Kobe Bryant excited at the prospect of playing under Mike D’Antoni – NBA Update
Kobe Bryant might have wanted his mentor Phil Jackson to return back as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, but after the franchise shocked the whole world by preferring Mike D’Antoni instead, the Black Mamba says that he
is excited to play under the man, famous for his offensive acumen;
"We were all thinking it was gonna be Phil," Bryant told reporters after taking part in a Lakers shoot-around. "It probably caught Mike a little bit off guard, too. But I'm excited. I spoke to Mike (on the phone) this morning.
It was great. It was really short, just 'hello'."
Kobe has known D’Antoni for quite some time. He was the fan of the coach back in his childhood, when the former New York Knicks man applied his trade in Italy. Bryant then played under D’Antoni as part of two Olympic teams. Mike
was an assistant coach and Team USA went on to win the gold both times.
The guard looked back about his experiences with D’Antoni;
"We have a great relationship," said Bryant. "The offense that he installed for our USA team was the offense that we ran to the tune of two (Olympic) gold medals.”
"We all know the type of talent that we had on that team, so it was important for us to have an offense that was flexible, that was open and that kept everybody involved. It worked pretty well for us.”
The Lakers roster is loaded with talent as well and D’Antoni’s offense might work wonders with them. That was infact the main reason why the Lakers preferred Mike over the ice cool Zen Master in the first place. Jackson prefers
Triangle Offense as his modus operandi, a system that is much similar to the Princeton Offense, which fired coach Mike Brown tried to apply. Both these systems are quite similar to each other and much complicated than D’Antoni’s philosophy which circles around
a point guard and keeps every player on court in the loop.
With so many superstars around, this system might just be the tonic that the Lakers require to form a chemistry; they so badly need to click as a team.
Tags: