Checking in With D’Antoni’s New, Old Teams

Sorry to make this all D’Antoni, all the time, but we’ve got our first hint of what he might do in New York. Sort of. As you may know, the totally useless Stephen Marbury is due $21 million this coming season. Then, he’s off the books, which makes him positively tantalizing trade bait.↵
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↵So—according to rumor, of course—what’s D’Antoni want to do? Send Marbury to his stingy former team for Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa, two signature D’Antoni players that anyone else would be regarded as awkward and overpaid. Diaw has been hit-or-miss since his Most Improved Player year of 2005-06, and without his old coach might be next to useless; Barbosa, 2006-07’s Sixth Man of the Year, took a step back in this “transitional” Suns season. Of course, this is also a way of sticking it to Kerr and Sarver, who with Shaq and Amare under max contract are looking for any wiggle room they can get. You know, sell my draft picks and I’ll offer you the immense gift of highway robbery.↵
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↵Again, who knows if this will happen. And who knows if the Suns will go↵for such a blatant eff you of a transaction, especially since acquiring↵Marbury would put them back where they were before D’Antoni began. If↵nothing else, though, it shows that the Knicks’ newest coach is↵thinking aggressively, creatively, and will turn this team into↵something worth watching. What exactly, he might not even know yet. But↵the devil in D’Antoni is alive and kicking, and it’s that mischievous,↵subversive side that will make him such a hit in New York.
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↵Meanwhile, back in the desert, the Suns try and move along with life after Mike. They’re not in a rush, they want to get it right. But to hear Steve Kerr tell it, that’s because the job is in-demand and they have the luxury of waiting. From The Arizona Republic:↵↵⇥“It’s a pretty coveted job, obviously,” Kerr said Monday. “Everybody in basketball would like to have this job, I’m pretty sure.”↵⇥
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↵⇥“I don’t think it’ll be that hard to pare down the list pretty quickly,” Kerr said. “I could go with a younger guy and a very experienced staff or the opposite - a guy with a lot of coaching experience who could mentor a younger guy or a younger staff.”↵↵Yo, not to rain on a parade in a place where it never rains, but this isn’t a marquee job. Who knows what happens with D’Antoni out of the picture? Certainly, bizarre creations like Diaw and Barbosa could go in a number of directions, including out the door. There’s Steve Nash, but he was the muse of Mike and will cry. Plus he’s old, like Grant Hill. And Shaq, who is going to slide into oblivion FAST. Amare Stoudemire is probably the team’s strongest player going forward, but what’s to stop him from becoming just a better, faster, badder Al Jefferson. So yeah, sounds like a dream situation. High expectations and a host of likely pitfalls.↵
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↵So maybe Kerr needs to check his rhetoric, until he actually introduces that sparkling new candidate who plans to bring some order—and some joy—back to this rapidly eroding Phoenix program.↵