JEROME SOLOMON NOTES MIKE D’ANTONI SEES A BRIGHT FUTURE.
Mike D’Antoni watched the NBA Finals intently.
Not like a former player or longtime coach — analyzing every possession, recognizing sets, evaluating strategy, appreciating the talent.
Instead, the Rockets’ head coach mostly watched the series, which ended Friday in a Golden State 4-0 sweep over Cleveland, like a fan.
And, not unlike many of the hardcore Rockets Red pajamawearing faithful, D’Antoni couldn’t keep himself from imagining what could have been. Maybe even what should have been. Oh, the agony. “I kept hoping both teams would lose and Houston wins, but I don’t know how that could happen,” D’Antoni said. “Above all, I’m a fan. I get excited about it, because it’s great basketball and you want to see what happens.
“But then you think about it a little bit and you think ‘Oh, shoot.’ ”
The “oh, shoot” is his G-rated exclamation every time he thinks that despite suffering through an unprecedented 0-for-27 3-point drought, the Rockets were down by only six points, at home, with five minutes to play in a winner-take-all Game 7 against the Warriors.
And that was without Chris Paul in the lineup. Paul, who was second on the team in scoring, assists, 3-point shooting percentage, missed the final two games of the series — both of which were Warriors’ wins — with a hamstring injury.
Had Paul not been injured the Rockets could have won that series. Had they Rockets won the Western Conference, they could have been the ones sweeping the Cavaliers in the Finals.
So close, yet so far.
Headed in right direction
And the 14th season he has been in the NBA as head coach that didn’t include a trip to the NBA Finals.
“Yeah, it hurts,” D’Antoni said. “It was an incredible regular season, but we came up short.
“I appreciate every day, every game. So much went into this season, so much satisfaction, that it’s hard to erase all of it. You gotta appreciate each step, and hopefully next year we can make all the steps. We’ll be better next year.”
Maybe not better than the franchise-record 65 wins, but D’Antoni is thinking the Rockets’ progress from the conference semifinals in his first year with the team, to the conference finals this year means they are headed in the right direction.
D’Antoni was a star player on Milano squads that played in three major championships each season — the Italian League, the Europeans Champions Cup and the Italian Cup, aka the Triple Crown.
During a three-season stretch, Milano had a host of runner-up finishes — losing several championship games by one point — that when they finally broke through and won, Italian newspapers declared their victory as the end of the “Second-place Curse.”
“It was brutal,” D’Antoni said. “It was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ But it made us closer. And after three years of that, we dominated the next five years.”
D’Antoni compared it to a golfer going after his first major victory. In James Harden and Paul, D’Antoni has two stars at the top of the “best player who have yet to win a championship” list.
“Once you get that first one, it’s easier to roll,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll get that soon.”
For the foreseeable future, there isn’t likely to be much rolling by any team other than the Warriors, who have three championships in the past four years, because Golden State has “three or four guys that can win games almost by themselves.”
That could change if general manager Daryl Morey manages to convince LeBron James to join his close friend Paul in Houston. Even without such a monumental move, the Rockets believe they proved this season that they have a core group that can get it done.
A single-digit handicap golfer, D’Antoni will play some this summer — he left for his summer home in West Virginia on Saturday — but he won’t have time to get the rust off because the offseason duties of the draft, free agency and summer league will keep him busy.
‘Got some redeeming to do’
Golf is a secondary consideration for D’Antoni, who turned 67 last month. He already is thinking about next season.
The mystery of what the team will be like is there every year, but he says he enters this offseason feeling better than in year’s past.
Recognized by some as the greatest point guard in Italian basketball history, D’Antoni admitted that the confidence he talked about in Harden’s ability to make the switch to point guard two years ago involved some spin. He believed it, but like everyone else he had to see it to be sure.
The same goes for last season’s addition of Paul. The spin was there was little question the pairing of Paul and Harden would work, but until the point guards hit the court together, there was no way to be sure what level of play the partnership would produce.
Turned out Harden-Paul combo produced at a championship level. But the Rockets didn’t win the championship, which also adds to the restlessness with which D’Antoni will have to deal for the next four months or so.
He knows changes will be made, and he’ll defer to Morey’s operational expertise, but team chemistry and talent made this a special group that he’d like to see given another run.
“We’ve got some redeeming to do,” D’Antoni said.