In one respect, it was easier for Dan than for any other high school coach making the leap from high school bench to pro bench—he was going to get a measure of initial default respect. We like Mike, so let’s give his brother a chance. But as the season progressed, it was on the elder D’Antoni to find his own place within the team. He couldn’t be Iavaroni, for Dan’s trust in film and stats and his familiarity with the minutiae of the NBA game is not that strong. He couldn’t be Gentry, for he does not have eighteen years of NBA coaching experience and an intuitive knack for handling pro players. He couldn’t be Weber, for his ability to work one-on-one with players, at his age, is limited (as is his faith in the eternal worth of mankind). He couldn’t be Quinter, the chief scout, for his intimate knowledge of personnel on other teams is limited.
And he couldn’t be his brother. He never has been. From time to time Dan reprises a version of Tommy Smothers’s Mom-always-liked-you-better routine, which gets Mike groaning except that he is forced to admit it’s true: Mom did like him better. Dan was the outlaw, Mike the model son. Dan was the athlete, Mike the student-athlete. Dan was the fighter (during a brawl at a high school game, he threw a policeman over the scorer’s table), Mike the diplomat. Dan has what Laurel D’Antoni calls “the thrill gene.” Mike, by contrast, is a creature of habit. When they were in Italy, Laurel left Mike a fortieth birthday card at each of a half dozen of his daily stops—espresso bar, newsstand, lunch counter, etc.—and he picked up all of them. “My life is a roller coaster,” says Dan, “and Mike’s is a merry-go-round.” I found that out myself on the road. If Mike and I went to a Starbucks together at 7:20 a.m. on one day—he would invariably order a latte and a blueberry muffin—then we would meet to go there at 7:20 a.m. the next day. We didn’t even have to talk about it.
They never played on the same high school or college team, which both agree was fortunate because Dan had his identity as a player and Mike had his. They argued all the time but never mixed it up physically, and, independently, both give the same answer as to why: Dan: “I would’ve killed him.” Mike: “Danny would’ve killed me.” (For a decade in Myrtle Beach, Dan was a bar bouncer along with being a basketball coach.) So they were competitive but rarely were they competitors. On the playground, Dan would select his little brother and give the other captain the next three picks. “I’m not saying we never lost,” says Dan, “but we didn’t lose much. I was pretty damn good even if I was small [Dan made it to the final cut with the Baltimore Bullets in 1971] and, from the time he picked up a ball, Mike just knew how to play the game. He almost never made the wrong play.”
Dan is not in the habit of puffing up his brother—they are more likely to be found battling over politics, theology, music, or which is the superior crossword-puzzle solver—but Dan extends D’Antoni the younger his ultimate coaching compliment. “If you stand on that sideline and all you have is X’s and O’s to guide you,” says Dan, “you got nothing. Mike feels the flow of the game as well as anybody I’ve ever seen.”
They had one class together at Marshall, when Mike, an incoming freshman, took the same summer biology course that Dan needed to graduate. From the front of the room, Mike, who had studied hard for the test, used elaborate sign language to communicate the answers to Dan, who had not. A couple of months later, Dan was Mike’s assistant coach on the freshman team and later, for one year, an assistant on the varsity staff when Mike was the star.
Years ago, they talked about coaching together somewhere but always figured it would be in college. When Mike got enough leverage within the organization to add an assistant, he knew it would be his big brother. The fact that Mike, the younger, is more famous is a family joke rather than a conflict between them. Last year, one West Virginia newspaper listed Mike’s winning coach of the year as the state’s biggest sports story, while Dan’s leaving Myrtle Beach and joining the Suns was sixth. “I had fifth all locked up,” says Dan, “but then some sumbitch died.” Mike claims he frequently receives mail from Marshall addressed to “Mike D’Antoni” and “Mike’s brother,” to which Dan replies, “Shit, I got into the Marshall hall of fame before he did.”
