The other day, I heard somebody say that now that Terry Porter had taken over in Phoenix, the team had at least solved its defensive problems, but they still had to figure things out on offense. Amare Stoudemire famously said that in all D'Antoni's time in Phoenix, the team never really worked on defense. I just got an e-mail from a Cleveland fan saying that of course LeBron James would never go to New York, because defense wins championships, and D'Antoni's teams can't play defense.

And, if you look at points allowed per game, D'Antoni's teams have allowed, in recent seasons, astronomically high numbers like 103, 105, or (the Knicks right now) 108 points per game.

So, the cruddy circumstantial evidence is clear: Mike D'Antoni's teams are no good at defense.

But if he's terrible, then half the league is abysmal. Because the truth is that he's in the middle of the pack.

How do I know this?

Points Allowed Per Possession
First of all, let's pretend that something crazy happened, and NBA rules changed such that in the Eastern Conference there was a new shot clock that lasted just 12 seconds. The West, in this crazy analogy, kept the 24-second clock.

Of course, teams in the East would suddenly have far more possessions per game, and far more field goal attempts. I don't know if they'd shoot a better or worse percentage, but they'd shoot a lot more, and that would raise all their scores.Mike D'Antoni

Would all the coaches in the East suddenly become much worse at coaching defense? In reality, no. But if you judge by points allowed per game, clearly. In this world, if you were to stack up all the NBA coaches by points allowed per game, and rank them, the Western coaches would look really good, and the Eastern coaches would look really bad. Which would be wholly misleading, and useless information.

That's also what happens when you look at Mike D'Antoni teams. He coaches a style where his team has the ball for a very short amount of time before shooting. ("Seven Seconds or Less," right?) That means the other team gets the ball many more times per game, too. He is, essentially, coaching in that mythical Eastern Conference, where teams are shooting way more. So his numbers suffer, in appearance, at least.

How does all that shake out? To really know, you'd have to look at how teams fared against his team's defense. There is a lot to look at when assessing any defense. How many 3-pointers do opponents shoot, and at what rate do they make them? How often do D'Antoni teams foul? Do they give up a lot of points in the paint? What about blocking shots and rebounding? Do they gamble for steals? Do opponents get a lot of assists? Do they draw offensive fouls? How about weakside help, containing the pick and roll, and scaring little guards from attacking the rim? Not to mention, with D'Antoni teams you also have wonder about stuff like: Does all the running make them tired and miss more shots? Does it make opponents go deeper into their bench, and play lower-quality players? Does all the running make other teams feel like running, too -- even though that style might not suit them?

You could research all that stuff if you wanted to. And there may be good reason to. But if you wanted a quick way to rate the defense of Mike D'Antoni's teams, or any coach, I would advise you do this: Add up the number of points his opponents have scored all season, and divide it by the number of possessions they have had. It's beautiful, right? It factors in everything above -- every miss or make, every foul, every blocked shot -- in a real world setting. It tells you, essentially, if your team has the ball, and D'Antoni's team is playing D, how many points are you likely to score before his team gets the ball back.

Other defensive stats might tell you more about how such a thing happens. But this statistic is surely king when it comes to quickly telling you which team is the best at stopping people.

Mike D'Antoni's Defensive Track Record
Mike D'Antoni has won a lot of games, and after many wins has pointed out that his team played the best defense of the two teams that night. It's a cute line, and hard to argue. But that argument over the entire season is worth knowing. Who did play the better D? D'Antoni's team or the rest of the league?

The truth is, it's close. Judging by points allowed per possession (often also expressed as points per 100 possessions, as on Basketball-Reference.com where I got all these numbers, because that's a more intuitive number), D'Antoni's career as a coach of defenses looks like this:

