Goodbye Isiah. Hello Mike. The Knicks snatched Mike D'Antoni off the market this week, hiring him to replace Thomas as the maligned team's head coach. While there are a few question marks 
surrounding whether D'Antoni is the right fit, I think this is a great move by Donnie Walsh and is a clear statement from Walsh that the Knicks are climbing back on the winning track.
Here's where I dispute some arguments against D'Antoni:
1. He is a win-now coach. True, but I think everyone realizes that the Knicks aren't going to be the Suns for at least a few years. I'm okay with him trying to win games. I think that's probably a good thing for an NBA franchise to try to do. With Mikey D at the helm, I expect the Knicks to win more games than they did last season and improve in all aspects of play - but I'm not expecting to be the Suns, or even the Nets. If the Knicks win 30 games next year, that's a big step. If they win 35, they're almost a playoff team in the East. The East will be a tougher conference next year, undoubtedly. Boston, Detroit, Orlando, Toronto, Cleveland, and Washington will be playoff locks. Chicago drastically underperformed this year and they will have to regroup with a new coach. Philly and Atlanta are two young franchises perfectly capable of making another run (actually, I think Atlanta is going to turn a lot of heads next year). And New Jersey should benefit from consistency in the first full season of the Post-Kidd era. The Knicks are not going to make the playoffs next year or probably the year after that. But they will be better than this past year and a contender to win 30 games. It's sad when that's your goal, but we just bottomed out this year. We won't be great, but D'Antoni's influence and the imminent culture change should help immediately.
2. He can't run his offense with this roster. This is true. D'Antoni cannot execute the seven-seconds-or-less speed game that he ran with Nash in Phoenix. Eddy Curry and Zach Randolf can eat a doughnut in seven seconds, but they can't make it down the floor that fast. I'm hoping that this encourages the Knicks to make as many deals as possible to basically rid their roster of everyone but David Lee. D'Antoni will undoubtedly have to change his gameplan for this team, but a half-functional D'Antoni offense is better than Isiah's offense, which is to say no gameplan at all.
3. He may not be able to handle New York. Let's face it: New York is the toughest place in the world to play or coach and the media will be breathing down Mike's neck the entire time he's here. He had a country-club organization in Phoenix compared to what he will face here. But this guy has two enormous things working in his favor here. First, he's used to the big stage. He has led one of the NBA's most successful teams for the past four years. He has played in conference finals. He has coached the MVP. 
He has dealt with rivalry (Spurs) and has been at the center of the biggest scandal in league history (Tim Donaughy). Mike D'Antoni is not an amateur and while he is used to a more relaxed atmosphere, he appears to have no illusions about the hardships of working in New York. The second big thing he has going for him is that he was preceded by perhaps the worst coach in the history of the NBA. Our beloved team has reached rock bottom. There is nowhere to go but up. The players, organization, and city all feel this way. No one is expecting to win right away. He won't have the pressure that Joe Girardi faces. Knicks fans just want to climb steadily up the ladder until we reach the top. He's as good a guy to get us there as any.
Three other quick points: First, D'Antoni is a coach who players want to play for - if the Knicks get their stuff together, people will want to come play for him (this includes LeBron, Wade, Bosh, and Michael Jordan, all of whom will be available to sign in 2010). Second, he is an assistant coach for the olympic team, which means that he will be spending a lot of time around LeBron and might be able to guide him toward the Knicks. Third, he has a good relationship with Stephon Marbury. He coached Marbury in Phoenix and although he shipped him to NJ, Marbury knows it was purely a business deal and is apparently looking forward to working with D'Antoni again. I hope Marbury is on the next train out of NY, but if no one wants his absurd contract and he is stuck here, D'Antoni may be the only guy to get through to him. Fourth, D'Antoni looks exactly like the monopoly man.
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