Herb Williams was a first round draft choice of the Indiana Pacers in 1981, where he played from 1982 to 1989 and had his most productive years. He was traded to the Dallas Mavericks after the 1988-1989 season. In 1992, he was signed by the New York Knicks, where he spent seven years backing up perennial All-Star Patrick Ewing. Williams played 1 game (31 minutes) for the Toronto Raptors in 1996 before been waived and quickly returned to the Knicks. The team made the 1994 and 1999 NBA Finals, with Williams serving as a team leader. After the 1999 Finals, Williams retired at the age of forty-one after just 6 regular season games and 8 playoff games in 1999. Four years later, he returned to the Knicks as an assistant coach. He worked under head coaches Don Chaney and Lenny Wilkens. When Wilkens resigned in 2005, Williams took over as head coach. On July 26, 2005, legendary basketball coach Larry Brown was hired as the next head coach of the Knicks, thus ending Williams' head coaching tenure. Williams was the acting head coach of the Knicks for the final two games of the 2005-2006 season when illness kept Larry Brown away from the bench for the final two games of his Knicks career. After that season Brown was fired by the Knicks and replaced as head coach by Isiah Thomas. Williams worked as an assistant coach under Thomas, and continues to be in the coaching staff under Mike D'Antoni, going into the 2008-09 season.
Michael Andrew "Mike" D'Antoni (born May 8, 1951 in Mullens, West Virginia) is a former National Basketball Association|NBA player and current head coach of the New York Knicks. He won the NBA Coach of the Year Award in 2005. Mike D'Antoni played more than 15 years in Italy with the Olimpia Milano, where won dozens of Italians and European trophies. He was also head coach of Olimpia Milano and Benetton Treviso, and won other trophies with both teams. He's Italian citizen and played also for Italian National Team in the beginnings of the 90's.
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