Seven Seconds or Less

by Jack McCallum

  Whoever wrote this page of the Laker report describes the Suns in predictable terms, which is to say potent on offense, impotent on defense. “We have a great chance to have success against the Suns if we use our heads as well as our hearts,” reads the report. “Know what our objective is versus Phoenix and stay dedicated to exploiting their weaknesses and eliminating ours. Defense wins playoffs.”

  There are three parts that most amuse the coaches. One is from the offensive game plan: “Everyone must contribute offensively,” it reads. “We can’t win this series if Kobe shoots over 30 shots a game. Balance our attack.” The second comes from the defensive game plan: “We must TAB (Tear Ass Back) on defense.” And the final paragraph reminds the team: “The Suns set up this playoff to meet the Lakers. If they want to meet us in the first round, make sure we let them know how much we appreciate the lack of respect they have for us. Take them down!” The coaches get a laugh out of it, but it happens to be true—the Suns did angle for the Lakers—and they would’ve used that exact motivational ploy had the roles been reversed.

  “Well, now we know what we gotta do,” says D’Antoni. “We have to TAD—Tear Ass Down—before they can TAB.”

  Out in Los Angeles, that noted basketball scholar, Kwame Brown, has weighed in with his assessment of the Suns’ offense. “They’re not a fundamental team,” Brown said. “They just go out and they just run a bunch of screen-and-rolls and have such good shooters.” That is quite a telling comment. In Brown’s world, “fundamental” equates not to movement and spontaneity but to isolation plays and set offense. It’s not his fault, really. It’s the basketball world in which he’s grown up. It’s all about one-on-one play. It’s all about what I can do when I get the ball. The team that is able to get up a shot in seven seconds by passing the ball is by definition not fundamental. This belies the fact that basketball was once about freedom of movement and decisions made on the run, the sporting world’s answer to jazz.

  At the first official meeting in preseason, D’Antoni told his players: “We are in the entertainment business. Our fans came out last season because we were exciting to watch. The NBA wants an up-tempo game because they can sell it better. And when you start cutting up the pie, it’s a lot bigger when the fans respond.”

  That is an extraordinary statement by a head coach in this day and age, “entertainment” being the last thing many of them would mention. For most coaches there is something frightening about turning a team loose. A coach must control his players lest the game descend into anarchy—that is the prevailing NBA thought. When D’Antoni last season announced his intention to get a shot within seven seconds, the immediate comparison was to the Denver Nuggets under Paul Westhead in the early ’90s. Westhead’s 1990–91 team led the league with 119.9 points per game. The problem was, the Nuggets surrendered a laughable 130.8 points per game, an NBA record for defensive futility. In one game (against the Phoenix Suns as a matter of fact) they gave up 107 points in one half. Westhead was eventually laughed out of the league, fired after a two-season record of 44-120. (He now coaches, ironically enough, the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA where he is still operating a transition offense, albeit a little more sensibly.)

  But D’Antoni saw no viable comparison between those Nuggets and his Suns. He would play defense—in Iavaroni he had one of the best defensive minds in the business—and push the ball. He had Nash, and that made all the difference. By definition, some of those quick shots would be three-pointers, the more the better, and some of them would be unwise shots. But D’Antoni lived with them. He couldn’t on the one hand preach a seven-second offense, then castigate his players for making a few loopy decisions. There was, however, a governing principle to D’Antoni’s offense: There are good shots, and there are better shots. It takes only one second to make an extra pass to a player who is more wide-open and better prepared to release his shot in rhythm.

  And when the Suns finished with the best record in the league and virtually swept the postseason awards (D’Antoni was coach of the year, Bryan Colangelo executive of the year, and Nash the MVP), there were no more comparisons to Westhead’s Denver Nuggets.

  “Playing the Suns is like being a passenger in a car going seventy-five miles an hour,” New Jersey Nets’ coach Lawrence Frank said. “When you’re driving, like they are, you feel comfortable. But when you’re a passenger, you’re uncomfortable. The trick is how to figure out to be a driver. But they don’t let you do that.”

