The lightbulb went on for Mike D'Antoni in his third year coaching Olimpia Milano in the Italian basketball league LBA, though maybe it was always there and he had been ignoring it. It was 1993 and D'Antoni was coaching "traditionally," as he calls it, but he wasn't getting much out of his team. D'Antoni decided to mix things up.

I just one day just decided to do it the way I wanted to do it, and be damned the consequences," D'Antoni told Business Insider. What followed were the seeds of a style of offense that would eventually sweep across the NBA. That year, Olimpia Milano won the FIBA Korac Cup, and D'Antoni's confidence in his preferred style of playing grew.