In his own way, though, Dan, like Mike, was always a leader. For thirty years he ran his own program, was respected as a motivator, and was recognized as a character. During one regional final, he grew tired of the relentless advice he had gotten from one leather-lunged fan, so, during a third quarter time-out, he marched his team up into the stands, gathered them around the fan, and said, “Okay, you got your thirty seconds. Tell ’em what you want and shut the hell up.” The guy just stammered.
With the Suns, Dan has gradually come to assume three roles. First, he is Barbosa’s personal coach. He can no longer get out on the court and show Barbosa how to, say, gather himself and try to draw a foul when he drives to the basket, as Weber is able to do, but he can tell him. He can be there day after day, the constant voice in L.B.’s ear that the player needs to keep up his confidence.
Second, D’Antoni the elder has become the anti-NBA voice of the staff, the guy who always preaches “Do less, not more.” Since he had never been around the NBA until this season, he takes even more delight than his brother in ridiculing some of what he sees as the over-strategizing of coaches. “At Socastee, I had one assistant,” says Dan, “and when he asked me what he should do during games, I said, ‘Sit there and chart what we do, so when the newspapers ask me I’ll know.’ ” He swears that NBA coaches call so many set plays only so they will be able to have an answer when asked about it after the game. Dan claims to have had one guaranteed-to-work strategy late in a close game: “Call time-out so that the other coach will get his team together and screw something up.”
Dan is convinced, too, that the other Suns’ assistants shouldn’t yell out the other team’s play call when they know it. “I think it messes up our guys more than it helps them,” he says. From my limited experience, I think he’s wrong about that. I think most players want to know and search the opposition bench for clues. (Nash and Bell do all the time.) But Dan is consistent with his do-less-not-more philosophical position, and that mind-set undoubtedly helped the team from time to time, particularly when it elected to call off a certain defensive scheme.
But the Old Ball Coach exerts the most influence when he doesn’t even realize it—in those private moments with his brother. At root, they approach basketball in the same way. “If I had a tape of my team in high school it would look like Phoenix,” says Dan. “We played small ball, little guys, quick, high pick-and-rolls, fast-breaking, aggressive.” But what he does for his brother is more philosophical than strategic. In those dark and lonely moments when the head coach wonders if he’s doing it the right way, it was the assistant on the bottom rung who tells him that he is.
“Obviously I wouldn’t have gone to South Carolina to get a high school coach if he wasn’t my brother,” says D’Antoni the younger. “Danny knows what I want and sometimes you have a crisis of confidence that you can’t get it. You have a road you’re trying to go down, but there are going to be some along the way, and, next thing you know, you’re veering off or going the wrong way. Danny understands and gets me back where I want to get.”
At practice, D’Antoni sidles up to Eddie House. “You ready to roll?” he says. “We’re gonna need you this series.”
“I been ready to roll,” says House. “Bring it on.”
As if to emphasize that, House politely interrupts D’Antoni when he starts the video session. “Uh, Coach, you got that paper from the other day?” House asks.
D’Antoni cracks up. Eddie had won about $400 in a shooting contest to be paid for out of fine money. “I’ll get it to you later,” promises D’Antoni.
The theory of using House in this series is based on three factors. First, Dallas does not have a strong, lock-down defensive guard except for little-used Darrell Armstrong. And if Armstrong is checking House, House will be asked to give up the ball immediately. Second, Phoenix feels it can beat the
Mavericks by outscoring them rather than with hard-nosed defense, and hard-nosed defense is definitely not House’s strength. And, third, as Gentry puts it, “There will be more possessions in this game, so each one is not quite so valuable.” House, who is point-guard-sized (six-foot-one) but not point-guard savvy, is capable of committing turnovers.
Further, as with all shooters, House is in a Catch-22. (Or, as Weber observes, it is a Catch-and-Shoot-22 with House.) Casa needs shots to get going, but, if he can’t get going, it’s difficult for D’Antoni to leave him in. The best advice is something the coaches have told him repeatedly—“Let the ball find you”—but, as D’Antoni says, “The main thing I worry about with Eddie is that he’s out there running around like a little Chihuahua looking for his shot.”
