Mike Celizic

Mike D’Antoni is looking more and more like the NBA’s answer to Marty Schottenheimer — a great regular season coach who can’t win when it matters. Schottenheimer’s shortcoming ultimately cost him every job he ever held. D’Antoni is heading down that same road, according to SI.com.

It's not clear whether he was let go or jumped ship, just that he didn't feel like he had the backing of ownership and management, SI.com reported.

It’s not easy to suggest that anyone as successful as D’Antoni — or Schottenheimer — should be fired. In D’Antoni’s four full seasons in Phoenix, he’s brought excitement to Phoenix and a highly entertaining brand of up-tempo basketball to the NBA. He’s finished first in the West once and been to the conference finals twice.

In 2005, the first year of the Suns’ run, he took Phoenix to the best record in the NBA at 62-20. But the Suns couldn’t play with the Spurs in the half-court game that determines champions. As brilliant as point guard Steve Nash was — and he was the best in the business — Phoenix had no answer for big Tim Duncan. They got blown out of the West finals in five games and went home to lick their wounds.

It’s been pretty much the same story every year since. Last year, they were bounced in six games by the Spurs in the second round. In 2006, they went down in six games in the conference finals to the Mavs.

It’s not just that D’Antoni has lost every year, he’s never even gotten to a seventh game in any of those elimination series. And if you keep getting eliminated without even getting to a seventh game, there’s something fundamentally wrong.

The Suns figured their problem was a lack of a big post presence on defense, somebody who could neutralize Duncan and give the Suns' high-powered offense a chance to do its thing. So they traded with the Heat for Shaquille O’Neal, who had run out of affection for coach Pat Riley and Miami. And with the Diesel parked in the lane, the Suns and D’Antoni were out of postseason excuses.

That’s not a good thing for D’Antoni, because the Suns have been bounced from the playoffs again — in the first round, no less — by the Spurs. After a great Game 1 that went into double overtime before the Spurs pulled it out, the Suns went into a funk for the next two games. They came out of it in Game 4 on Sunday, picking that day to play to their full capability and run the Spurs off the court, out of the building, and back home to San Antonio. They played hard again in Game 5 but made too many mistakes.

Consistency and toughness have never been the hallmark of D’Antoni’s teams. When they’ve got you down and everything’s clicking, they take your breath away. But when they don’t have their best stuff, they’re not good at toughing out victories against the best opponents.

These are coaching issues. There’s no excuse for a team of professionals to go into a two-game funk after a tough loss. And there’s no explanation for that same team coming out when it finally has nothing to lose, because everything’s already pretty much been lost, and putting up one of its best performances of the entire season.

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The most prominent qualities of great teams are consistency and mental toughness. Great teams bounce back from disappointment. Great teams don’t take two games off. Great teams don’t get themselves bounced from a playoff series — year after year after year — in five and six games.

The players are there. Chris Paul has taken over as the game’s best point guard, but Nash is still a force of nature. Amare Stoudemire is a stud up front. Shaq is a monster in the middle. Raja Bell and Boris Diaw are capable of scoring explosions. OK, the team is without Grant Hill, a big cog up front, but the Suns had the talent to beat the Spurs.

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So there’s no alternative but to point a finger at the coach who’s taught the team how to thrive when things are going its way but not to gut it out when they’re not.

If this were college ball, I’d say D’Antoni’s job should have been secure. But college is a different game, and the NCAA tournament is one-and-done. All you can really demand of a coach is to get to the tournament more years than not and get deep into it now and then. In college, coaches are heroes for making the Final Four. In the pros, that constitutes a failure when it starts to become a habit.

He’s like Schottenheimer, a coach who’s going to give you a playoff team every year, but who hasn’t shown the inclination to make it a championship team. The window of talent is open for only a brief period in pro basketball, and the Suns couldn't afford to wait for D’Antoni to figure out how to win a game that really matters.

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