  Even when D’Antoni started working his magic again this season—without his leading scorer—there was resistance to that up-and-down style. Barkley, for example, loves the way Nash plays but, as always, declares the Suns ill equipped to win a championship. On the other hand, D’Antoni was treated like a savior in other quarters. At one point late in the season, a radio interviewer asked me, quite seriously: “You’ve been close to him all year now—is Mike D’Antoni a genius?”

  I don’t remember how I answered, but I hesitate to call anyone in the world of sports a genius. A hundred times I saw D’Antoni pick up a clipboard during a time-out, and, in ten seconds, draw up a play that is a slight variation of something the Suns ran three dozen times. Most of the time it resulted in an open shot. D’Antoni considers that spontaneous bit of sketching to be an important aspect of a head coach’s job. “You can gain or lose confidence of the guys if you can’t come up with a play,” he says. “If you start struggling with it, they say, ‘Hell, we’re doing all this work and the general has left the battle-field.’ ”

  But is that genius? Could a dozen other coaches do it as well? Perhaps. Coaching is at one level the art of repeating almost the same thing over and over so it doesn’t sound like the same thing.

  What I do know is that the closer you get to someone’s work process, the more you resist calling it genius. That’s because what you see at work are the sweat glands, not the brain cells. Had you been able to observe Hemingway pecking away in front of his old Royal, tossing away page after page until he got it right, you would probably conclude: “Damn, that guy rewrites a lot.” D’Antoni and his coaches rewrite a lot.

  Now, D’Antoni is particularly gifted in two areas. First, he has undying self-confidence, not so much in himself, but in what he believes about the game. You can tell him that this isn’t going to work for these reasons, and that the Suns won’t be able to accomplish this for these reasons, and he’ll smile at you and say, in so many words, “You’re full of shit. It will work.”

  He delights in cutting up every chestnut about the NBA. “I’ve heard you don’t lose the game in the first five minutes,” D’Antoni will say, “but if you get down six in the first five minutes, then you lose by five, didn’t you lose the game in the first five minutes? I’m from West Virginia but I took a little math.” Or: “Most coaches believe defenses are more vulnerable late in the shot clock, that you can get them out of position with a lot of passing. I don’t know why defenses wouldn’t be more vulnerable before they get set. That’s why we play fast.” Or: “People say that when you play fast you’ll be a high-turnover team. I think you’ll be a low-turnover team because you don’t throw as many passes.”

  Or: “I’ll hear people say, ‘You blew a big lead because you play fast.’ Well, hell, did they say that before we got an eighteen-point lead? Playing fast is how we got the lead.” Or: “Coaches are always telling players, ‘Hey, you can learn from this guy.’ They told Leandro Barbosa he could learn by sitting behind Stephon Marbury. When I was playing, they told me I could learn by sitting behind Tiny Archibald. Well, guess what? I didn’t learn shit, just like Leandro didn’t learn shit. He doesn’t play anything like Stephon, and I was about a hundred times slower than Tiny. So how was I going to learn anything?”

  Secondly, he has the gift of distillation. For every minute of specific instruction D’Antoni gave his team—how to play this defense or what variation to run on that offensive set—he and his assistants had spent at least three hours deciding on those specifics. Maybe m
ore. It is D’Antoni’s belief that coaches must put in the time to devise the game plan, that they must know, to the best of their ability, everything an opponent is going to do. But the players don’t have to know all of that, and, in fact, can’t read and react if they have too much swirling around in their heads. Players become paralyzed, he believes, from watching too much video or getting too much pregame intel.

  “What makes Mike so good is that he gets to the meat of what he wants very quickly, then trusts his players,” says Gentry. “And it took me a bit of time to accept that. NBA Coaching 101 says: You gotta cover every single thing. And I found out from Mike that you don’t.”

  At this point, with Game 7 tip-off a few hours away, the Suns have reclaimed the role of favorite. Two straight wins, confidence building, home crowd, Bell back, the Lakers on their heels, Bryant unsure of whether he should dominate or play the role of distributor. But basketball has always been a game in which one man can take over a game.

  “Let me test this out on you,” I say to Gentry. “You know you have the better team and now you have the momentum and all that. But the mere fact that they have a player like Kobe is reason enough to be worried. Without Kobe, you’re thinking, ‘We win easily.’ ”

  “Absolutely true,” says Gentry. “One game, one man can always beat you. I don’t think he’s going to do it. But he could do it.”

