The 2012-13 season was supposed to be a return to glory for the Los Angeles Lakers. During the summer of 2012, they had traded for Hall of Famers Steve Nash and Dwight Howard in the hopes that both men would give Kobe Bryant the support he needed to win yet another NBA championship while he was still an elite player.
Things didn’t exactly go as planned. Nash, one of the best, if not the best, point guards of his era, suffered a fracture in his left leg in just his second game with the team and missed almost seven weeks as a result. The Lakers started the season 1-4, causing then-coach Mike Brown to be fired, and when the team reached out to Phil Jackson about returning as coach, it looked like things would soon be OK.
But instead, Los Angeles hired Mike D’Antoni, the coach of the mid-2000s Phoenix Suns during the “Seven Seconds or Less” era. In a recent interview with ESPN, he admitted that he took the job because of Nash’s presence on the team.
“One of the reasons why I took the Laker job — the biggest reason, other than I wanted to coach — was that Steve was going to be there,” D’Antoni said. “So I’m thinking that if Steve and I can get this and put this together, we could be really good. And I remember asking them before I signed, ‘I know Steve’s hurt, when’s he coming back?’
“And they go, ‘Well, he’ll be back by Friday. And if we can get you to sign and you get in here, he’ll be almost ready to go right when you get here.’ That kind of pushed me over the hill.
“Well, Steve never really came back. And even when he did come back, he was about half himself. And so it was doomed from the start.”
Nash finally returned on Dec. 22, and while he played fairly well alongside Bryant, his season averages of 12.7 points and 6.7 assists a game paled in comparison to the numbers he put up in prior seasons with the Suns.
While the Lakers started to play better after his return and won 28 of their last 40 games, nothing ever seemed right that season. They were hit by a gnarly rash of injuries all year, and that series of injuries was capped by the torn Achilles that Bryant sustained on April 12 near the end of the regular season.
Los Angeles finished 45-37 and was swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Howard left in free agency a couple of months later, and just like that, the franchise plunged into the darkest chapter of its history. It would miss the playoffs six straight times before winning the championship in 2020.
D’Antoni would last one more season before resigning his position in 2014. Two years later, he would start a four-year stint as the Houston Rockets’ head coach.
As for Nash, he would appear in 15 games during the 2013-14 campaign before retiring. He would later become the Brooklyn Nets’ head coach in 2020, with D’Antoni serving as an assistant under him for one season.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Mike D’Antoni says he took Lakers coaching job because of Steve Nash
Reporting by Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire / LeBron Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire | USA TODAY Network
