Thanks to two years of losing, there’s no question that Mike D’Antoni is not a happy man. The Knicks coach admitted yesterday the team’s struggles have left him “miserable.”
While team president Donnie Walsh absolved D’Antoni of any blame on Wednesday, D’Antoni said he always feels as if he’s on the hot seat anyway, thanks to the personal pressure he puts on himself. But he insisted that he hasn’t begun to doubt himself at all, confidently declaring that his system will work.
“I’m 100 percent sure the way we want to play will win,” D’Antoni said after practice yesterday. “It’s done that way, and I think we can win the championship this way. Not today, but that’s where we want to get to.”
D’Antoni came to the Knicks having captured three division titles with the Suns and having earned a coach of the year award. And last season’s Knicks won nine more games (32) than they did prior to his arrival. But this season’s outfit, currently 21-39, is on pace for just 28 victories.
Walsh’s words aside, D’Antoni said everyone with the Knicks deserves blame. But D’Antoni insisted he doesn’t worry about whether he has something to prove.
“I just don’t sit around wringing my hands all day and worry about I’ve got something — I’ve got something to prove every day. I think every coach has something to prove. Every player has something to prove. That’s how I attack every game and try to win,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t sit around and read what you guys say or listen to the radio. I just try to do my job the best I can. I get crazy upset if we don’t win, and I’m miserable right now. But we have a plan and we’re going to stick with it. We’ll see through it and try to turn this thing around.
“If we do, great, because we turned it around,” D’Antoni said. “If we don’t, then, yeah, obviously, there’ll be changes. But I’m not sitting around going ‘Oh my gosh, what’ll happen?’ That’s part of the nature of the business.
“I’ve been cut, I’ve been fired, I’ve been yelled at and I’ve been carried off on shoulders. That’s all part of the game.”
D’Antoni admitted the Knicks have “underperformed a little bit, no doubt about it.”
Walsh, though, reiterated yesterday not to blame D’Antoni, saying that “I made it fairly clear that because of the plan that we were taking that it was going to be difficult to change the team substantially upward for the first two years.”
Said Walsh, “The coach can only work with what he’s got — this is the NBA.”
D’Antoni presumably could be under fire next season if the Knicks fail to win big with whatever additions they make — and especially if they land LeBron James or Dwyane Wade. He refuses to concern himself with that.
“I just don’t look at it that way. I’m too old to worry about other things,” he said. “I worry about winning. I want to win. I’m always on the hot seat because it’s my hot seat. We’re in it to win, and when we lose it hurts.
“That’s up to other people to judge where I am. But at the same time, I’m not going to be sweating, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m on the hot seat.’ I’m sweating right now. I want to win [tonight].”