* 1998-99 Nuggets 29th out of 29. Now that's some bad D. But is Chauncey Billups' rookie year really what we're talking about?
* 2003-2004 Suns 24th out of 29. Mild improvement with a roster that was never going to guard well.
* 2004-2005 Suns 17th out of 30. Squarely middle-class, which combines with the most efficient offense in the NBA to make an elite team. This was the revelatory Steve Nash, Joe Johnson, Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire, Quentin Richardson team we all fell in love with.
* 2005-2006 Suns 16th out of 30. D'Antoni's agent would tell you 14 coaches had worse defenses, but you don't hear everyone complaining about their D.
* 2006-2007 Suns 13th out of 30. In this season, Phoenix had the most efficient offense in the NBA, was just a whisper outside of a top ten defense. Most NBA coaches were, in this season, notably worse on defense. And being first and 13th overall in team efficiency is the stuff of champions.
* 2007-2008 Suns 16th out of 30. With an aging team without any truly standout defenders for much of the season, D'Antoni is still coaching a middle-of-the-pack defensive squad.
* 2008-2009 Knicks 21st out of 30. Clearly, that's not great. But eight teams are worse, and the players on this roster are miserable defenders -- which is evidenced by the fact that with many of the same players, last season under Isiah Thomas this team was 29th. An eight-team improvement with a seven-player roster of bad defenders ... not terrible.

The other really important thing to note: In D'Antoni's last season in Phoenix, his team allowed 105 points per game. This season under Terry Porter, they allow 103 points per game.

That has been taken, in some quarters, as defensive improvement. Yet the team has gone from 16th most efficient on defense to 26th! This team is playing at a slower pace. But it is not playing better defense. In fact, you can see the story of this Suns season as one of new-found defensive catastrophe. (The team's offense is still pretty good: fourth most efficient.)

No, He's Not Gregg Popovich
But Mike D'Antoni is also not the worst defensive coach in the NBA. Not by a long shot. You start telling me how bad he is at coaching defense, and I'll start telling you who has been worse (at the moment, Terry Porter, Lawrence Frank, Don Nelson, etc.) through the years.

To me the best numbers out there show that Mike D'Antoni has a history of taking gifted offensive players, and making them into an average NBA defense. That's no small feat, and has the potential to one day be the kind of coaching job that results in a ring.

just an fyi...at the garden, there used to be a "de-fense" chant on the big screens for the fans to chant. now, there's an "of-fense" chant that comes up on the big screen. yup, that's right, "of-fense"...

this makes me happy :) I would still like to see a defensive specialist hired as an assistant...

Posted by Elite:

this makes me happy :) I would still like to see a defensive specialist hired as an assistant...

more than an assistant, he needs players that can defend.

It will be very interesting to see what we draft this summer- if its more euro lite great offense crap defense type players, I'll be with Isles screaming about his system not being up to the challenge of winning a championship.

Posted by Rookie:

Posted by Elite:

this makes me happy :) I would still like to see a defensive specialist hired as an assistant...

Isn't that a big part of the disagreement that led to leaving Phoenix?

[Edited by - Rookie on 12-23-2008 3:48 PM]

And why he chose the Knicks over the Bulls

The players make a HUGE diff. If you add naturally capable defenders, they play D, regardless of extra special coaching. I think this team has clearly played much better defensively, but with the lack of any defensive presence inside, it's going to naturally limit how good the team can be. I think this team plays hard most of the time and if we ever get a big that can anchor the D, this team would be a solid defensive team.

The goal is to put together a title contender not a defensive team. Few teams win only playing one side of the ball. We'll likely be slanted a bit more towards offense, but as has been noted the Magic Lakers were exactly like that and they were great.

Posted by Elite:

this makes me happy :) I would still like to see a defensive specialist hired as an assistant...

Larry Brown might be an option.

Posted by K22:

Posted by TMS:

Posted by Elite:

this makes me happy :) I would still like to see a defensive specialist hired as an assistant...

Larry Brown might be an option.

I have a better shot at that job than he does.

how about Isiah then? he was a tough defender in his playing days.

Posted by GallOfFame:

Wow what a terrible article made up of excuses and concessions.

Who said he's the worst Coach in the NBA?

I haven't I don't think Suns or current Knick fans think or thought he was.

If the ultimate result is for his style to win an NBA championship, he needs to incorporate defense more into his scheme or find out how players like Balkman and Jr can be resourceful in his system.

Being compared to bottom dwellers like 3-4yr coach Porter(pre Shaq trade is his roster defensively better than what coach had when he was there?), or inept Don Nelson who could care less about playing D... who's been one of the better offensive minds in the biz... who's never won a chip with his style, or little Franky and let's make concessions for his roster while we're at. This isn't a good thing.

