D’Antoni drooling at possibilities with point-guard pairing

Mike D’Antoni, long the NBA’s point guard whisperer, thought of having the point guard he long considered the NBA’s best. He thought of his offense in Chris Paul’s command. He thought of James Harden empowered to do as he pleases with the ball. Like a lottery winner considering a spending spree, D’Antoni delighted in offensive possibilities.

D’Antoni considered his offense driven by a pair of brilliant passers and a thought bubble nearly popped above his head with the notion of one of the greatest offenses in NBA history getting significantly better.

When Rudy Tomjanovich checked out Yao Ming with the Chinese national

team weeks after the NBA draft that would deliver him to Houston, he was so thrilled with what he could do with the talent dropped in his lap he spent the flight home diagraming plays, running out of paper and then loading up on cocktail napkins to keep writing.

Tomjanovich was rooted in the Rockets’ big-man tradition. D’Antoni has long been about point guards, from Steve Nash to Jeremy Lin to Harden.

With the acquisition of Paul on Wednesday, D’Antoni was given the ultimate point-guard weapon. He would have the point guard he considered the NBA’s best last season and the point guard he thought of as the best of the past decade. Pairing them would not be a problem, he said. It would be a “joy.”

“The more point guards you have on the floor the better it is,” D’Antoni said. “Whether James is running the pick-and-roll and Chris is there hitting shots, the ball swings to him and you can’t stop it. Or vice a versa. Whether it’s Chris bringing it up or James, we’ll figure it out. There will never be a time one of those two won’t be on the floor. There’s endless possibilities.”

With Harden handling the ball, the Rockets did not seem to need a point guard. But in a larger sense, they needed what Paul can bring.

In past seasons, Harden wore down and crashed in the postseason with teams able to load their defenses against him until he hit a wall. Even before Harden’s play fell off in closeout game losses, defenses against the Rockets had become about forcing the ball out of Harden’s hands and contesting hard on the 3-point shooters.

The Rockets around him could not create enough off the dribble and could not get the open catchand-shoot 3s of the regular season. The Rockets’ shooting and the offense as a whole suffered.

With Paul or Harden handling the ball, the other will get it with the defense loaded elsewhere. Harden, second in the NBA in scoring while leading in assists last season, can score from the wings as well as any player. Paul, the threetime assists leader, can create in multiple pick-and-rolls from many angles better than anyone.

The Rockets will be so difficult to defend, D’Antoni saw more than last season’s record-smashing waves of 3s. He imagined a parade of lob dunks.

“I see Clint Capela being the leading scorer on the team,” he said.

As spectacular as Harden was this season, he set the NBA record for turnovers in a second consecutive season. Paul is a master at running an offense without turning it over. He brings the Rockets a mid-range marksman they have liked, despite their annual freeagent efforts to land one strong enough to have a green light to take those shots.

Neither will have to play too many minutes, and the Rockets’ second unit with Eric Gordon, the reigning NBA Sixth Man of the Year, will have an elite playmaker running the offense.

“I think we have the two best playmakers in the entire league on one team,” Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said. “I’m so excited to see them on the floor. With coach’s leadership, working with those players, I think it’s something special.”

Most of all, the Rockets believe it will work because Paul and Harden wanted this partnership.

“A lot of people will mention ‘how do they play together,’ ” D’Antoni said. “It’s a little bit like USA Basketball or (Kevin) Durant going to Golden State. You can sit around and say that doesn’t work. But guess what, it does, because they want it to work. I know James and Chris want it to work.

“USA Basketball when they all go there with their egos and all-stars on every team, why does that work? Because they played for the United States. They didn’t play for individual stuff or contract or anything else. James and Chris are both at that point in their career that will happen. When that happens, you can’t have too many point guards on the floor. … You can’t have too many stars.”

The Rockets have one more Hall of Fame-bound star than they had before. That he plays point guard, the position Harden so magnificently manned last season, was not a problem. It made the windfall even greater.