Suns' D'Antoni named Coach of the Year

PHOENIX — After directing the Phoenix Suns to a 33-win turnaround and installing a fast-paced, high-scoring style praised throughout the league, Mike D'Antoni was rewarded as the NBA's coach of the year on Tuesday.

D'Antoni, in his first full season as Suns coach, molded a squad that transformed a 29-win team a year ago into one that led the NBA with a 62-30 record.

The easygoing Suns coach, who spent two decades in Italy as a star point guard, then highly successful coach, received 41 first-place votes and 326 points overall from a panel of sports writers and broadcasters from the United States and Canada.

Rick Carlisle of Indiana was second with 26 first-place votes and 241 points. Nate McMillan of Seattle was a close third with 234 points and 30 first-place ballots.

"It's an unbelievable honor," D'Antoni said at a news conference. "I was just honored to be mentioned with them, and to really win it is beyond my wildest expectations. It's not something that I did. There are so many people involved."

After Phoenix acquired Steve Nash and guard Quentin Richardson, D'Antoni decided to go with a small, speedy lineup, persuading Amare Stoudemire to switch from power forward to center, and Shawn Marion to shift from small forward to power forward.

"I've been touting him for a long time this year, so call me a prophet," Miami coach Stan Van Gundy told reporters. "If you go back, there were a lot of you writing that it wouldn't last a year. Stoudemire couldn't hold up playing against centers, Marion against power forwards, that style of play wouldn't work."

"I heard all of those things and Mike stuck to those guns and proved to people that it can work."

The combination worked far beyond the expectations of anyone in the Suns' organization, averaging 110 points per game, the most in the NBA in a decade.

"Out of 82 games, I think maybe we were flat one time," D'Antoni said. "That's these guys. They come out every game and play hard. That's rare. It's hard to have a group like that. The chemistry's just perfect."

Nash, named the league's most valuable player on Sunday, shares D'Antoni's philosophy of how the game should be played.

"We didn't really need to talk about it that much," Nash said. "We just have the same feelings about the game in a lot of ways."

D'Antoni gives Nash the freedom to create whatever he feels is best on the court, and leaves the game largely to his players.