| Phoenix Suns News | | | Top Five Lakers Playoff Moments in the Kobe Era - Fan's Take (Yahoo! Contributor Network)
The 2012 Playoffs were full of frustration for Lakers fans like me as Kobe and Company struggled in the first round against the Denver Nuggets, getting pushed to seven games in a series that should have been closed out much sooner. Then, in the Western Conference Semifinals, the Lakers blew Games 2 and 4 and were defeated 4-1 by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Mike D’Antoni breaks silence on New York Knicks exit: ‘An obstacle had to be removed’ (Ball Don't Lie)
Mike D'Antoni has maintained a pretty low profile since resigning from the post of head coach of the New York Knicks two months ago, on the heels of a six-game losing streak, the day before the NBA's trading deadline. While everyone else talked — about where the Knicks would turn next in their ceaseless search for a savior , about how the refusal to look inward for solutions has poisoned the Knicks' organizational culture , about whether D'Antoni really stepped down or a certain isolation-loving forward who never seemed at peace with the coach's spread pick-and-roll, ball-movement-dependent system demanded his ouster, etc. — D'Antoni just exited stage left, watched as the Knicks ripped off an 18-6 run under interim head coach Mike Woodson before being eliminated in the first round of the NBA playoffs by the Miami Heat, and kept quiet.
Until now. D'Antoni recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with legendary basketball scribe Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated. McCallum spent a season in the coach's hip pocket while writing a pretty cool book about how D'Antoni was evolving the modern conception of NBA offense with the Phoenix Suns. In the resultant piece, D'Antoni shoots down rumors that he's interested in leading the Orlando Magic ("When I saw those stories, I immediately texted Stan [Van Gundy, the Magic coach] and told him it was bull----"), bristles over McCallum's description of his exit ("Could you use the word 'resign?' It hurts when I even hear the word 'quit'") and recalls his wife Laurel's response when he told her he was resigning ("She told me I should stop at the store on my way home because we were out of milk").
[Adrian Wojnarowski: LeBron James delivers for Heat at the most critical time ]
And, of course, he addressed the elephant in the room — what role that iso-loving forward played in the process:
| | | | |
|