This ESPN blogger is using Hollinger's Def/Eff stat as a means to judge how good or bad our coach has been this yr. How ridiculous because it doesn't take into account other important stats. Who cares what we allow in pts per 100 possessions if say on 80possessions out of 100 we allow a team to get whatever they want on most of their possessions. What other tidbits can we gather?

[We foul a lot] [Possibly play teams who aren't good at shooting Free Throws], [Possibly defend the 3pt line adequately], [Play teams who don't incorporate shooting 3 balls as much or aren't good at shooting the 3 ball period].

I bet we allow tons of pts in the paint.

If we want to use Hollinger as a reference check out the Off/Eff for our team. We'd find out we're a bottom half team, currently ranked 18. How about taking a peek at our Turnover/Ratio, another Hollinger gem. We're bottom half of the league, currently ranked 18th.

Like I said if we aren't going to blame our defense then it has to be our offensive scheme that's hurting our defense. You can't ignore one and give credit to the other. Maybe there should be an ESPN blog about our coach not being the Best coach in the NBA. Then again who said he was right?.

Here are the stats that matter to me.


1. We may set a Knicks record low in blocked shots for a season

2. Teams are shooting 48%fg against us

3. We're allowing 108ppg

4. Allow 47reb/gm while we only get 42reb/gm. So this somewhat negates Hollinger's stat of Def/Eff because obviously we're giving teams more opportunities to not score the most pts per 100pos or maybe they are. I don't know, so confusing isn't it?

Go ahead and compare from previous yrs

http://www.82games.com/0809/0809NYK3.HTMNot Good defensively but good offesnively

http://www.82games.com/0708/0708NYK3.HTMNot Good offensively nor good defensively

http://www.82games.com/0607/0607NYK3.HTMNot Good offensively but better defensively(ironic supposedly the best chance at getting to the playoffs this season and we were rebounding studs this season)





[Edited by - GallOfFame on 12-23-2008 5:01 PM]

Wow, you completely disregarded the point that this article is making. The point is not whether or not some1 said he's the worst Coach in the NBA. It adresses the fact that

is being portrayed as a coach who disregards defense alltogether. Yes he's being compared to the coach that replaced him due to being a better defensive coach and the numbers clearly show the opposite. You wanna talk about the numbers?" Who cares what we allow in pts per 100 possessions " man this the the whole point. With 7 sec offense the possessions go up , so to compare defense to other coaches using ppg allowed is dumb. Points per possession on the other hand gives a much better picture of how each possession is played on d. This is a concept that the Legendary Larry Brown uses in the exact opposite way(drain the clock= less possessions= each possession means more and if your defense is superb u just need an efficient offense, even below average is ok, to win). Thee 100 possessions is just used as a number to dance around, it really don't matter if the actual possessions are 100 or 200, the numbers are still consistent because they are not based on the # of possessions(brilliant imho)

Just to comment on the other stuff u mention; Turnovers per game commited- belongs in a different thread since this one is about defense. The 4 things you say are important to you blocks per gameand rebounds per game- number based entirely on the type of players out there not the coach. PPG allowed again you can only bring this up if you don't understand math and don't realize that more possessions= more points scored and MORE POINTS ALLOWED. Opponents FG % the only stat that actually is meaningful to this discussion and yes 48% is bad. We need to improve on that. However the point that this guy is making is that is not the worst nor is he even in the lower 30% of the coaches on D. He is about average, somewhat below 50%. And the only reason why you could say that this article is made up of "excuses and concessions" is if you don't understand what the guy is trying to say , which is evident from your post.

the other argument that is crap is that D'Antoni's system won't or can't win a championship. But the truth is, unless a coach is Popovich, Jackson, Rivers, Riley or Rudolph Tomjanovich, then nobody's system can win because they haven't.

NBA is entertainment in first place and sport after this.
People want to see exiting game not boring 90s Spurs-Knick battle (70-71).
Offense is the future on NBA and defense exists just to make offense look better under pressure.
Why we want other teams look better that they are?