This early into the season, we're above average defensively when we were near the bottom last year. It's our offense that's been sucking.

Over the course of the season, some folks will shoot better, like Danilo and Amare. We'll see where we are when things start to even out.

BasketballJones wrote:D'Antoni needs at least 7 or 8 years to get his system in place, and for Donnie to get the players he needs to run his system. The plan always was to be able to start rebuilding in 2018, right?

Right, Isiah already told us this. It's when LeBron's second extra extension will be up. He's already planning for it and, in fact, Curry's second contract extension will also be up in that same year.

Let's see what happens.

No practice, no defense, no scouting, no game plan.

I think some of the points D'Antoni brings up are valid. For example, you don't want to tell a guy like Gallo not to shoot 3s even if he's missing because he has shown the ability to do it very well in the past and you have to believe that the #s will eventually correct themselves somewhat. Plus, by telling a guy like that to stop shooting 3s, you take away his confidence and possibly stunt his development (how many 6'10/6'11 guys have the skills that Gallo has? why limit those skills?).

At the same time, I don't believe everyone on our team should have free reign to chuck up 3s (even Gallo shouldn't unless open of course) as we simply don't have the shooters that the Suns had to do that under D'Antoni. In that regard, I think D'Antoni hasn't done a good job of adjusting as this team is taking a lot of dumb shots and when that happens, the coach needs to at least take some of the blame.

I do think the players are also at fault here. I mean, D'Antoni and Amare have hinted at various points that this team isn't running enough and last night it looked like we finally saw some running out there. Maybe you put some blame on D'Antoni for not getting them to do that earlier on but that really comes down to lack of execution (which I think ultimately falls under players if coach is constantly delivering the message that they need to run more).

It's tough because if Gallo shoots like he normally does, this team is likely in a much better situation than they currently are. Without his production though, we really don't have a legit 2nd scoring option out there and without that, you can't compete with the other teams in the league that have at least 2 all star caliber players on their squads (who is our 2nd all-star right now?). On the defensive end, there is a better effort out there and we are contesting more shots than we did last season. So I can't sit here and say with a straight face that D'Antoni is the problem because truth is, there are a lot of problems with the way we're playing and I don't think firing the coach will solve those issues.

PresIke wrote:

Caseloads wrote:I think D'antoni should just be left to coach this team and be exposed for the loser he is.

No practice, no defense, no scouting, no game plan.

you don't have to like mda as a coach, but this is about as baseless a statement as there gets.

islesfan wrote:I'm getting really tired of being right all the time.

No you're not.

Knicks Free Throws - last night 37
- avg for year - 28

Gallo is driving to the basket more and getting more FT.
Free Throws - last night 16 for 17 FT - excellent
Free Throws - for the year - 6 FT attempts making 90%

Keep Gallo shooting those Free throws! We'll win a lot more games with Gallo shooting 90% from the line.