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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SAN DIEGOMarch 15, 2018Dan D'AntoniSan Diego, California THE MODERATOR: We will now take questions for Coach. DAN D'ANTONI: Glad to be here. Hated to bring the weather to you, but that's the way it goes. Looking forward to the game. I know our kids are excited. We're excited. It's good for Marshall and for the stave West Virginia. We're look forward to it, get it on, see what happens. Q. Talk about the tournament and your successful run through your conference tournament? DAN D'ANTONI: Well, you know, regular season we, I'll say this for our conference: The conference USA. We have six teams that be won 20 games this year. ODU is sitting home 25-7. Middle won two straight first-round games against higher seeds. UAB did it the year before that. Now, I don't know if our conference gets the right amount either of exposure or respect, but it's pretty tough conference, especially the top six, seven, eight teams. During the year conference run we had a lot of injuries and we had some illnesses, and we really didn't get together until toward the end and beat Middle at Middle, ranked 23rd in the country and beat 'em double digits. Got in the tournament. Played pretty well first game. Won fairly well and then second game was closer and last one was, it was really close, I don't know how we won that. I tell them it was devine intervention. I told 'em my dad reached down and knocked the last one out because I taught it was in the basket and they got the rebound and tried to put it back and there was a long-time friend of mine when I was playing there, who was on the plane crash and I think he reached down and blocked the next one. So here we are. It's where they wanted us to be and where we wanted to be, and we have three outstanding players. You talked to Jon Elmore who probably has the best overall stats of anybody in the country. I don't know anybody that averages 22 points. He averages 8, I might not get these exactly right, 8 assists, top-15 conference USA rebounding, top 5 or 6 in steals. He's a complete player. He had a phenomenal game that last game getting into the win against Western. Ajdin Penava is the leading shot blocker in the country by a big margin. I think it's like 200. They say 6-9, but he's 6-10 and a half, long arms. Shoot threes. We play open style. C.J. Burks, 21 points a game. So we can be formidable. You see our true game out there. Kansas will have to play real well to get us, but they're a good ball club, too, so you never know what's going to happen. Q. Thirty years coaching at Socastee. Is it a glimmer in your mind that one day you will be leading a team in the NCAA Tournament? Could you have even fathomed that coaching at Socastee for 30 years? DAN D'ANTONI: There's a lot of things I don't fathom into the future. I'm a day-to-day guy. I don't look ahead. I try to do the best I can wherever I am and try to enjoy that 37 I started a tournament called the Beach Ball Classic which is probably at one time, probably still is, one of the best high school tournaments in the country and I got asked that question all the time. Would you believe this small high school tournament is where Jason Kidd plays and Kobe Bryant plays and Kevin Garnett played? And I said I don't know. I was just thinking about the party after the first game. So I'm not one of the those guys that looks ahead. I always wanted that job. The guy I mentioned before that was on the plane crash. When I graduated I was assistant coach for two years at Marshall. Plane crash happened and everything wasn't the same. But he always wanted me to take his job. Sometimes destiny just happens, you never know. Somebody is guiding something. I don't know why, but somehow I got where I always wanted to be. Q. How did those 30 years at Socastee do you feel prepared you to handle growing and mentoring college kids at Marshall and achieving these big dreams you have this year? DAN D'ANTONI: I've coached on all levels. I've coached the Championship game in Columbia, coached, assistant coached of The All-Star game, assistant coach in the Western Conference Finals in the NBA. I've seen it all. In all of it, I'm not smart enough to fool people by trying to trick 'em. I'm just who I am and I talk to the high school kids just like I talk to, talked fact to Roger Bell, from Miami, sports talk show and he was the Suns when I was there and talk to him the same way, same way I talk to a junior high kid. If you're trying to help them, they pretty much accept you. If you help a little bit. I try to hide what I don't know, but trying to help them be a better player. Pretty easy. I don't know any experience anywhere along long the line. It's just who you are and how you present yourself. People see through fake stuff and they can see the real stuff. I try to be as close to real as I can be. Q. Coach, coming from your pro background to become a head coach for the first time, did you come in with the idea of playing the style that you're playing? How has it been recruiting players to that system? Do you find them excited about having a chance to play a system like this? DAN D'ANTONI: Well, the system really started way back in the 50s and 60s in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. It's kind of where all the high school coaches taught. They said they started the fast break and the zone defense, of course we're a man team. So it kinda started there and then Mike's team and my team -- my brother Mike D'Antoni, we both played that style. We didn't have centers that posted and we were an outside/in team. If you look at our stats, we don't post up. But if you watch at the end of the game and look at points in the paint we will be right there. We just go a different