Dwight Howard was going to have a real Thanksgiving dinner in his new home.

It wasn't going to be a long one -- the Lakers had flown back to Los Angeles very late Wednesday night and were scheduled to leave again Thursday evening -- but he was committed. He could walk again, he could play again, and it was time to give thanks.

Rookie Darius Johnson-Odom and second-year man Darius Morris joined him. Some of the other veterans said they'd try and stop by, as well.

New Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni admits that it was mistake to have left the Phoenix Suns for the New York Knicks. Jerome Miron/US Presswire

New Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni had to politely decline, though. The invitation was generous and he would have welcomed the chance to connect on a different level with Howard and his parents, who had flown in from Atlanta. But a night out, even a quiet holiday meal with new friends, isn't a luxury he can afford right now.

Since taking the Lakers job on Nov. 12, D'Antoni has been playing catch-up. On a bum leg. He wakes up early and in pain, as the medicine he took the night before wears off, checks to see if his surgically replaced knee still seems OK, then gets up, watches film of his new team and prepares for practice.

When he had surgery at the beginning of November, the Lakers job wasn't even on the horizon. Heck, no job was on the horizon. NBA teams don't generally fire coaches during the first two weeks of the season. Then again, NBA teams don't generally come into a season with the kind of expectations the Lakers did, either. So instead of laying in bed at his home in New York for another month, recuperating like a normal patient, D'Antoni is hobbling around Los Angeles trying to rehabilitate the Lakers.

There is no way to rush the healing process, for either his knee or the team, but D'Antoni has to try.

So where did he go on Thanksgiving instead of joining Howard?

"Nowhere. I was in bed, curled up in the fetal position."

By Friday morning he was back on his feet, pacing the sideline of the FedExForum in Memphis after shootaround, itching to go.

Knowing how badly his knee is hurting, I ask if he wants to sit down. He says he's fine.

At some point over the last 48 hours he's been able to reset. The sting from an awful 113-97 loss in Sacramento on Wednesday night has worn off, and the pain in his knee has dulled. Or at least he's pretending it has.

He may not have had time to eat on Thanksgiving, but he has plenty to be grateful for.

"You don't get many second chances in life," he says. "This is definitely a big one."

The guy he came back for is limping, too.

D'Antoni's right knee is grossly swollen and stiff. I ask if he's wearing a brace, he rolls up his pant leg to reveal a puffy mushroom of a joint that's being held together with black surgical tape.

"Yikes, is that what you've been walking around on?" I ask.

He grins and rolls his pant leg back down.

Steve Nash says he remembers the tough moments from his career but that there is no point holding on to them. Noah Graham/Getty Images

Steve Nash's left leg is in a bit better shape. But he is expected to run D'Antoni's offense, not walk the sidelines, and right now he can't even jog. It's been almost a month since Portland rookie Damian Lillard banged into his left leg. An inch one way or the other and Nash would have been back on the court the next day. But he was unlucky.

His fibula fractured ever so slightly. The nerves in the area weren't happy, either. He hasn't been on the court since. He's miserable sitting out, but it's not in Nash's nature to give in to depression. Not after all those years in Phoenix, he and D'Antoni winning all those games together but never the game they had to win to get over the hump. So close, an inch here or there, a break that went another way and they're wearing rings.

The year Joe Johnson broke his face (2005) . . . the year Raja Bell hurt his calf (2006) . . . the Amar'e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw suspensions (2007) . . . the 3-pointer Tim Duncan hit (2008). Nash remembers all of it.

"It was a [Manu] Ginobili pick-and-roll. And, it's not like we were trying to take a 3 away from Tim," he says, narrating the past and reliving it at the same time. "He made one 3 all season. Sometimes you just have to say, 'He made a big shot.'"

His voice gets a little deeper as he runs through the details. There's pain there.

"I do remember those things," Nash says. "But I don't look back on them. That's life. You move on. We never got to the Finals, we never were a championship team. But we also accomplished a lot and had a lot of success.

"We also never played with a defensive center. We were a flawed team that got pretty dang close to our potential and maybe it was never quite good enough."

He looks up at me to make sure that last part sinks in. It's not a line. It's his truth.

Enough time has passed now that D'Antoni can admit where he went wrong. It's not one of those plays he regrets, it's a decision.

His decision to leave.

"I shouldn't have gone to New York," he says, looking down at the sideline in Memphis, pacing on that unstable right leg.

"I should have stuck in there and battled. You don't get to coach somebody like him [Nash] too many times. It's pretty sacred and you need to take care of it. I didn't."

D'Antoni has never told Nash this.

It feels good to confess.

"I think we got frustrated and I got frustrated. That's why I left. We were there, it seemed like we deserved it, and then it seemed like something happened all the time. Maybe we weren't good enough either. We have to understand that.

"I probably irrationally made a decision right when the season was over. You should take a month to figure it out. I shouldn't have left. That was my fault."

The story I've always heard is that it was a mutual parting. The Suns' ownership group and new general manager Steve Kerr pushed him to hire a defensive assistant. His system was questioned. Everything was.

Sure the Suns could outscore everyone, but could they win a championship? Could D'Antoni? Was the team flawed? Was he? Did they just have horrible luck? Did he need to change? Could he?

When the Knicks job came open in the spring of 2008, the Suns let him go.

"No. It was me," D'Antoni admits now. "I initiated it and I probably shouldn't have."

Everything about New York felt wrong. The Knicks weren't built to win any time soon. In fact, it was probably better if they lost enough to get lottery picks. D'Antoni's job was to build his players' statistics up enough so that the Knicks could trade them and clear more salary-cap space for the summer of 2010 and make a run at LeBron James and the other stars of that free-agent class.