Other than ditching his crutches and getting a haircut, Mike D’Antoni didn’t do much to commemorate his first game on the sidelines Tuesday as the coach of the Lakers.

The man who replaced Mike Brown – and more importantly, the memory of Phil Jackson – knows better than most the uniqueness of the journey he’s embarking on, so to do anything out of the ordinary beforehand would have been a bit too much.

“You’re coaching the Lakers at Staples Center,” he said at his pregame news conference. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Enough said.

via Vincent Bonsignore of the Los Angeles Daily News