He was head coach for 16 seasons, but never won the ring: he deserves credit for changing basketball with the Phoenix Suns
There couldn’t have been a more prestigious recognition for Mike D’Antoni. The former coach of Olimpia Milano and Benetton Treviso, in fact, rightfully enters the basketball Olympus with the most coveted award: election to the Hall of Fame. The 74-year-old coach will therefore become part of basketball’s most exclusive club on August 15th when the ceremony will be staged at the Springfield museum in Massachusetts.
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Although at NBA level D’Antoni never managed to win the NBA title in his 16 seasons as head coach, the former Olimpia point guard is credited with having changed modern basketball with his “Seven seconds or less” Suns (of which he was coach from 2003 to 2008). A true visionary from an offensive point of view, so much so that his approach to basketball has radically transformed the NBA. In the end, Mike D’Antoni in his 16 seasons as an NBA head coach, with the Nuggets, Suns, Knicks, Lakers and Rockets, achieved 672 victories (with 526 defeats), winning the “Coach of the Year” award on two occasions, in Phoenix in 2005 and in Houston in 2017. His Suns, led by another Hall of Famer, Steve Nash, perhaps would have deserved better luck in terms of results in the postseason, thanks to some excellent injuries and the controversial suspensions of Diaw and Stoudemire (who will join D’Antoni in the Hall of Fame in the “class of 2026”) against the Spurs during the 2007 playoffs, but that team certainly became the model from which many clubs were inspired, starting with Steve Kerr’s Warriors. Now the Hall of Fame is also giving its tribute to Mike D’Antoni.
