Mike D’Antoni quit the Knicks because of Carmelo Anthony

Mike D’Antoni quit the Knicks because of Carmelo Anthony, mystery solved.

In his first year of coaching the Houston Rockets, Mike D’Antoni has had himself one heck of a season. A heck and a half, even. Behind the beard and basketball playing of MVP-hopeful James Harden, the Rockets have turned around from a season of blech to be only two wins away from the right to lose to the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. This is about as well as it could have gone.

Not everything has been that d’ang awesome in D’antoni’s career though. While the “seven-seconds or less” Suns  now occupy a special place in NBA fans’ hearts, his time with Kobe and Dwight in L.A. is more like a blockage in the left ventricle.

And then there were the New York Knicks days. There were moments of hope and dreams in his four years, but then the fun-time happy illusion ended. It ended with anger-time sad reality. Four years old is about the time kids need to know that Santa isn’t real, so it only makes sense. If you don’t want to tell your children, I will. I think it’s fun.

Anyways, the underlying rumor was that there was head-butting with (super?)star Carmelo Anthony. Mike D’Antoni wanted to run the triangle or something. Carmelo preferred going to bodegas in a robe.

This superstition was never really confirmed until ESPN dropped a profile on D’Antoni yesterday. When confronted with Carmelo’s desire to leave New York if D’Antoni were to remain as head coach, D’Antoni had this to say:

"“I just went in and quit,” he says.“Don’t say ‘quit,'” Laurel says. “I hate that word. You resigned. You walked away. Mutually walked away.”Mike rolls his eyes and turns to me.“I quit,” he says."

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The mutual-walk-away-quit-leaving was indeed the result of Carmelo. We can speculate whether that was best for Carmelo or not, but in the end it worked out well for Mike D’Antoni. At least now we can put the speculation to bed and focus on the important matters of whether or not Kelly Olynyk is a dirty player. He is.

There. That’s two mysteries solved.