For his first three years abroad, his books were Mike D'Antoni's only companions. They have remained good friends. As he stood surrounded by the 16,833 books collected by the Rockets Women's Foundation and Reliant for the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation and distributed to local charities on Friday, he recalled the power those books had to change his world.
"When I left the NBA and went to Europe, didn't know the language and was by myself more or less, I didn't speak Italian so I started reading," D'Antoni said. "I read a lot when I was young, but you lose it.