When it’s time for what passes as the D’Antoni pep talk, there is a palpable ease in the practice gym. The pressure will come later, of course. But the Clippers have been disposed of, and the Mavs seem, if not soft, then somehow familiar. Nowitzki is damned good but he’s also solvable, certainly less of a puzzle than Brand and certainly less frightening than Kobe Bryant.
“You’re gonna hear over the next couple of days how good they are, and how balanced they are, and how they beat San Antonio,” begins D’Antoni. “All that’s well and good, but I’m telling you right now that we are better than they are. We busted their ass twice and had them down seventeen another time. [The Suns blew that big third-quarter lead against the Mavs in the first game of the season at home and lost 111–108 in double overtime.] We can play the underdogs to the outside world, but in here we know we’re gonna bust their ass.”
Chapter Twenty
[The Second Season]
Dallas, May 24…………………
GAME 1 TONIGHT
“If they don’t think that little motherfucker is the MVP now, they can kiss my black ass.”
Until I step off the team bus at American Airlines Center for the morning shootaround and see four dozen reporters and photographers, I have no sense of how, suddenly, everything must look and feel so different for the players. Now there are only four teams left, nothing else to refract attention from Suns-Mavs in the West and Heat-Pistons in the East.
Watching the interview tableau from the perspective of a semi-insider is a fascinating demonstration of the NBA caste system. The head coach and the star—D’Antoni and Nash—are whisked away for private network interviews or massive group sessions. Nash will answer a hundred questions about his “return” to Dallas and his friendship with Nowitzki, even though this is his dozenth return to Dallas and he and Dirk regularly see each other off the court. They plan to have dinner together between games.
Marion is also a popular target, and so is Bell, who is known as a good talker—there is nothing more valuable than a good talker to a journalist—and, further, an emerging postseason hero.
Then there are the “middle men,” players like Boris Diaw, Eddie House, James Jones, and Tim Thomas. Actually, Diaw has emerged from that pack since he has been named the NBA’s Most Improved Player and word has gotten around that, while he doesn’t love analyzing the game during interviews, he can be a charming guy. The other middle men don’t command as much attention as they should. Jones is a thoughtful player, and both Thomas and House are friendly sorts who are liable to say something cocky, just what a reporter needs. Nobody is sure about Barbosa’s command of the language, so most reporters stay away from him. (Though he struggles with some nuances of the language, L.B. is smart and picks up almost everything.)
The guys who aren’t playing much—Pat Burke, Skita, Kurt Thomas, Brian Grant, and the injured Dijon Thompson—congregate in a corner of the locker room, taking united solace in their outsider status. Occasionally, they are sought after for that local angle, that end-of-the-bench perspective, or that knowing-veteran comment (Grant is especially valuable for those), and, in truth, any one of them would be able to address the Suns’ strengths and weaknesses if they were asked or were in the mood. (Skita could do it in five languages.) But it gets more difficult to be a reserve at this time of year—the lights are brighter but you’re still stuck in a dark corner.
The Suns’ assistant coaches retreat to a small room near the entrance to the locker room. Experienced reporters know enough to tap the minds of the assistants, who are often freer with their tongues than the head coaches and just as plugged in to the X’s and O’s. Certain head coaches, Pat Riley being the prominent example, don’t allow their assistants to speak to the media, preferring that one message—the Riley Report—make it to the outside world, a paranoid viewpoint that earns him a lot of scorn among the media, and, in all likelihood, among the fraternity of assistant coaches. D’Antoni, of course, has no such edict, and Gentry and Iavaroni, in particular, get interviewed as much as any assistants in the league. Weber is recognized by veteran reporters as an enthusiastic dispenser of information, and Dan D’Antoni’s rep is growing because of his relationship with Barbosa. On this day, though, they are being ignored while the head coach gets deluged.
