Mike D'Antoni is changing the time honored tradition of the game day morning shoot-around, otherwise known as get-the-players-out-of-bed by 9 a.m. and make them practice.

Traditionally, NBA teams practice for one hour in the morning on game days to go through scouting reports and get in a light workout. Pat Riley and Phil Jackson have been known to go for two hours. Lenny Wilkens sometimes went as short at 30 minutes when he was Knicks coach.

Traditionally, reporters liked working with Lenny Wilkens for obvious reasons.

D'Antoni told reporters today that for home games the Knicks won't be required to practice in the morning. Instead, the team will meet at 3:30 at the Garden for meetings, a walk-thru and a light meal prior to a 7:30 p.m. game. Whether that will translate into wins remains to be seen. If nothing else, the Knicks will get a chance to sleep in.

This is a plan Latrell Sprewell would have endorsed whole-heartedly.

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The Knicks took to the pool today for aquatic exercises. Either that or they're training to make the Olympic synchronized swimming team. I'd pay to see Nate Robinson and Eddy Curry go through one of those routines.
Former NBA coach P.J. Carlesimo attended Friday's practice.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/knicks/2009/10/dantoni-to-let-knicks-sleep-in.html#ixzz11AVdup00

ant is healthier than he has ever been. That’s the best it has been in a long time,” Babby said. “He’s going into the season expecting to be fine.”

Mercury coach Paul Westhead, who was an assistant coach with Orlando (2003-05) said that a healthy Hill will have no problems keeping up with the Suns and their high-tempo style.

“You look at all the injuries, but he had a lot of pop left,” Westhead said. “He could run the lanes on the break as well as anyone.”

Babby said one of the deciding factors was Phoenix’s well-respected training staff, led by Aaron Nelson. The Suns had the fewest games lost to injury in the NBA last season and the trainers are known for their aggressive, cutting-edge approach. D’Antoni’s short, light practices — as opposed to a Pat Riley in Miami or an Avery Johnson in Dallas — likely played in the Suns’ favor as well

http://www.nba.com/suns/news/tribune_hill_070711.html

I will say that you can't really prep for teams in season. There's not often enough time to really game plan. I believe it's best to play your style and force teams to adjust to what you do rather than try to change what you do. Execute your gameplan to perfection and it doesn't matter what the other team is trying to do.

Mike's teams have consistently run other teams into the ground during the season, so clearly his methods have led to fit and strong teams. It's not like he was working with Kobe/Shaq where you can just beat teams to death with overwhelming talent. I think his methods will be an asset to this athletic and long roster. His Suns teams failed to adjust to the tune of 62 wins and WCF's appearances with lesser teams. Like i've often brought up, 54 wins and WCF's with no Joe Johnson or Amar'e, just Nash & Marion as the 2 top players and Diaw/KT as his bigs. You have to give props to a system that still allows that kind of roster to win so much.

nixluva wrote:I'm not sure what you're point was with this post. Is this a sarcastic dig at those who criticize Mike's practices or a post against his methods?

I will say that you can't really prep for teams in season. There's not often enough time to really game plan. I believe it's best to play your style and force teams to adjust to what you do rather than try to change what you do. Execute your gameplan to perfection and it doesn't matter what the other team is trying to do.

Mike's teams have consistently run other teams into the ground during the season, so clearly his methods have led to fit and strong teams. It's not like he was working with Kobe/Shaq where you can just beat teams to death with overwhelming talent. I think his methods will be an asset to this athletic and long roster. His Suns teams failed to adjust to the tune of 62 wins and WCF's appearances with lesser teams. Like i've often brought up, 54 wins and WCF's with no Joe Johnson or Amar'e, just Nash & Marion as the 2 top players and Diaw/KT as his bigs. You have to give props to a system that still allows that kind of roster to win so much.

So here is the thing. Mike has his teams ready to run for 48 minutes and this is clearly a "let them adjust to us" approach. So why does he have to gameplan for each team? He already knows he wants to play the passing lanes and drop off on D, to deny penetration and force jumpers and bad passes. That has been the history of how his teams defend, so it's his unwritten defensive approach. It seems that he wants to introduce more pressing n trapping this year too, which is good for creating TO's if you've got a very quick and athletic team, which we have. So in short he wants to play aggressive on Offense and aggressive on D full court, but in half court most likely we'll see zones and soft man D. He wants long rebounds and tipped passes. Anything to create more fastbreaks.

