Lewis D’Antoni, a West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame basketball coach and father to two sons who found coaching success in college and the NBA, died Saturday at age 103.
Craig Ackerman, the radio play-by-play voice of the Houston Rockets, where Lewis D’Antoni’s son Mike is head coach, announced the news on Twitter on Saturday evening.
D’Antoni, son of an Italian immigrant, won a state prep boys basketball title with Mullens in 1955, coaching a team led by future West Virginia University standout Willie Akers. He was the inaugural recipient of the West Virginia Sports Writers Association’s High School Coach of the Year award and is a member of the WVSWA’s West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
His coaching career began in 1937 at Pineville High School and included stops at Mullens High and Chesapeake High in Ohio. He won 450 games in a 35-year career and coached in the West Virginia state tournament five times between 1951-56.
During a 2013 interview with the Charleston Gazette, he recalled when his Mullens team met up with a future legend and Basketball Hall of Famer in the 1956 state tournament in Morgantown.
“We lost to East Bank and Jerry West,’’ D’Antoni said, “who scored about 44. I lost a couple nights of sleep over that, wondering why we couldn’t stop him. But then he went to college and no one could stop him. Then he went to the NBA and no one could stop him. After that, I figured maybe we did a pretty good job.’’
D’Antoni’s teams were always high-octane, which would foreshadow the type of basketball his sons Mike and Dan would coach.
“We tried to get to the other end of the floor before the other team could get their defense set,” Lewis D’Antoni told the New York Daily News in 2008. “Get the rebound, get the ball in the middle and go, with two guys on the wing and a trailer.”
The next generation of D’Antonis would leave their mark on basketball as well. Both Mike and Dan starred at Marshall University. Mike would play and coach in Italy before becoming head coach of the Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets, twice winning NBA Coach of the Year honors.
Dan, born Lewis Joseph D’Antoni II, spent decades as a high school basketball coach before serving as Mike’s assistant in Phoenix, New York and Los Angeles. He became Marshall’s head coach in 2014. He coached the Thundering Herd to its first 20-win season since 2011-12 and led the team to the Conference USA tournament championship game.
In recent years, Lewis D’Antoni has remained active in the sport he loved.
In 2010, he authored a book “The Coach’s Coach,’’ in which he wrote about the changes in sports over a century of time, his fast-break style of basketball and his own family values.
The following year, he returned to his alma mater, Concord University, to be honored on Dec. 10 during “Lewis D’Antoni Day’’ at halftime of a men’s basketball game in the school’s Carter Center.
At the 2013 boys high school state basketball tournament at the Charleston Civic Center — the 100th state tournament ever — D’Antoni was a guest of honor and, at age 99, tossed up the ceremonial jump ball before the opening game between Buffalo and Charleston Catholic.
Last March, D’Antoni got to coach one more time when he was named an assistant coach of the Class AA All-Star team for the Scott Brown Little General Classic at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
D’Antoni is preceded in death by wife Betty Jo. He is survived by sons Dan, Mike, Mark and daughter Kathy.
