Wednesday, February 4, 2009

My Ideal Mike D'Antoni Team

Skeets brought this up a while ago on the Basketball Jones, I'm too lazy to find which one right now, so no link, sorry.  Anyways, regardless, here's my take.  For D'Antoni's 7 seconds-or-less offense to be effective and sustainable even through an extended series, you need three things in your players; three-point shooting, athleticism, a halfway-decent two-way game.  I think a squad of athletic forwards might do the trick quite nicely.

Here's my take:

PG - LeBron James, Lamar Odom
SG - Caron Butler, Tayshaun Prince
SF - Rashard Lewis, Kevin Durant, Ron Artest
PF - Josh Smith, Al Harrington, Carmelo Anthony
C - Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh

Firstly, you have no one shorter than 6-7 on the roster (Artest and Butler) which gives you a lot of length to bother the opponent.  While not everyone is inclined to play defense, nobody on there is necessarily a defensive liability.  Secondly, you get two players that can easily defend upwards of 4 different positions in Artest and Prince.  They're long enough to bother most conventional lineups, fast enough to keep up with smaller teams, and athletic enough to consistently increase the pace of any game they're playing.

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