Childs2Dudley wrote:Just win games. I don't give a **** when they practice.

It's not like all they'll be doing is sleeping every day. They'll still be practicing.

Just looking at Amar'e it's clear this guy isn't taking any days off. That dude is ripped and ready. In the end winning solves everything.

OjilEye wrote:D'Antoni has had feuds with past Knicks players. He's erratic with his roster lineup changes and doesn't communicate well with players. Is it the players responsibility to approach the coach for concerns? Hmm. Perhaps, but it's a 2-way street.

Defense wins championships period. I hope D'Antoni can learn this and learn this quickly.

sigh...

Roster changes were a problem for every coach we've had in recent years, cuz the team wasn't that good. On teams with set stars and role players it's easier to come up with a rotation. When most of your team is made up of role players, no one stands out and it becomes impossible to set a rotation cuz the players performance goes up and down. That's what happens when you try to win with only role players. Now we have an All Star and a PG who at least took his team to the playoffs on the team. That sets part of the rotation up for more stability.

Yeah if a player has a problem it's totally up to him to speak up and go to coach. The coach isn't a mind reader and he's got an entire team to worry about. His door was open so don't listen to those babies whinning about not being able to talk to coach. Besides what were they going to say... "I should be playing coach." Nah, you've been stinking up the joint and we've been losing when your in. "But I'm trying to get a new contract." YEAH well we're trying to win here, try playing better and working harder in practice and i'll get you back in there. "We talkin bout PRACTICE?"

CrushAlot, you say that D'Antoni showed a lack of leadership and teaching and yet, you seem to bash him because he did not play troublemakers that went against him. To me, a coach benching certain guys until they learn to play in a team concept is the epitome of leadership and teaching. If D'Antoni played immature players that weren't professional, then how would they learn that they are not acting properly? Moreover, would the rest of the roster respect the coach if he continued to let behavior like that slide? While it may seem like the easy way out (i.e. not playing certain guys), sometimes that is a good teaching method to let a player know that he needs to change his ways if he wants to make it in the league or at the very least, if he wants to get minutes on that team.

For example, D'Antoni was sour on Nate but he certainly gave him second chances and when Nate finally seemed to somewhat behave, he got minutes.

I don't think D'Antoni tries to piss players off, I think he truly wants to win and is as competitive as any other coach out there. For us fans, it may be difficult to see that at times since we don't have any true inside access. However, I don't think that gives us reason to simply bash the coach when the results aren't pretty and we don't know the full story.

s3231 wrote:Moreover, everything that we've read/seen so far in Training Camp suggests that D'Antoni is going all out to use his players to the best of their abilities. Many of the ideas suggested on this very message board (with a bunch of them coming from BRIGGS) have been echoed by D'Antoni himself.

For example, this includes:

- An 11 man rotation to play quick and have fresh legs (BRIGGS suggestion).
- AR spending time at Center position (BRIGGS and a lot of members here are in favor of this).
- Full court trap has been practiced with many saying that AR will be used heavily in this scheme (heard this one a lot over the summer, definitely BRIGGS idea too).
- The LOAD mechanism that tracks how hard players are working in practice and essentially lets them know they can't slack (a D'Antoni exclusive that as far as we know, hasn't been used by any other team in the NBA).
- A Felton/Douglas backcourt at times to set tone on defense (many articles have stated D'Antoni likes the idea of this combo for defense).

I mean really, the point is D'Antoni is trying every idea that has been thrown out there and more. And yet, if we don't win 50 games this year, I bet a lot of people here will be saying that D'Antoni didn't coach to the best of his abilities. It's ridiculous but true. Sometimes fans don't look at what other teams have and just think that their team is going to be elite simply because they addressed a few issues. Don't get me wrong, I think the playoffs are a very realistic goal (I'm predicting 7th/8th seed) for the first time during the D'Antoni/Walsh tenure, but I find it amusing when people EXPECT (big difference than the word "believe") this team to win 45 games minimum when no one truly knows how the young talent will perform.

If some of you truly believe that D'Antoni doesn't care about winning or doesn't put forth the effort into his job to get it done, do yourself a favor and go read "Seven Seconds or Less." Pretty much details a season spent on D'Antoni's coaching staff and if you still hate the guy after reading that book and question his effort, then go ahead and continue to criticize him.

It's hard to argue with ones point of preparation, it's usually the recipe of success in most cases.
However, since MDA is going to incorprate a full court pressing denfense, and a fast break offense, the ideal preparation for that would be rest.