Mike D’Antoni has one regret about offense that changed the NBA

Mike D’Antoni is headed into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend, and he knows exactly why.

It wasn’t merely the 672 wins. It wasn’t the two NBA Coach of the Year awards. It wasn’t even coaching Steve Nash and James Harden during MVP seasons.

It was the way his teams played.

“That’s the reason why I’m getting in the Hall of Fame,” D’Antoni told ESPN, referring to the offensive philosophy that helped change how NBA basketball is played.

Funny thing is, D’Antoni now wishes he had taken it even further.

His “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns played fast, spread the floor and fired away from 3-point range at a time when plenty of basketball people insisted teams couldn’t win that way. D’Antoni told ESPN his biggest coaching regret is that Phoenix occasionally listened.

“We didn’t go as far as we could have pushed the envelope back then,” he said.

The Suns would attempt 30-something threes and wonder whether that was simply too many. Today, nobody would blink.

D’Antoni acknowledged plenty of other factors helped produce the modern NBA, including better players and better shooting. Still, the fingerprints of those Phoenix teams are everywhere.

His system later followed him to Houston, where Harden became an MVP and the Rockets pushed the 3-point revolution even harder. D’Antoni said improved analytics finally gave coaches the confidence to keep taking those shots even on nights when they weren’t falling.

Twenty years later, the league essentially caught up to D’Antoni.

His regret? He could’ve made it catch up even sooner.