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| Mike D'Antoni, left, and Steve Nash are together again, but the setting will be quite different this time. |
When Mike D'Antoni resigned from the Knicks 10 months ago, in the wake of an apparent work slowdown by Carmelo Anthony, it was easy to dump all the blame on Anthony for not being on board with the emergence of Jeremy Lin.
How could he not want to play with the exciting new point guard anointed by D'Antoni as the second coming of Steve Nash?
Except Lin wasn't Nash — not then and probably never. He was a great story — Ivy Leaguer turned instant N.B.A. phenomenon. D’Antoni missed the essential point that instant didn’t mean proven. Already offended by Anthony’s career-long and well-earned reputation as a serial killer of ball movement, he was seized with delight to Nash-ionalize the Knicks’ offense.
Blinded by unforeseen opportunity, D’Antoni went too far in trying to resurrect the fluid system that had made a coaching celebrity of him in Phoenix. He never tried to assure Anthony — who had come to town with the fanfare of a savior — of his standing. It was a miscalculation that left D’Antoni with no choice but to leave, perhaps made with the understanding that he was not long for New York as it was.
Now that the Lakers' job has fallen into his lap thanks to the Buss family’s bailing on Phil Jackson’s reported power play, D’Antoni will be reunited with the real Nash — albeit the 38-year-old version. But he had better be able to answer the nagging question of what, if anything, he has learned from his Knicks’ experience in seven seconds or less.
Is he still wedded to his once-celebrated system or can he be the best kind of coach, one who adapts to the hand he’s been dealt?
Easy to like as he was, D’Antoni nonetheless must be evaluated less supportively based on how Mike Woodson has cultivated a relationship with Anthony. Yes, Anthony was bound to be more circumspect after using his leverage lifeline to undercut a coach he didn’t want to play for. But for those who predicted that Woodson would only survive in New York by pandering to Anthony, that hasn’t happened.
His offense is running through Anthony’s gifted hands, but with enough quick-witted guard play thus far from Jason Kidd and Raymond Felton to keep it from becoming one-dimensional. Whereas D’Antoni communicated from a distance, Woodson has been more direct with Anthony, who has responded at both ends of the floor.
Asked last week about Anthony’s willingness to shuttle this season between playing small and power forward, Woodson said: “If you ask him to play the three, he’s got to play the three. If you ask him to play the four, he’s got to play the four.” That may sound like no great sacrifice but it was refreshing to hear that there remains some working order in the N.B.A. universe of coach-franchise player relationships.
In Phoenix, Nash served as D’Antoni’s on-court surrogate and the coach tenuously coexisted with the Suns’ other star, Amar’e Stoudemire. While D’Antoni and Nash must be overjoyed to be together again, D’Antoni would be wise to remember they are not in Phoenix anymore. Set in the pressurized chamber of immediate championship expectations, the Lakers present a momentous challenge of outsize egos and volatile personalities — and that’s not even counting the curious case of Metta World Peace.
Firing Mike Brown after five games certainly bordered on Steinbrenner-esque farcicality, but it was a maneuver based on the issues simmering underground: Dwight Howard’s pending free agency next summer and Kobe Bryant’s obsession with winning a sixth championship ring (tying him with Michael Jordan) before his 34-year-old body wears out.
Everyone knows what Bryant can be like to live with when he senses a season sliding toward irrelevance. Losing all eight preseason games and four of five to begin the regular season proved nothing but did temper the optimism bordering on grandeur after the acquisitions of Nash and Howard. It illuminated the challenges of keeping Bryant happy now to make sure he doesn’t scare off Howard from committing to the future.
That’s what made Jackson’s return seem so inevitable as a short-term salve, even if our last snapshot of the 11-time champion coach was walking away after a four-game sweep by Dallas in 2011, worn out and disgusted by his team’s on-court hooliganism.
It seems likely that the Lakers negotiated with Jackson while internally debating whether to move forward or backward. Jackson may have communicated his own ambivalence by asking for things — reportedly travel restrictions and a piece of the team — that may have come across as extortion. According to the Lakers’ spokesman John Black, the stunning shift to D’Antoni occurred because management was “unanimous that D’Antoni was the best coach for the team at this time.”
But how can he be when the Lakers’ aging infrastructure and shallow bench seem at odds with D’Antoni’s fast-paced style? When the presence of Howard and Pau Gasol demand an attention to low-post play that D’Antoni has never embraced?
The answer, satisfactory or otherwise, is apparently that this was no time to take a chance on a promising but unproven commodity like Brian Shaw, a former Jackson assistant the Lakers should have hired instead of Brown. They believed they needed a name, someone with a brand to help this star-studded roster blast off, and not blow up.
Buyer beware: in retrospect, D’Antoni did not play that well with flammable personnel matches in the pressure-cooker of New York.
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