Mike D’Antoni will be an assistant coach with the Brooklyn Nets, rejoining him with his previous MVP point guard, Nets coach Steve Nash, the group reported Friday.
The Nets declared the recruits of D’Antoni, Amar’e Stoudemire and all around respected partner Ime Udoka, who spent seven of the previous eight seasons on Gregg Popovich’s staff with the San Antonio Spurs.
Nash has built a solid coaching staff for his first season as a head coach, including associate head coach Jacque Vaughn. The Nets are relied upon to be among the NBA’s championship competitors with the arrival of Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn presentation of Kevin Durant.
Udoka went through seven years as an assistant under Popovich with the Spurs and the 2019-20 season as the top assistant with Brett Brown and the Philadelphia 76ers. He has been a contender for a few head-coaching jobs in recent years.
For D’Antoni and Nash, this is the third time they will be together, including a memorable 2004 to 2008 run with the Phoenix Suns that saw the birth of the “Seven Seconds or Less” offense and the development of Nash as a Hall of Fame point guard in the system.
D’Antoni coached Nash on the Los Angeles Lakers (2012 to 2014) for a far less successful stretch after wounds had restricted Nash’s playing time and viability.
D’Antoni, 69, is one of the best and inventive coaches of this generation. He went through the previous four years with the Houston Rockets prior to deciding to leave without an agreement augmentation toward the finish of the 2019-20 season.
He was 217-101 in four seasons as Rockets coach, progressing once toward the Western Conference finals and three times to the conference semifinals. D’Antoni, a two-time NBA Coach of the Year, led the Rockets to the highest prevailing upon rate in the Western Conference the previous four years (.682), following just the Toronto Raptors (.695) in the whole league.
