When the time came at last to pack up his practice-day polo shirts and his seven-seconds-or-less playbook, Mike D’Antoni moved as far from Madison Square Garden as he could get — not really so much by design but by happenstance. When the Lakers call, there is only one right answer.

D’Antoni went to Los Angeles in search of the talent he never truly had in New York and to reunite with the point guard he so badly missed. The promise of 70 degrees and sunny didn’t hurt either.

Paradise never looked so stressful.