way. We're off the dribble. They're more of a pass in. That style started a long time ago. Got a good chance from high school -- I played that way in high school, Mike played that way in Europe. Then we got together in the NBA and he had a lot of knowledge. I got a lot of knowledge -- you know, you would almost have to be brain dead not to learn from Steve Nash and all the players that I was fortunate enough -- Mike gave me the opportunity -- fortunate enough to be around and help coach. Then being around him I learned a lot. I had a chance to perfect that same type of game, but have a little bit more organized system to it. A lot of people don't think it's organized, but if you come to our practices every day you would see that there's madness. I coined it. I will say this: In the 80s I coined the phrase Socastee basketball was organized chaos and that's kind of the way we play. It's chaotic, but if you look deep in the roots of it it's organized. It's coach and had I hope y'all look at it as chaos and we look at it as organized and that gives us the advantage. Q. You mentioned the plane crash a couple of times. The two of us are of a similar age we were students at Wichita State in 1970. Do you have a feel for that bond that's always kind of been there because of that year even though the two of us have never played in basketball? DAN D'ANTONI: If you heard one of the interviews and I can't remember, I'm getting, I told somebody I'm getting too much publicity. I can't hang out in the low places I used to hang out, and the other night I went home and my wife recognized me. So I gotta be careful how that all works. I was sitting home -- in fact, Doc's house, who was on the airplane crash, started the Big Green MMI tournament, big basketball supporter, his wife. I was sitting on their couch and heard about the Wichita State plane crash. He looked at me and he said, you know, we'll never feel the pain and the tragedy of that crash from where we're sitting. You have to be a part of that to understand it. Three weeks later, it happened to us. Pretty good connection. Q. Coach, the style that your brother and you had going in the NBA was that ahead of its time and how do you like his team right now? DAN D'ANTONI: I would refer to it more -- and it did change. I mean, it's not exact. It's more of a retro. You know, basketball went through a process where it became for me, and believe me I coached it, too, that way, when it was popular. It took a while to get back to our roots. It's kind of a retro. It's more the way basketball was played, then it went through the five-star camp and what do they call the illustrators, and go here, go there. It became more of a coached game. Almost like if you were a painter. You're painting A to B to C to D and stay within the lines, you know? I prefer the freelance, he gets up, he has an empty canvas, he doesn't have directions you just start putting it on the canvas. To me it's a prettier picture and it's for fan friendly in basketball. It shows the athlete more than the coach which I don't know too many that want to look at a 70 year old if they have a chance to look at somebody who is 22. I'm not abdicating all responsibility way from coaches but probably -- I will say John Wooden was like that, most of his coaching was in practice not the games and you got to see his players once you got to the games. I like to think you see my players. You don't look over at me. I tell my players don't look over at me, you're the one playing. I look at it like that and try to give them their best opportunities to play as good as they can. So that Marshall University can win. And I've been around the pro tour and everywhere. Your best players don't buy in, we went from Arizona to New York to LA for a reason. Because we had probably one of the best coaches, head coaches in the NBA, every! There's a reason that you're moving around. It's not his coaching. It's fan-friendly. It's player-friendly. They like our practices. The recruiting part of it, pretty easy, really. That was my recruiting of Jon Elmore, knock on the door say come on in! (Chuckles.) Last year Steve Browning, we had a good player, player in Europe, C.J. Burks, come on in! And Ajdin Penava, we were one of maybe two, you know? I do think if you look at the Phoenix teams you had Roger Bell, Steve Nash given up by Dallas, thirty years old, can't read it, Bell is a journeyman. Boris Diaw come from Atlanta. They said worst player in the NBA. Tim Thomas. Shawn Marion, who's greatest highlight was with Phoenix. If you look at those teams that were playing San Antonio in the Western Conference Finals, dead even, if it hadn't been for a bad break, Nash going into the scorer's table might have won the whole thing with guys that really nobody wanted. You're looking at Marshall and our players aren't highly recruited but I would venture to say be careful at underestimating because they're pretty doggone good. It happens. I do think the system we allow them to play we teach a lot of player development and that's kinda what I did for Mike in the NBA. I worked with Leandro Barbosa, he was one of my first students, had a lot of success. I think if I have a strength it's to get players so they feel like they can beat anybody, that there is nobody that is better than them and that they can do anything and then I teach 'em that. I don't pigeon hole 'em, I don't say only shoot jump hooks, only you shoot from here, don't dribble. I expect them all to dribble, I expect 'em all to be able to shoot everywhere and I think they will. Then that kind of goes downstream to the players. You know, they don't think they can miss, they think they're the best player in the world, and can't figure out why y'all don't figure that out. It's kind of where we are. Q. Coach, I want to know what