Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni has resigned from the team.
Adrian Wojnarowski reported Wednesday afternoon that D’Antoni has quit effective immediately. He reports assistant coach Mike Woodson, largely credited with the team’s defensive turnaround, will take over as interim coach for the remainder of the season.
“It was a mutual decision to no longer coach the Knicks … conflicting visions of the club’s future,” Wojnarowski reported a league source had told him.
Just this morning, the New York Post reported that star forward Carmelo Anthony was unhappy with D’Antoni and a rift between the two had caused him to ask for a trade. Anthony denied this after Wednesday morning’s shootaround.
The Knicks have lost six straight games and fans have chanted “Fire D’Antoni” at many recent home games. Rumors that D’Antoni would be fired were common in January and early February as the team got off to a terrible start, but the emergence of Jeremy Lin may well have saved his job at that time.
D’Antoni finishes his career with the Knicks with a 121-167 record. They made the playoffs once in his tenture, last season, and were swept in the first round by Boston.
Yahoo! also reports that assistant coaches Phil Weber and Dan D’Antoni, Mike’s older brother, are also out.
Kentucky head coach John Calipari, who served as head coach of the Nets from 1996 to 1999, tweeted he was not interested in the job Wednesday afternoon. His name, as well as former Lakers coach and Knicks player Phil Jackson, have come up regularly as replacements for D’Antoni.
“As I’ve said before, I have the greatest job in basketball at any level. Why would I be interested in another job?” Calipari wrote. “I love being the coach of the commonwealth’s team. To the #BBN [Big Blue Nation] & all the recruits that are coming or want to come, I will be at Kentucky.”
The Knicks are set to host Portland tonight at 7:30 p.m.
