The 2020-21 NBA will be only the second since 2003-04 in which Mike D’Anonti is a member of a coaching staff that he is not in charge of (the other being 2015-16 when he was Brett Brown’s associate head coach in Philadelphia).
Now finalizing a deal that will make him an assistant coach for Steve Nash in Brooklyn, D’Anonti is reunited with both his former Suns star point guard and Amar’e Stoudemire, his superstar big man in Phoenix.
And as far as ESPN’s Stephen A Smith is concerned, D’Antoni now has the perfect situation for himself.
“He’s right where he belongs,” Smith said on ESPN’s First Take following the report of the Nets finalizing a deal with D’Antoni. “He’s an assistant coach — particularly for Steve Nash. If anybody should hire him as an assistant, it’s Steve Nash. They had great success together in Phoenix: they won 65% of their games, they went to a couple of conference championships — even though they never made it to the finals — and clearly, that’s where Mike D’Antoni made a name for himself. [He] revolutionized the game of basketball on the offensive side of the ball because of what he was able to do.”
Smith also thinks D’Anoni was “lucky to get that job” in Brooklyn.
“Because here’s the reality of the situation, you’ve been a head coach — Phoenix, New York, LA, Houston — never got to an NBA Finals,” he said about D’Antoni. “Obviously, injuries and bad circumstances had a lot to with [some instances]. Got close, but never got there, right? And this man is a master of departing jobs right when he knows he’s gonna get fired.”
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