The Diesel wrote:And why on earth did the front office tell D'Antoni to wait until after the playoffs ended to get his contract extended?
They should have extended his contract the second he wanted to extend it.
The man is a brilliant coach and a million times better than Terry Porter.
I mean, consider the following:
- Nash became a 2 time MVP under him
- Barbosa became 6th man of the year under him.
- Diaw became Most Improved Player under him
- He took the team to the Conference Finals TWICE and got screwed by bad luck each time.
- The team would have won the Championship in 2007 if Amare and Boris had just stayed on the bench after Horry's foul on Nash
- The team finished last season winning 15 of their last 20 games with Shaq and were a Tim Duncan 3 pointer away from winning Game 1 and a Grant Hill injury away from potentially winning the series.
Remember, the Suns beat the Spurs 3 out of 4 times in the regular season last year and were the better team for the majority of Game 1.
Hill's injury was a HUGE blow because nobody could defend Tony Parker.
Now the Suns are stuck with a horrible coach in Porter and SEVERAL players are unhappy.
The worst part about all of this? The media will blame Shaq for this mess even though he's been the team's best player this year and is playing better than Marion.
I'm sorry but the grass is always greener on the other side, and people tend to have short memories about things like D'Antoni's flaws.
Granted he had some unlucky things happen, we all understand that. But that was not the problem.
The problem was that D'Antoni is NOT a play-off coach. Look at the Spurs, who do not have the dynamic pieces that the Suns have, don't win as many regular season games, and yet manage to out-compete the Suns in EVERY playoff series. It's not just a suspension here or a player injury there, it's that D'Antoni just couldn't match the mental competition of superior coaches like Popovich.
D'Antoni was far too stubborn to try to improve in those areas that were deficient like a sore thumb, and far too dumb to make in-game adjustments during the play-offs, instead choosing to let Nash coach the team in the key games, and refusing to adjust even when Nash was out of the game.
With D'Antoni we had good entertainment, but would never have won a championship. I'm sorry but D'Antoni is history, and good riddance. Thanks for the good times, but if you can't even make some minor changes to your coaching style during the playoffs, and too dumb to compete against superior coaches, you gotta go.
Porter's making adjustments and finally seeing the light, so the man can change his ways. That's something you could never say about D'Antoni.
