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Two hands. That’s the way you’re taught, from the first time you set foot on the court and your coach has you pair up to start practicing how to pass. Whether you’re bouncing it off the wood or sailing it from your chest, you throw the pass with two hands. That’s how you best ensure the ball will arrive safely; that’s just how it’s done.
“How it’s done,” of course, changes as the passer and recipient grow up, and especially as the passer grows more daring. In a story included in his wonderful 2010 book, “The Art of a Beautiful Game,” Chris Ballard noted that part of what made Steve Nash such a brilliant and multifaceted facilitator was his predilection toward eschewing time-honored, bog-standard two-hand feeds in favor of one-handed deliveries from all angles. Those more risqué, insecure transmissions might set most orthodox coaches’ teeth on edge. What Nash’s coach lamented, though, was that we hadn’t broken from orthodoxy sooner.
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“Sometimes we’re slow on teaching things,” Mike D’Antoni told Ballard. “Most coaches teach you to put two hands on it, and to be honest with you, we probably need to teach kids to throw with one hand. Sometimes, I think we limit.”
D’Antoni’s coaching career was nothing if not a repudiation of those limits — a decades-long exploration of just how far, and how fast, one could push the line of offensive innovation. The results of that inquest include:
10 playoff appearances in 16 seasons, including three trips to the conference finals, leading four separate franchises to the postseason;
Two selections as the NBA’s Coach of the Year — one in 2004-05, when his “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns took the NBA by storm, and in 2016-17, when he led the Rockets to 55 wins and the NBA’s No. 2 offense in his first year on the job — making him one of just 11 coaches in history to earn the honor multiple times;
Creating an offensive ecosystem in which two different lead guards under his charge, Nash and James Harden, could be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player (and which could also coax career-best play from the likes of Jeremy Lin, Steve Blake, Kendall Marshall, Raymond Felton, et…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/naismith-memorial-basketball-hall-of-fames-class-of-2026-mike-dantoni-remains-one-of-the-greatest-offensive-minds-in-nba-history-182115814.html
Author : Dan Devine
Publish date : 2026-08-14 18:21:00
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