Mike D’Antoni

Mike D’Antoni an Italian and an American former NBA player was born in 1951 in Mullens in West Virginia At present, he is the head coach of New York Knicks. Having a double citizenship of Italian and American, Mike is well known for supporting a fast paced offense system.

Mike was known as “Arsène Lupin” in Europe due to his ability with right to the steals of the balls from opponents. He started his passion for basketball during his college days at the Marshall University.

As a professional player, his position was that of a Point Guard, having won various titles. His statistics shows him achieving 605 points, 363 assists and rebounds of 262 in his entire basketball career. Other than that, his Jersey number was 5, 10, 14 and 8. With a height of 6 feet and 3 inches, and weighing 84 kg, he was selected in the round two of the second pick by Kansas City-Omaha Kings in the NBA Draft in the year 1973.

He played professional basketball for several NBA basketball teams. Some of the teams he played for include the Kansas City-Omaha Kings for three seasons for 1973 to 1976 series, the Spirits of St. Louis, for 1976-77 season, the San Antonio Spurs for 1977-78 season and the Olimpia Milano team for 1978 to 1990 series.

His career as a coach started from 1990, when he became the head coach of his loyal club, Milan. He remained in this team for almost four seasons, from 1990 to 1994. He even led the European Championship in 1992 finals, leading his team in the top four positions and in the Korac Cup in 1993.

Later on, he got an opportunity to head the Benetton Treviso team, another major Italian basketball club in 1994. He coached this team for four season capturing the Cup of Europe and Coppa Italia in 1995. His team won the domestic league title too in 1996-97. In the year 2001, D’Antoni for the second time, became the coach of Benetton Treviso.

Career Highlights

He was the head coach of the Phoenix Suns team during which he won the “NBA Coach of the Year” award for the season 2004-05. During his tenure with this team he excelled well with his team achieving 33 victories as compared to their previous season performance. As a player, Milke achieved many basketball titles and awards. Following are some of his successive achievements.

More than 5 Italian League titles, 2 Euroleague titles, 2 Cups of Italy, 1 Korac Cup and even 1 Intercontinental Cup.

Further, he was one of the fifty greatest contributors in Euroleague History in 2008. As a coach, he achieved success with 2 Italian League titles, 1 Korac Cup and 1 Cup of Italy respectively.