Mike D’Antoni was inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend as part of the 2026 class. He knows that the primary reason he is getting in is the philosophical change in the league that he helped usher in when he brought the “Seven Seconds or Less” philosophy over from his coaching days in Italy, ESPN’s Dave McMenamin writes.

While D’Antoni’s Suns’ up-and-down, free-flowing offense influenced the way that teams play today, he still regrets that he didn’t push the style even further, closer to what it has become today.

“Because we were first to go through the door, first of all, you take a lot of bullets. And … it makes you hesitate. We didn’t go as far as we could have pushed the envelope back then because we didn’t know,” he said. “We’d shoot 30-something 3s and we’re going, ‘Is that too many? Can we do that?’ While other people were saying, ‘You can’t win that way.’ And so instead of going, just revving it up like they do today and going after it … we just didn’t quite maximize what we could have done.”

He spoke to McMenamin about what about Steve Nash allowed him to form such a successful coach-point guard bond, his time with the Kobe Bryant-Dwight Howard Lakers, the phenomenon of Linsanity, and more.

We have more from around the world of hoops:

After it was previously reported that brothers Joey Buss and Jesse Buss were in talks to become investors in the French team ASVEL, the former Lakers executives traveled to Lyon on Wednesday to shoot some hoops with head coach Tony Parker and take a closer look at the club, Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia writes. Team shareholders had hoped that the club would be valued at upwards of $120MM, but current estimates are closer to $60-to-80MM, Carchia notes.
Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein is playing with the German national team for the first time since the 2019 FIBA World Cup Qualifiers, Johnny Askounis writes for Eurohoops. The 2024 NBA champion expressed his excitement to return and explained his absence away.”For the first four or five years, I had to prove myself in the NBA. It was important to me what the teams thought and how I could establish myself there. I was often told I should stay and train. But now that I’m firmly established in the NBA and have found my role, I’ve always wanted to play and give something back,” he said.
On the heels of the 2026 Hall of Fame class inductions, ESPN’s Ben Golliver looks at 11 players who should make the Hall of Fame next. LaMarcus Aldridge, Marc Gasol, Blake Griffin, and Andre Iguodala are a few of the players currently eligible who should be given real consideration, while Derrick Rose has one of the more interesting cases, given that every previous eligible MVP has made the Hall of Fame to this point.