oohah, I don't even get where you are coming from. Improvement is always in the eyes of the beholder, and if you either don't want to see or can't see it, I am not about to change any of that. And please, be more realistic with all of the "prove" stuff. Seems by your definition of everything, to argue a point you have to have absolute proof...
First off, maybe a better way to say it is "back it up" instead of "prove". All I am looking for is a shred of evidence.
The improvement of players will almost always coincide with more winning. Have I seen the young players get better? Maybe. They sure looked better when they were getting consistent minutes and playing style. Maybe that was all they needed to improve. Why did that change all of a sudden?
But it is hard to say how they have truly improved with the inconsistency of how the team has been run, and my feeling is that the roller coaster style of coaching has likely hurt the players as a whole more than it has helped.
how do you prove that any coach improved any player at all - especially if you keep saying that there is a natural progression of things?
I don't think anyone should argue against the fact that most players improve, peak, then slowly fall off regardless of coach.
Any player who improves, dramatically or marginally, should get 99% of the credit, the coaches, etc. get the other 1%. Can coaches help a player improve? Certainly! But to state that while the Knicks are losing so bad but LB is improving the players is to take this bitter pill of a season and sugarcoating it like BRIGGS said.
Is there any way for any of us to prove that Aguire help Sweets with his game? Not really, but we did see an improvement with his game. Same with the other stuff I wrote about. Brown is the head coach and generally speaking has direct involvement with player development, either through his own teachings or that of the assistants. Has that equalled wins? No. But tell me something that is not so obvious. I'm already good with that.
The difference is that we know that Aguire worked directly with Sweetney so it is a reasonable conclusion to draw. Assistant coaches generally work directly with the players, not the head coaches. But to use Aguire/Sweetney as an example, it would be as if we gave the credit for Sweetney's improvement to Chaney or Wilkens when it was Aguire and Sweetney doing all the work.
To me, I did not really see improvement with individual players last year. You look at game 1 and follow through to game 82. And I am not referring to team play at all. Have I seen a difference in those same players this year? Yup. What has the big change been from a coaching perspective? Brown.
Call me crazy, but I think a coaches job first and foremost is to win games. I don't really believe the Knicks are "Sacrificing for the future", because it is my belief that this team will look pretty different next year.
Now let's look at the players that were on the team last year that are still here: Marbury, Crawford, Penny, Ariza, Taylor.
The only player that I can say has improved would be Crawford, and even that improvement has been choppy at best, plus Crawford looked pretty damn good last year until he caught the injury bug. I would not say Marbury has improved from last year just because he recently had a nice stretch. If anything, he was much better last year. Ariza has stood still in my book. Penny is shot so he does not count. Taylor has played well, but he is a vet, and from a numbers standpoint this is among his weakest seasons: http://www.nba.com/playerfile/maurice_taylor/index.html?nav=page
Hypothetically speaking, what if the Knicks' record were 28-14 but the team's minutes were heavily dominated by MoT, Marbury, Q1, James, Rose, Penny, AD... and tactically Brown was being hailed by every beat writer/ESPN gopher as pulling off a small miracle. Let's say Lee averages 3 minutes, Frye gets 10, Ariza 7, Nate 5, Butler & Woods IR. Call the whole first half of the year Darko Part Duex. Winning games but doing zilch for young players. Would you feel better at Brown and the job that he has done as compared to what we have now?
Isn't what you are describing close to what happened for the first 28? It was not to the extreme you are describing, but Davis and Rose especially ate up too many minutes and LB played a style which was designed for old guys rather than the young thoroughbreds. The youngsters were used willy-nilly with no apparent rhyme or reason and I don't see how that is helpful to their development. In fact I see it as detrimental.
The Knicks SUCK. The changing starting lineups SUCK (but only because it seems that the prevailing good theory is that you need the same one above all else). So what? We all may be hating the fact that our #1 pick in 2006 isn't gonna be the Knicks' pick. So why are we (well some) benchmarking everything off of the record? DEVELOPMENT. See it or not, that's what's to judge. Maybe it has not been good enough, that's fair. Maybe it could have been better, fair again. Forget the record, this season it's doesn't have any barring on anything.
I think the theory of developing players on a bad team rather than maxing wins is reasonable. I just don't see that Brown is doing that.
oohah
1/29/2006 5:59 PM