it means to you to coach high school ball for 30 years in South Carolina? DAN D'ANTONI: You know, obviously I enjoyed it. Socastee High School still of some of my fondest memories, my three sons played for me there. We were in the state Championship with two of 'em. It always is. The hard thing about moving like you do is you lose your friends from the past. You don't have time because you're making new ones, you keep moving. It's hard to fit everything in, you know? You feel like some of your roots are getting away from you because you're growing new roots. I got a former player that lives out here. He asked me for tickets so I felt pretty good. I'll get him two tickets. We're good. I loved South Carolina. South Carolina is a great state that has great players. I haven't tapped down there, yet, I'm stim trying to get the West Virginia ones, but we got about nine West Virginians on our team but I'm sure I will be down in the home roots finding something down there. Q. Coach, last week you had a discussion about analytics at a press conference -- DAN D'ANTONI: You want to challenge me on that? Q. No, no. DAN D'ANTONI: I would back up and be careful. Q. I enjoyed reading the transcript of that. I'm just wondering, you guys have played this style for so long, when you first heard about sort of the analytics supported this style? DAN D'ANTONI: That's basically what happened. Q. What was your reaction at that point? It was like wow we knew this 40 years ago? How did you think at that point? DAN D'ANTONI: You're looking for somebody to support you because nobody else was. Most everybody wanted to go down to the post and we were trying to tell you that he is the worst shot in basketball. And I did it. I'll admit, I went down, tried to get it into the post and didn't realize I was trying to work it to the best shot in basketball unless you have shack, you're going to shoot over 65% and you got somebody in there that can totally dominate that shot, but we don't have that at Marshall right now. We might have next year. Right now the fact that Baby Shaq we're going to play in Wichita he would be Runt Shaq next to the guy I'm going to put down there! But it just qualified everything! In high school we were playing, like, South Carolina, we were playing Wilson who was our big competitor. Another part of that is shooting the best -- or a good shot early not waiting to set something else up. That's all part of a flow. Not only the spread, knowing where the shot is, but go ahead and taking the first good -- and I emphasize because I know y'all are saying well, you took an early shot, that's a bad shot, well I've seen a lot of late shots that are bad shots, so it's taking a good shot early and letting the game flow, letting it get out and the kids determine -- I had a coach, I loved him, he was a good coach, but he always tried to dictate my shots, where he wanted to shoot it, when I wanted to shoot it. It wasn't until I told him quit and just let me take the shots that I know are good for me that I became a better shooter. So I put that in my philosophy, you know, guys -- and they'll make mistakes and sometimes I gotta swallow back and say, oh my God, I can't believe you just shot that one! But if I tell him not to shoot that one, he may not shoot the next one that we win by. So I think you have to be careful and understand that my philosophy as a coach is that players win games, coaches lose games. I try not to lose 'em and I try to let them win 'em. We just kinda -- I kinda go that way. But analytically, to me, once the stats came out, I think as a coach if you're trying to work real hard to post up -- again, it depends on the talent level that you have. Most people since the stats say .7 points for a shot in the paint contested, it's much better to shoot that corner shot that's 1.3! So if you're designing an offense as a coach I would think you want to design to the best shots that have been proven, can't fight it. Any three is better than any contested two. So you want to set up, layups are the best one, keep the basket free, try to get all the defense out so you can get up and lay it up, make sense, right? If you're driving, get fouled. You get fouled driving more than any other way. So keep them open so you can drive. That's 1.5. So if you're designing shots or designing a style of play, I would suggest, you know, if you take the test, in school, you better go with the right answers not the wrong ones and think you're going to get 100. Won't happen. Q. Coach, you've talked about the plane crash and that whole situation, obviously, long time ago but it seems vivid in your mind. As a young person did that shape you at all? Did you learn anything? Also, for the Marshall community to have this team back here on this stage. What does it mean for you as somebody who has lived the history of the school? DAN D'ANTONI: Well, for a long time -- I left Huntington basically because of the plane crash. Everything changed. It wasn't the same that I played under. So I wandered down to Myrtle Beach playing golf and I had never written a resume until Marshall asked me to write one. I had the job when they asked me to write one. In my family I'm the wild child. I lived day-to-day. Enjoyed my life. I don't know if that was partly because of the plane crash, you know, maybe, you know! I don't know. No one put me on a couch and talked to me after that. I don't know. I do know that in Phoenix when I had to talk about it, about 15 times about the movie when it came out, I kind of released a lot and felt like I was different from the time before, after the movie. It is what it was, you know? THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. Good luck. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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