Houston Rockets Hiring Mike D’Antoni Comes with Curious Questions​

Mike D’Antoni occupies a complicated space in the NBA landscape, so his agreement to become the Houston Rockets’ next head coach, as first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, raises appropriately complicated issues.

After spearheading an offensive revolution with the Phoenix Suns and enjoying wild success in the mid-2000s, D’Antoni flamed out with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers. The ultimate question, then, is this: Which version of D’Antoni is the real one?

Are the Rockets getting the offensive mind widely credited with altering offensive basketball? The guy who spaced the floor, championed pace, shrunk lineups and made the pick-and-roll the fulcrum of virtually every system since developed?

Or are they getting the guy who lost the locker room in New York and may well have deserved more blame for the implosion in L.A. than the more rigorously chronicled Kobe Bryant-Dwight Howard rift?

Unless you think his short tenure as an assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers sparked some kind of unlikely revelation, there’s really no third option.

We’ll get the answer to that big question when we see whether D’Antoni fails or succeeds in Houston. But there is a handful of smaller queries that should provide hints ahead of time.

Does This Work Without Steve Nash?

No matter how convinced you are of D’Antoni’s revolutionary offensive thinking, you can’t conclude he was solely responsible for the Suns’ offensive innovation and success.

Not when Steve Nash was running top-tier attacks long before D’Antoni showed up.

NBA.com’s John Schuhmann pulled together the numbers a couple of years ago when Nash’s retirement began to appear imminent, and they’re stunning.

Nash led the NBA’s best offense for nine straight seasons from 2001-02 until 2009-10. Three of those years came with the Dallas Mavericks, and the final two came after D’Antoni left Phoenix. So if you’re looking for a common denominator here, it’s not the coach.

It’s the transcendent point guard.

D’Antoni never had anything approaching his Nash-era level of offensive success in his other stops, despite the respective scoring talents of Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant. That’s a potential concern—one the presence of James Harden may not mitigate as a primary ball-handler.

And in terms of incumbent point guards, the best Houston has is Patrick Beverley—a good defender and capable shooter who is about as far from the Nash prototype as possible.

Toss in the other worries about the league adopting, improving and rendering obsolete many of D’Antoni’s core offensive principles, and you’ve got a long way to go before reaching any certainty the Rockets will suddenly score like crazy just because they hired a new coach.

What About Dwight Howard?

This one’s easy. Howard is gone.

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