GoNyGoNyGo wrote:How can it be that all season long the team looks bad then, Stat is lost. Then Melo is hurt and Lin comes in. The Knicks win and win and win and win and win....Then Stat comes back and they win and win. Then Melo comes back and they lose and lose and lose...The team now looks as bad as they did the fist part of the season and maybe worse. What is the common to the losing parts of the season and not part of the winning season? It's only one guy. It's Melo.Is MDA a perfect coach? NO. Past records show he can run a team that can win 60 games and compete for a championship. Melo has been on exactly ONE team that has made it past the first round and that was with Billups. WHat has MDA done without Nash? Nothing but Lin is as close to Nash as he has had. Perhaps they should try letting it work.
MDA will be fired and Melo will be kept. That is just how the NBA works. The Knicks will get their new savior of a head coach. Whoever it is will instantly inherit the Melo problem. Phil Jackson? Yes! HE can fix the problem. He has done it before. We will here that from all the fans. The problem is that when he came in before the superstar players were superstars, they needed help with the guys around them, not them. We all thought (hoped) that Larry Brown could "fix" Marbury. Nope. How about Lenny Wilkens? Nope. MDA? Nope. The problem is not the coach. It's the player who does not want to be coached. Melo may not realize how heavy is presence is. It may not be intentional and if its not then maybe the coach can help but if it is, then the next coach is doomed too. Is it any wonder why George Karl seems to be a much happier guy now?
A new coach will bring a new system that is "suited" for Melo. That offense will be so boring! They will isolate Melo and we will watch him pound the ball for 18 seconds and eventually throw up a shot. On some nights he will make many and the "team" will look good. On other nights, he will miss and they will look like they do now. They may win 45 games that way. SO what.
All I know is that I enjoyed watching the Lin-icks! They were fun to watch and root for. They fought and scrapped every game. Lin was dead on his feet and outplayed Rubio and Love to win a game in the last 2 seconds! It was fun watching Novak, jeffries, Walker and the rest playing above their heads! Maybe that team could not win a championship but you can see how it would be fun trying and then who knows if you add the "right" superstar then they could win.
Im afraid I agree with this post. I know we all hate how Amar'e and Melo are playing, but that part on bold has really stayed in the back of my mind during this losing streak. There is no denying that Amar'e has changed from last season and not only in his body and play, but in his attitude. Last season he was the leader until Melo came in. Then Melo was supposed to be the defacto leader and everything changed.
When both Melo and Amar'e were down, the Knicks needed a leader desperately. In came Lin and made every player a believer that they could win sticking to Mike's system. Amar'e came back and just wanted to fit in. He was just one of the guys when he came back and Linsanity continued. Yes, the first loss of Linsanity was before Melo came back, but they were still playing well.
When Melo came back and D'Antoni adjusted the offense to fit him, thats when everything went down. Truth is we played at our best when D'Antoni's system was running non stop. The offense kept everything running, even the defense and the rebounding. The offense had to be stopped for Melo. Now possessions had to go through him and sometimes die with him. How can things improve if the system has to adapt to a guy that, while talented, simply stops the offense, takes contested shots when there are better options and then goes the other way and doesn't rebound nor defend?