Mike D'Antoni, Part II, begins in his second-floor office inside the Lakers' El Segundo training facility. On the basketball court below a group of young players are going through an early morning workout before heading to Las Vegas to represent the Lakers in the NBA summer league.
"We've got some interesting players," D'Antoni said. "We're trying to get more athletic."
The deliberate, low-key atmosphere on this mid-summer morning is in stark contrast to the frenzied storm that welcomed D'Antoni the moment he replaced Mike Brown as the Lakers coach one week into last season.
It also serves as a poignant reminder of everything D'Antoni never was afforded as he tried to navigate the Lakers through the troubled waters of a turbulent season that never quite found a steady course.
Namely a summer to prepare, a training camp, a healthy roster, a content Dwight Howard, a unified team, a roster that fit his preferred style of play, the backing of the fans and the non-threatening shadow of a certain former coach an entire city was prepared to embrace as Brown's replacement.
The lack of which helped sabotage D'Antoni's first season with the Lakers.
"He came in and there was just so much going on," Lakers guard Steve Nash said. "There were so many injuries and new players who had just spent all training camp trying to learn (Brown's) complicated offense. And then Mike comes in and we changed to a completely different system.
"It was a
tough situation and it was just really hard for him to put his mark on the team."
In other words, it was nothing like D'Antoni envisioned when he accepted the Lakers offer.
"It's such a great job that you only look at the positives," D'Antoni said.
So when he hobbled to Los Angeles from New York shortly after undergoing knee surgery eight months ago he thought he was taking over a championship-caliber team that featured Kobe Bryant, the greatest player of his generation, and the endless possibilities of Nash and Howard on the pick and roll.
"Steve Nash and Dwight Howard on the pick and roll, and that's what I do?" D'Antoni remembers, wistfully. "I just thought, 'Boy, that's gonna be a staple.' "
Instead he ran smack into a hornet's nest.
Howard never was completely healthy and refused to buy into his role. He fancied himself as a dominating low-post force the offense should run through.
"There was just a lot of conflict, emotionally," D'Antoni said. "People were not settled in their roles. But it's funny because a lot of times players will say 'I don't know my role.' It's not that you don't know it, you just don't accept it."
Howard never accepted his, although appeasing him as a prominent low-post option also wasn't practical because he simply wasn't healthy enough to carry that load.
"The only thing that cracks me up is (the question) 'Why didn't you go through him more?' " D'Antoni said. "Well, he was hurt. Why would we go through him if he's hurt? You have to (factor) that in. Why would we do that with Kobe and Nash and (Pau) Gasol on the floor? That doesn't make a lot of sense."
There were other issues working against D'Antoni.
Nash went down in the second game of the season and missed the next seven weeks. That severely stunted the transition from Brown's so-called Princeton offense to D'Antoni's system.
Gasol missed 33 games, and it wasn't until the end of the season a proper balance was struck to conciliate the skills and needs of him and Howard.
Meanwhile, upon building up hope the Lakers would lure Phil Jackson out of retirement, fans were irate when they hired D'Antoni instead - anger they never held back throughout the season.
"I knew there would be some backlash. I mean my goodness it's Phil Jackson," D'Antoni said. "But I also felt had we won, all of that would have subsided. But we didn't, initially, and when you aren't winning people are going to find anything to get you with."
It didn't help that Nash, who had four years experience running D'Antoni's offense in Phoenix, missed so much time early in the year and forced D'Antoni to scale things back until he returned.
Although by that time, the resistance of roles complicated matters even more.
"We kind of milked it until Steve got back. And then we were like, 'Well, this isn't working.' For whatever reason people were hesitant to accept certain roles and so we had to figure something else out," D'Antoni said.
"By that time 40 games had gone by and we got ourselves in such a hole, and that complicated everything."
The Lakers finished the season on a 28-12 surge to qualify for the playoffs, although the frantic push likely cost them Bryant, whose minutes piled up down the stretch until his body finally gave out when he suffered a season-ending Achilles' tendon injury the final week of the regular season.