  As the endless afternoon wait continues—tip-off is 5:30, Phoenix time—Iavaroni, Weber, and Dan D’Antoni have gone downstairs to the locker room. Iavaroni always prefers to worry down there. Weber balances his nervousness with intense aerobic and weight workouts. Dan has been getting treatment for an aching Achilles tendon. On the upstairs office TV, the Kentucky Derby is about to come on, and Gentry turns up the sound. As the horses settle into the starting gate, D’Antoni suddenly turns and says, “All right, guys, I’ll see you downstairs.”

  “Damn, Mike, the race is only two minutes long,” I say. “Don’t you want to see who wins?”

  But he’s already gone, lost in thought.

  As Iavaroni prepares his board, a martial arts movie, holding the rapt attention of Eddie House, Brian Grant, and Kurt Thomas, plays at max volume on the large screen directly beside him. “Here I am doing Game 7 shit,” says Iavaroni, “and all I got in my ear is Bruce Lee.” One of the phrases Iavaroni writes is: Pace. Space. Pass. Dan had blurted out those three words yesterday when his brother asked for a way to summarize the game plan. “I like what the Old Ball Coach came up with,” Iavaroni had said. “That’s going on the board.” Near him, the remainder of the week’s schedule has been written, carrying the implication that Game 7 is a done deal.

  MON, MAY 8TH SHOOTAROUND 9:45 AM.

  MON NIGHT, GAME 1 VS. CLIPPERS

  In the coaching office, D’Antoni nervously passes the time chatting with Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski. As president of USA Basketball, Colangelo has named Krzyzewski head coach of the 2008 Olympic team, while D’Antoni, Portland Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan, and Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim will serve as assistants. They were potentially awkward appointments, a pro guy (Colangelo) putting a college guy (Krzyzewski) in charge of primarily pro players and in the process passing over his own coach (D’Antoni). But if D’Antoni feels slighted, he never says anything about it. With the possible exceptions of Phil Jackson and Larry Brown, Krzyzewski is better known among the general populace than any NBA coach, certainly better known than D’Antoni. Anyway, the pro-coach model had failed in the 2004 Games. Brown failed to connect with his younger charges, and the Americans limped to a bronze-medal finish.

  Whether it’s the influence of Colangelo or an instinctive basketball kinship with D’Antoni—Coach K’s teams are known for pushing the tempo and being fundamentally sound, along with being solid citizens—Krzyzewski seems genuinely smitten with the Suns. If Phoenix wins Game 7, its next opponent will be the Los Angeles Clippers, whose roster includes three of Krzyzewski’s ex-players—Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, and Daniel Ewing—but K sounds like he’ll be rooting for Phoenix. “I just love watching Mike’s guys play,” he says. “They do it the right way here. With the right kind of guys.”

  Krzyzewski leaves before D’Antoni’s pregame speech, but he wouldn’t have picked up any motivational tips anyway. “All right, guys, real quick,” says D’Antoni, his salutation the same as always. He goes over the matchups, reminds them to corral Bryant in transition and trap him in pick-and-rolls and make Odom turn baseline when he gets the ball down low. The Suns have been doing a particularly good job with that. “Offensively, do what we do,” he says. “Push the ball, dive hard on pick-and-rolls. Keep spaced. Drive, kick, run the floor. All right, Noel, let’s see what you got.”

  D’Antoni moves to the back of the locker room, folds his arms, and begins smiling. It is Gillespie’s responsibility to put together this one-minute pastiche of offensive highlights, and the young video coordinator had another idea for this game. He ran it by D’Antoni, who was enthusiastic about it. Into the regular clips Gillespie has inserted a snippet of a commercial, running endlessly, in which a round-faced guy sings the Waylon Jennings song from the Dukes of Hazzard: “Just two good ol’ boys/Never meanin’ no harm…”

  As splices go, it can’t begin to match some of the stuff Phil Jackson has done over the years. During this series Jackson has been inserting snippets of the movie Inside Man into game film. But Gillespie’s edit has its desired effect. Around the room, smiles form on the faces of the Suns. Raja Bell, whether he means Kobe no harm or not, begins mouthing the words. As a battle cry, it seems a little tepid, but it works. The series has been turned into a holy war, and the Suns’ one certified jihadist has returned to the lineup. The Suns go charging out of the locker room.

