Report: Warriors intrigued with Mike D’Antoni and Lionel Hollins

With Mark Jackson out of the picture, the Golden State Warriors will soon begin their search to find his replacement and according to Sam Amick of USA TODAY Sports, both Mike D’Antoni and Lionel Hollins are on their radar.

While everything at this stage is all preliminary, one of these names makes sense while the other draws lots of questions in regard to where Golden State’s front office head is at.

Seeking out Mike D’Antoni makes sense. He’s an offensive mastermind that could build a high-powered offense around Stephen Curry. He’s never been known to clash with front offices, so he likely fits under an umbrella Joe Lacob and the rest of his cohorts   are attempting to build. While he may not be the players-coach that Jackson was, improving the offense and putting the key players in a better role in order to succeed could pay off dividends in the long run.

The Lionel Hollins is a peculiar situation. For the same reasons the Golden State Warriors decided to move on from Mark Jackson, the Memphis Grizzlies did the same with Hollins. Hollins was unable to get along with the Grizzlies new regime, forcing them to move on with Dave Joerger at the helm. To simply put it, it’s a bit contradictory for the Warriors to have a legitimate interest in Hollins. Add in the factor that Jackson has shown in his three years that he’s the superior coach to Hollins, it makes little sense as his addition would be a step back from where they were in previous years when the goal is to improve.

As mentioned at the beginning, everything that’s surfacing on the Warriors coaching search is all just talk. D’Antoni or Hollins could walk away with the role when it’s all said and done, but they’ll likely go through a pile of coaches in order to find the right fit for a club that fell one game short of a second round appearance without their second best player in Andrew Bogut.