Mike D’Antoni has long been a supporter of a fast-paced approach to basketball, but it was the Warriors who made it a viable strategy with Stephen Curry.
The Golden State Warriors’ impact on the basketball world is hard to ignore. In the early 2010s, the physicality of the NBA signatures declined, but the style of play remained much the same.
The big athletic wings that allowed them to reach the rim and gain high percentage opportunities often dominated the best conversations in the world.
Players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant were proficient at bringing the ball to basketball on almost every play.
However, the NBA world attracted attention when Stephen Curry and the Warriors began to find success primarily by shooting jump shots and three-pointers.
Read more: LeBron James admits that the Golden State Warriors were superior in the 2016 NBA Finals, but at one cost
Mike D’Antoni praised Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors in his sit-in conversation with Kirk Goldsbury, Megna Chakrabarti and Jonathan Chan.
He said that the boundary-centric style of NBA basketball is not a viable approach to championship basketball if not successful.
“What Steph did with Warriors and Steve Kerr has verified he can win with a three-point shooting.”
“And there was always that question before. You can’t win a championship. You can’t do this with that kind of shooting. And now they’ve verified.”
“That’s where Floodgates were opened and the rest of the coaches followed because of Steph’s ability to make shots.”
D’Antoni is very familiar with Curry and the Warriors and played against them in the late 2010s as his Houston Rockets team is closest to beating them at their best.
Read more: LeBron James didn’t know that the Warriors’ 2015 “back pocket” strategy existed, it caught the Cavaliers by surprise
Through various stints as an NBA head coach with the Suns, Knicks and Rockets, Mike D’Antoni tried to implement an “under 7 seconds” attack.
Steve Nash won two MVPs with D’Antoni, and Amar’e Stoudemire became an All-Star player. It didn’t work with the Knicks, but perhaps the best version of this offense came to Houston.
With James Harden and Chris Paul as two major offensive outlets, D’Antoni and Rockets also became primarily boundary-based teams.
However, despite helping Harden win the MVP, D’Antoni and Rockets failed to score a legitimate postseason success, losing in a seven-game thriller to the Warriors at the 2018 Western Conference Finals.