  The arena is full of signs. RAJA RULES. KOBE WHO? IT’S NOT RAJA’S FAULT THAT KOBE CAN’T LIMBO. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, accompanied by photos of, respectively, Nash, Bryant, and Phil Jackson. Behind the Suns’ bench, Bell is startled when he notices a few fans with cutouts of his face. Robert Sarver has purchased 12,000 extra clackers. It’s bedlam.

  Marion hits a jump shot, then tips in a miss. James Jones makes a jumper. Everyone is in tune. The Suns go up 16–6, the Lakers call time-out, and Nash waves his arms up and down, exhorting the crowd, which is something he rarely does. The Lakers look over-matched. Bryant, booed every time he handles the ball, is playing well, but his teammates have gone AWOL. Bell is steady and his replacement is spectacular—L.A. has no answer for L.B., who is frustrating them with his speed.

  Midway through the second quarter, Barbosa attempts a three-pointer from the corner. Lamar Odom runs at him, and, without making a play at the ball, catches Barbosa in the face, the second straight game in which his face has gotten in the way of a Laker appendage. The Suns coaches leap off the bench, but no flagrant foul is called. Tim Thomas, however, does get whistled for a technical when he confronts Odom. Barbosa gets only his three personal foul shots and makes them all.

  With 5:47 left in the half, Bryant, no doubt irritated that he is playing one-against-five, throws an elbow at Bell. The refs catch it and put Bell at the foul line. As a thunderous KO-BE SUCKS! chant fills the arena, Bryant cups his hand to his ear, urging the fans to give it to him louder. In considering the phenomenon that is Kobe Bryant, one must conclude that he is a Shakespearean fusion, part Henry V, part Falstaff, part hero, part knave.

  The Suns lead by 60–45 at halftime. Comfortable but hardly decisive, given the capricious nature of the seven-second offense. The lead would be larger were both Nash and Marion not having subpar shooting games, and had the Suns not, typically, come up empty on six straight possessions near the end of the quarter. The coaches gather to fume about replays hastily put together by Gillespie and March.

  “Lamar could’ve put L.B.’s eye out,” says Gentry. It is an exaggeration, though a flagrant foul could’ve been called on the three-point shot.

  They watch Bryant elbow Bell (it was called) and nail
Diaw in the back (it wasn’t).

  “You think Kobe Bryant doesn’t know exactly what the fuck he’s doing on those kind of plays?” says Iavaroni.

  “That’s okay,” says Gentry, “all we gotta do, I’m telling you, is kick their ass.”

  “Win the fucking game,” says Iavaroni.

  “They can’t fucking guard us,” says Gentry.

  True to form, D’Antoni, though livid, says nothing to the team about the referees.

  “I know some of our adrenaline went out of us,” he begins. “You could see ourselves getting a little tired or not putting the hammer down on them, and guys, that’s a mistake. That’s a big mistake in a Game 7. Every inch of the game, every possession, you have to fight. You can’t be, ‘I’m up fifteen, I can force a shot now.’ ‘I’m up fifteen, I can take a defensive possession off.’ You can’t be that way. You gotta be disciplined enough to go frame by frame by frame. Now, within that, there will be mistakes. But you know what? That’s fine. Go to the next frame.

  “Just go out and bust their ass. We can win this defensively. Let’s take care of business.”

  It’s over by early in the fourth, the unofficial end coming when Bryant, covered tightly on a drive to the basket, deliberately slams his shot high off the backboard in an effort to get the rebound and put that back in. All he gets out of it is an offensive foul. At the other end, Tim Thomas dunks, the scoreboard reads 94–67, and Raja Bell lifts up his jersey and points to his number 19, a takeoff on what Bryant did after his victorious jumper in Game 4.

  “Don’t do anything now to get a technical or a flagrant,” D’Antoni warns Bell during a time-out. With his flagrant foul penalty 1 (the one that drove D’Antoni crazy between Games 3 and 4) and the flagrant penalty 2 (for the assault on Bryant), Bell will be suspended for at least one game if he flagrant-izes again.