player-development coach Bruce Fraser, who was a Suns scout during Kerr’s time in Phoenix with D’Antoni. “We want to beat them, but not because it’s Mike. They just happen to be the next team.”
In June 2007, after three seasons as a Suns consultant, Kerr left his broadcasting job with TNT to become Phoenix’s GM. Within the previous four years, D’Antoni had used a revolutionary offense to transform a 29-53 team into an annual championship contender.
Under D’Antoni, Phoenix’s goal was to shoot before defenses could set up, in seven seconds or less. Traditional centers were unnecessary. Transition three-pointers were encouraged. As long as a shot was open, it was deemed a good one. With point guard Steve Nash finding open lanes and directing traffic, the Suns reached the conference finals in 2005 and 2006.
The problem was that Phoenix had no answer for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs. Two weeks after watching the Suns fall to San Antonio in the 2007 conference semifinals, Kerr became GM with a clear objective: put Phoenix in a position to get by the Spurs and hoist a Larry O’Brien trophy.
Tensions reportedly began to surface early in the 2007-08 season, when Kerr questioned D’Antoni after a loss for not posting up Amar’e Stoudemire. The two, however, agreed that the Suns needed to make a seismic move to have a chance at a championship. Before the trade deadline, Kerr shipped four-time All-Star Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks to Miami for Shaquille O’Neal.
Well past his prime at age 35, O’Neal was an odd fit for D’Antoni’s free-flowing system. Phoenix, 37-16 at the time of the trade, went 18-11 with O’Neal before losing to the Spurs in the first round.
“The reality is, it’s asking a lot to make a philosophical shift in February and try to win the championship in June,” Kerr said. “If I had more experience as a GM, I would’ve understood that concept better. I would’ve stayed the course, kept doing what we were doing and made smaller moves to stay true to our identity. You live and learn.”
Hours after the Suns’ season ended in Game 5 of the first round, Sports Illustrated reported that D’Antoni was looking for a new place to coach. There were rumblings that D’Antoni had been resistant to Kerr’s suggestions and to making defense more of a priority. Multiple reports suggested that D’Antoni no longer believed he had the front office’s support.
Though he publicly tried to rectify the relationship, Kerr granted D’Antoni a release from his contract. Two weeks later, after considering an offer from the Bulls, D’Antoni signed a four-year, $24 million deal with the Knicks. The only coaches in the league making more at the time were Popovich ($7 million per season) and the Lakers’ Phil Jackson ($12 million).
“I think we got frustrated and I got frustrated,” D’Antoni, who went 121-167 in four seasons with New York, told ESPN Los Angeles in 2012. “That’s why I left. We were there, it seemed like we deserved it, and then it seemed like something happened all the time. Maybe we weren’t good enough, either. We have to understand that.
“I probably irrationally made a decision right when the season was over. You should take a month to figure it out. I shouldn’t have left. That was my fault.”
In June 2016, when D’Antoni took over the Rockets, the news was met with plenty of skepticism. At age 65, he seemed past his best years. His resignation from the Lakers’ head-coaching job in April 2014 had come little more than two years after he resigned from the Knicks. Though widely respected, D’Antoni’s pace-and-space system made him an awkward fit with many rosters.
“I thought he was exactly what Houston needed,” Kerr said. “James Harden is Steve Nash plus 40 pounds. Nash was a conductor. James is also a conductor, but he’s a bully at the same time.”
Fresh off guiding the Rockets to a 14-win improvement last season, D’Antoni was named NBA Coach of the Year. Now, after posting an NBA-best 65-17 record and steamrolling through the first two rounds of the playoffs, Houston enters the Western Conference finals as one of the most daunting postseason opponents Kerr has seen in his four years with Golden State.
“They’re both great guys, so it’s kind of sad it didn’t end on better terms in Phoenix,” Nash said of Kerr and D’Antoni. “Having said that, that’s the nature of the business. Everyone is under so much pressure.
“We were a team that was probably just a little bit ahead of our time in that we played a style that suited the game 10 years down the road.”