Mike D'Antoni was the luckiest man in the world for about a week there. He was losing a job that was slowly being yanked out from beneath him (that is, unless he really did want Shaquille O'Neal, too), he had two billionaires desperately wanting him to work for them, and he was being hailed as the best coach in the world without a job.
In short, he had leverage, a commodity more precious than sex. Then he screwed up and took the Knicks job.
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| Mike D'Antonio turned his leverage into a reported $6M a year ... to coach the Knicks. (AP) |
But D'Antoni was in great shape as long as he was letting them come to him. Once he chose, his window closed, and he was the leverage master no longer.
Too bad, too, because coaches so rarely have it any more. They are hired, often overpaid, and then fired for the slightest provocation, typically wrong. They are the goat owners and general managers keep on scaping, and because there is almost an unlimited supply, they almost never have leverage.
And, we will repeat, leverage is better than sex.
Now, for you young and randy members of the audience who will correctly point out that while many blog sites have pictures of barely clad women, few have pictures of rich people throwing money at non-rich people, let me remind you that there's tons of sex around. You can find some almost every day, for as long as your cash, your heart and your migraine medicine hold out. And, we needn't remind you, it often turns out to be not quite as spectacular as you thought it would.
On the other hand, leverage is very rare, has a shelf life of maybe a week if you play your cards right, and it almost always ends up well. Unless, of course, you take the Knicks job.
But we kid.
When coaches get a chance to make the bosses chase them, it is a good thing. Anyone who pays attention to the end of every college basketball season, any portion of the international soccer season, or the start of the hockey and NBA seasons knows that coaches get smoked as often as ham, usually because the people above them have given them Fisher Price tools with which to build a mansion. And of course the converse is true when your GM gets you something of value -- you get smarter and safer.
So D'Antoni, who oddly was an idiot in Denver before becoming a genius in Phoenix, largely for doing the same things, knows how it works. He had Shawn Marion and Steve Nash and Amare Stoudamire and Raja Bell and Leandro Barbosa, and the Suns were a fascinating team. Then Steve Kerr became the general manager, decided he needed O'Neal, made the trade that made the Suns more vulnerable than before, and suddenly D'Antoni was framed as the victim in a crackpot scheme that went awry.
Meanwhile, Dallas' season went in the toilet the same way. The Bulls, young and promising, burned through Scott Skiles and tossed off Jim Boylan. And the Knicks were putrid from the toupee down to the lifts. And while Dallas was mentioned for D'Antoni a bit, the Bulls and Knicks really wanted him. Jerry Reinsdorf and Jimmy Dolan, dueling to the death.
And D'Antoni realized that his life was about to get very good for a few days, sat back and let his agent give him phone sex: "The Bulls say they'll let you play your way ... the Knicks will give you more money ... the Bulls say they'll give you a million more ..."
But leverage doesn't last forever, and at some point D'Antoni would have to choose. Surprisingly to some, he chose the Knicks, or as the folks at The Big Lead put it, "D'Antoni Signs 4-Year Deal With Hell." And with that, the leverage stage was over, and now he was just another guy who has to spend the next few years avoiding eye contact with Isiah Thomas.
Within a couple of years, if D'Antoni cannot turn this brackish and fetid puddle into cases of Montrachet, he will be fired again. It might be the last time he gets a crack at the big time, because few NBA coaches ever get four shots at a gig without having really excelled once. He might just have decided, "It's time to swing for the fences," or the Bulls were coming up short on some detail, but he took a huge risk with a team with acres of downside. But as we are terrible at foretelling the future, he might actually know how to make the Knicks not be the Knicks any more.
But no matter how good it might get, it'll never be as good as it was last week. Last week, Mike D'Antoni was a universally acknowledged mastermind who had sunbursts emanating from his skull. Now, he works for Jimmy Dolan. Now there's a comedown for you.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