“Are you worried about matchup problems?” I ask them with faux TV-interviewer enthusiasm, thrusting an imaginary microphone under Dan D’Antoni.
“Alvin’s sock and tie combination is a big matchup concern,” answers Dan.
One of the major lines of questioning, obviously, is the grim mathematical precedent that presses down upon the Suns. Since 1966, only seven NBA teams have even played in two consecutive seven-game series, and, of those, only one has emerged victorious in three seven-gamers. That was the Los Angeles Lakers, who in 1988 twice needed seven games in the conference playoffs, then went the max to defeat the Detroit Pistons in the Finals. It’s been only four years since the NBA went to a best-of-seven format for the first round.
For a team already thin on reserve strength; with a point guard who, given the every-other-day schedule of games, will not be able to get in restorative work with his personal biomechanic; and without a center (Stoudemire) who killed the Mavs in last year’s playoffs with 28.8 points and 12.5 rebounds, the task seems daunting indeed.
“All I can tell you,” says D’Antoni, “is that we definitely plan to show up tonight.”
The highlight at a casual shootaround occurs when Tim Thomas, standing almost on the baseline, rears back and heaves a ball, like an outfielder trying to nail a runner taking the extra base, at the far basket. It swishes. “I might have to try that tonight,” he says, nodding, as if it were nothing.
Amare’ Stoudemire has made himself more and more available to the media as the postseason has gone on. He probably gets interviewed about not playing as much as anyone besides Nash gets interviewed for playing. At shootaround that morning, Stoudemire had announced that he has a new nickname. “Call me ATM,” he says after winning a shooting game, “because the cash always comes back to me.” Stoudemire always gives himself his nicknames. “STAT” means “Stand Tall and Talented.” That was his favorite until he decided he wanted to be called “Is-Real” because, you know, his game Is Real.
Now, an hour before tip-off, he is putting the finishing touches on his wardrobe. “Charles called my green coat ‘relish’ and my yellow coat ‘mustard,’ ” says ATM, slipping into a jeans-colored coat that looks perfectly apropos for, say, a square dance in Compton. “So tonight I’m throwing blueberry at his ass.” Like most players, Stoudemire professes negative feelings about Barkley as a basketball commentator, yet courts his attention.
D’Antoni had talked about playing the Mavs relatively straight-up, but that isn’t exactly the plan. The Suns plan to trap Jason Terry on all pick-and-rolls; there is not unanimous agreement on that, but D’Antoni fears that Terry will get loose and start making three-pointers. They want to “raid and recover” on Nowitzki, i.e., send a second defender at him who would then retreat to his own man when Nowitzki’s penetration has been stopped, and, as was the case with Kobe Bryant, “catch” his spin move. They talk about corralling the speedy Harris, then, in the half-c
ourt, playing off him and making him shoot perimeter jumpers. They have to be aware of Josh Howard driving hard left and Jerry Stackhouse driving hard right.
“Everything else, guys, is activity,” says D’Antoni. “We do that, as usual, we will be successful. Let’s go get ’em.”
As the coaches retreat to their small office, and the players lace up before Nash hollers out “NINETEEN ON THE CLICKETY!”, someone passes wind, heroically so.
“Someone has died,” says Diaw, calmly moving away from the stench, “but does not yet know it.” Even when he talks about bodily functions, he sounds positively French.
As the players exit, one of Iavaroni’s blackboard messages is there for study: HURRY UP OFFENSE EASIEST You get the best shots in first :07 seconds.
Marion knows that. Six times in the first half he streaks downcourt and takes a pass for a wide-open layup. The Mavs aren’t quite sure how to play Nash, either, finally electing to switch on his pick-and-rolls, which allows him to score twelve points in the second quarter or find Diaw posting up a smaller guard. At halftime Phoenix leads 62–58; the Suns would be up by a greater margin if not for the inspired play of Devin Harris, who looks every bit as quick as Barbosa, a daunting thought. The plan is to force Harris to drive left into what the Suns call “the muck,” the congested area in the paint.
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