02-06-2025
Mike D'Antoni: Lakers legend was behind 'pace and space' revolution
Mike D'Antoni: Lakers legend was behind 'pace and space' revolution
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the NBA was a league that was infested with slowdown basketball. Almost every team routinely walked the ball upcourt and milked the shot clock, and the result was scoring and shooting percentages plunging to levels not seen in decades.
Ratings and fan interest sagged, and something needed to be done. The league instituted a number of rule changes starting in the mid-1990s, but none of them helped. The change that was necessary needed to come from within.
In the early 2000s, the Sacramento Kings came within a whisker of winning the NBA championship by employing a freewheeling, run-and-gun style of offense. A few years later, the Phoenix Suns, coached by Mike D'Antoni, took that style to a new level.
Those Suns teams immediately became championship contenders and reached the Western Conference Finals three times in six years. D'Antoni made a surprising admission while on the "On Point" podcast that Los Angeles Lakers superstar Shaquille O'Neal was a huge influence on his offensive philosophy.
"A big driving force was Shaquille O'Neal was the center in Los Angeles, which is in our division," D'Antoni said. "And we always said among ourselves, you can't out Shaq Shaq. You can't just trot somebody out there and think you're gonna get the best of Shaq.
"So we had to figure out a way to beat him," D'Antoni continued. "And that was to speed the game up, take more 3s and spread them out, and then they give us a chance to win."
D'Antoni became the head coach of the Suns early in the 2003-04 season, which was O'Neal's last season with the Lakers. They didn't do too well that season, but they did rank sixth in pace.
The following season, when Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash came on board, their revolution began in earnest. They led everyone in both pace and fast-break points, and they were the first NBA team in many years to reach 110 points a game.
It took over a decade, but eventually, most teams had adopted at least some of D'Antoni's "Seven Seconds or Less" offensive philosophy. During the 2018-19 season, NBA teams averaged 111.2 points a game, the first time the league average was over 110 points per game since the 1985-86 campaign, and it was also the first time in over 20 years that teams averaged over 24 assists per game.
Although many have complained about excessive 3-point attempts over the last few years, D'Antoni helped make NBA basketball beautiful again. "Pace and space" basketball, as well as quick ball movement around the horn, is now the norm across not just the league but the entire sport.
