Forget those first impressions; D’Antoni a perfect fit after all
The man who Leslie Alexander privately admired for all those years slowly walks down a dark hallway, two hours before Toyota Center turns bright red.
A 65-year-old who finally is getting the absolute best out of James Harden moves past dimly lit pictures of old Rockets champions: Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, the glory of 1993-95.
Then the coach we were all so wrong about calmly leans back as some TV reporter casually mentions how smart he is.
Mike D’Antoni, leader and creator of what is still the NBA’s biggest 2016-17 surprise, smiles and wisecracks back.
“Well, thanks. I’ve said that often,” said the coach of the third-best team in the NBA.
How many of you truly thought this would be happening? Five? Ten? Alexander knew. He was ahead of us all.
One of my Chronicle colleagues took the safe middle ground, yet also predicted 50 wins. But he has been wrong about other things, so I don’t want to give him any public credit.
Talk radio hated the hire. Social media cruelly LOLed. The average fan stuck in traffic seethed. Antoni, anti-defense — this guy is going to push Harden to the limit???
I was highly skeptical and feared the same franchise that had fired Kevin McHale just 11 games after nearly going up 2-0 on Golden State in the 2015 Western Conference finals — then struggled to barely go 41-41 and didn’t show up most nights, as Dwight Howard and Harden split their separate ways — was going backward once again.
Well, you know what they say: You can’t always be right.
How’s 33-12, just 4½ games behind the NBA-best Superpower Warriors, Harden as the real MVP and the Rockets being F-U-N again look? And did I mention D’Antoni’s the current no-brainer favorite for coach of the year?
Out of tune? As I type this, the Rockets couldn’t have been more right about the thrilling, redeeming power of the D’Antoni Show and all those swishing 3s. Then again, even they didn’t know the run was going to be this good, this soon.
“It’s obviously worked better than probably anyone thought, including Mike and myself and Leslie,” said general manager Daryl Morey, who also should be in the running for executive of the year.
Harden becomes Nash 2.0
Magnets of NBA teams, with players’ names below, are tacked to one wall. A bunch of basketball-speak is scribbled on another.
D’Antoni leans back in his office, clean-shaven and fit at 65, and cracks wise again.
McHale — good guy, solid coach – was the old, grumpy neighbor who frowned the second you touched his lawn. D’Antoni — crisp white dress shirt, black slacks, purple tie — warmly invites you in, never stops the sarcastic one-liners and is as comforting as can be, while always being in control.
“We’ll have a meeting and people just draw on the walls,” joked the man who averaged 58 wins from 2004-08 with Phoenix, worked magic with Steve Nash, helped reinvent the limits of pro basketball, then fell so hard with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers.
“I thought it would work (here),” D’Antoni said. “I thought it would work in New York and I thought it would work in L.A. We just couldn’t get the right pieces and people just wouldn’t buy into it. … So there’s a little bit of head-butting and usually coaches lose.”
These Rockets rarely lose and always fire away, which are two of the many things that have made them feel so brand new.
Beginning with 14 of 20 games away from Houston only made D’Antoni’s Rockets stronger. Then they won 10 straight. Then nine more. Every time there has been a chance for the honeymoon to end and reality to return, this team has fought off the bad habits that tore it apart last season.
Harden had to change himself and has acknowledged many times he and the Rockets weren’t right a year ago. But it also took D’Antoni to produce nightly greatness — full commitment, 48 minutes at the Kevin Durant and LeBron James level — from The Beard.
“As soon as I saw James can do what he does as a point guard, then I knew we were going to be really good,” said D’Antoni, who boldly and immediately turned Harden into Nash 2.0. “That’s where it kind of started … making that transition. He’s accepted it and taken it to heights I couldn’t even imagine.”
‘Our ambition’s changed’
It’s hard to recall, now that the wins are stacking up and the new guy has fit in so smoothly. But the Rockets took their slow, sweet time getting it right.
I mean, like, 43 days of time as the returns of Jeff Van Gundy and Kenny Smith were debated.
J.B. Bickerstaff — nice guy, interim coach — wasn’t coming back to the disaster that finally ended April 13, 2016. Howard was leaving; Harden had to fix himself. And Alexander vowed to evaluate every single thing about his organization, which had won 110 combined games from 2013-15 before disrespecting the game of basketball, as Bickerstaff so eloquently and accurately put it.
The final assessment: The Rockets had to double down on everything they did well, shore up their obvious problems (defense, 3-point shooting), play faster and turn the team over to Harden.
Alexander had long respected D’Antoni from afar. A coach out of the spotlight for two years blew away the Rockets during initial discussions. Then D’Antoni got the promise he needed.
Alexander was aligned with his front office and the Rockets were aligned with their superstar who wanted to stay. All D’Antoni required before taking the job was the promise that he would be 100 percent aligned with Harden.
“We’re privy to a lot of conversations that people don’t see. (Harden) was extremely focused on winning last year. He also had a vision of how we could play,” said Morey, who had his own vision of the up-tempo, 3-heavy Rockets toward the end of their 2014-15 season.
Almost eight months after D’Antoni bought in, his Rockets hold the third-best record in the NBA, lead the league in average made 3s (14.8), rank third in offensive rating (112.1) and are up to 14th in defensive rating (105.3), thanks to the daily work of assistant Jeff Bzdelik.
“It’s like, yeah, we can be good,” D’Antoni said. “Then we could be really good. Then we could be really great and we could be really special. So it’s changed — I think our ambition’s changed.”
‘Oh, we can win it all’
D’Antoni is 26-33 all-time in the playoffs and hasn’t won a series since 2007.
As sharp as everyone from Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson to Pat Beverley and Montrezl Harrell have been, Harden still could use another star, especially during a seven-game series when the court shrinks and an off-night for 3s suddenly becomes an 0-1 hole.
But these reborn Rockets already are Western Conference final contenders in the season of the Warriors’ Big Four and James trying to repeat in Cleveland.
So life is getting better as D’Antoni gets older, right?
“Life? Hell, no. I’m getting old,” he said. “I’d rather have the troubles of 20 years ago.”
D’Antoni then joked that his new team hasn’t even made the playoffs yet. But he also isn’t afraid of what could be coming.
“Oh, we can win it all,” D’Antoni said. “I know that’s easy to say and it’s hard. … There are about five to six teams that could beat us. You could get knocked out of the first round, you could win the whole thing. But we are one of the better teams, no doubt about it.”
And the Rockets now have one of the best coaches in the NBA.