It's sad that some posters didn't even read the interview and blindly agreed with OP. D'antoni gave a balanced interview and praised Dwight for his effort to win for the Lakers.
Gasol was and will be a second banana for his entire life. D'Antoni had success with a relatively small market team and his system but he failed with the teams in big cities. (NY and likely LA) Never won a title or being to the Finals. Gasol is still a good player, borderline Allstar but inconsistent and injury prone and D'Antoni did not use him well. He went from trying to get rid of Gasol to now declaring him the best Center in 6 months. D'Antoni is well aware of his dire situation and is clinging onto his last straw and that is Gasol and Kobe. He is a second tier head coach and will always be one sided and crumbles under media pressure.
D'Antoni is a sub par coach right now. What is there to agree and disagree? And he is terrible giving interviews, rallying his players to achieve greatness. Well what did he achieve with the Knicks?
I find D'Antoni's evaluation of Post-Up players and his assessment of how to properly utilize talented/dominant Post players is as irrelevant as it is useless. He has NO clue how to properly use highly skilled post players, nor how to utilize them efficiently in his offensive system. He sees big men as merely the beginning of his fast break and the guy he doesn't want handling the ball in the last minutes of the game. They rebound they block, and they outlet the ball, but he has no clue how to put them into position to use them as offensive weapons. And D'Antoni has to say he would choose Pau, cuz he is stuck with him and Dwight wanted no part of continuing to go down with the Lakers' best titanic impression.
Gasol's the guy D'Antoni wanted to come off the bench so he can try to work his PnR offense with Dwight.
Another horrendous thread by OP. Antoni actually came out well in this interview despite the interviewers relentless desire for controversy.
D'Antoni gave a good profesional interview in all honesty. Now the interviewer on the other hand was absolutely absurd and tried just asked questions about dwight trying to elicit a certain respons on every question rather than actually building off the previous questions like a real interview should be conducted.
Pau Gasol is super weak in the post and he CANNOT get anything done without a Bynum or Howard or Tyson Chandler beside him in the post.
And unicorns are better than leprechauns at jumping over rainbows. Since when does D'Antoni's offense involve giving the ball to a player in the post?