D'Antoni thinks the playoffs might have played out a bit differently with a healthy Bryant, but to be perfectly frank he never got the sense the Lakers were ready to make a long run.
"We had it kind of set up right and had we stayed healthy we could have made some noise in the playoffs," D'Antoni said. "But to be that dominating great team I don't think we could have gotten there. And that was disappointing to think we couldn't.
"But maybe because of the injuries and maybe because of the roles or the accepting of pecking orders, it hurt us."
And for an organization with expectations of competing for championships year in and year out, that was unacceptable.
"This is the Lakers, and all they want to do is win championships," D'Antoni said. "And rightfully so."
To top it all off, D'Antoni forever may be remembered as a primary reason Howard left the Lakers for the Houston Rockets as a free agent earlier this month.
That is, if you buy into talk that reportedly leaked out of Howard's camp he'd still be a Laker had they simply fired D'Antoni and hired Jackson.
That might make for a great headline, but it doesn't quite add up as far as D'Antoni is concerned.
After all, D'Antoni still is here and Howard is gone. You would think - had Howard really made that demand - D'Antoni would be leisurely vacationing somewhere in Italy right now, his one season as Lakers coach just an unfortunate memory.
"That would have been an easy switch in order to get him," D'Antoni pointed out. "But I don't think they picked me over him. I don't think it came down to that."
In fact, D'Antoni noticed a bit of irony in Howard choosing Houston, considering the Rockets run an offense every bit as wide open as the one D'Antoni prefers and the one Howard resisted conforming to last year.
"The thing that cracks me up is Houston, they do the exact same thing," D'Antoni said, laughing. "And so (Howard) is gonna go to Houston? OK, so did they talk about change there? Don't tell me that it's that different."
D'Antoni wishes Howard well, but does think he needs to accept what makes him a special player rather than envision himself as something he isn't yet and may never be.
"He's a force and he can be really, really good and dominate the league," D'Antoni said. "But it's in an area that he's not loving right now. He wants to dominate a different way, in the low post and all that. But he needs to get better there, and he will. But his greatness is in defense and being a physical force. I think he'd be better served if he embraces that.
"But he's good."
More than anything, though, D'Antoni's focus is pointed forward.
He'll have a complete offseason and training camp to work with, which he thinks will make a significant difference, and hopefully a healthy Nash and Gasol.
As for Bryant, D'Antoni certainly wouldn't be surprised if he makes it back to start the season opening night.
He is especially excited for Gasol, who now returns to his normal position and should mesh better with recently signed center Chris Kaman than he did with Howard.
"They can both play on the outside and the inside. I can put Pau on the post and Kaman can hit an outside shot," D'Antoni said. "Which we couldn't do that last year because Pau was the only guy who could play outside because we had (Howard) inside. It will really work well together and I think Pau's numbers will soar."
D'Antoni certainly isn't predicting a championship, but he does think the Lakers can be a good team. If they meet expectations or exceed them, he believes he'll have the backing of the front office moving forward.
As far as seizing a chance to rehabilitate an image that took its share of hits - and perhaps show Lakers fans he was the right choice to replace Brown - D'Antoni keeps it in perspective.
"It's important in that I'm very competitive. But it's not important in terms of what somebody else thinks," he said. "It's important to me what the other coaches think and what the organization thinks or people that work with me think.
"I'm not going to sit here, and if somebody is talking on a talk show, I'm not going to worry what they think about me. We're in a business where everyone thinks this is easy. It's a little bit different and a little more complicated than people think. And they really don't know.
"But I'm not mad at them because they really don't know."
With that, D'Antoni headed downstairs to watch the Lakers' summer league team practice. It's one of the many benefits he has this year compared to last.
Mike D'Antoni, Part II, starts here.
Vincent.bonsignore@dailynews.com
@DailyNewsVinny
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/ci_23672396/lakers-coach-mike-dantoni-ready-act-ii-minus?source=rss_viewed
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