ESPN.com · May 22, 2018
How Mike D'Antoni embraced the iso, and why he won't stop now
Mike D'Antoni knows the drill.
When his team trails in a playoff series, critics tend to take shots at his offensive system. It has been that way since his days leading the "Seven Seconds or Less" Phoenix Suns in the mid-2000s, when conventional NBA wisdom was that shooting too many 3-pointers was a surefire way to flame out in the playoffs.
D'Antoni found himself in familiar territory after his Houston Rockets lost at home to the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. This time he got ripped for the Rockets' reliance on isolation plays. Houston ran 45 isos in Game 1, according to Second Spectrum data, the most by any team in any game in the past five years.