aside from running the triangle much more tonight-- 50% maybe-- fisher is getting quality minutes from his deeper bench players. holtzman-esque... and that is jackson's influence no doubt in my mind. i appreciate that there seems to be a plan emerging and being executed by fisher and his crew. a terrific and promising road win indeed.

lance thomas and langston galloway why do i lump them together? because these are the type of players that a title contending team needs. heady, tough, hard workers... and clutch.
melo to me he played like a franchise player for the first 40 minutes... and then got drunk. seriously, though, if he can put together a complete game and play the way he played the first 44 minutes, sharing the ball, getting others involved, facilitating, i am happy. is there a connection between his being red hot in the second quarter and the fact that he really facilitated leading up to "taking over"? absolutely! now, what would have happened had he continued to play a tight game from the 44 minute mark instead of going iso melo or "island melo" as wally put it? well he has to try that in order to find out. i think he took 5 bad shots, but 3 of the were in the last 8 minutes of the game, where he went 1-5 and had two turnovers trying to go one on one. still, very promising game from the 124 million dollar man.
seraphin he does not deserve minutes. put amundsen in there from now on.
early lets not get carried away. he hits a prayer double clutch three and finishes with his right hand on the left hand layup. remember he is to earn minutes on the defensive end.
vujajcic and calderon practically invisible in my opinion. when afflalo returns their minutes should be drastically reduced.
lopez he is getting better every game. more offensive rebounds, more assists, high percentage shots, effective defense and utilizing all his fouls.
o'quinn not sure what's up with him. he seems to be regressing somehow
grant and williams also some regression here, especially with grant. i think grant is losing confidence and is hurting his court vision because he is playing tight. williams? not sure really, except that maybe fisher wants the bench to run more triangle, which is not williams strength. surprisingly he registered 3 assists and once again got to the line in limited minutes.
kp strange game from him. i saw some bad melo-like habits seeping into his game, for one thing. i think i saw hints of that in the last two games as well. something to watch. that said, he still finds ways to make an impact. he's played 8 games now.

you like williams so you are going a bit easy on him. His 3 assists today were almost excuse me assists. 1 was decent maybe.

Melo really did not have a good second half, you are being a bit too nice (maybe based on the flack you get for constant melo bashing? )

Sasha actually had a very good first half. I still don't like him. Second half he did not play much.

Jose is doing something right out there to get his PT. Turnovers? Offensive flow?

I like early a lot more than you do but I am ok with fish bringing him along slowly.

I am start to have more faith in fisher and in what he is seeing that we are not privy to.

mreinman wrote:Melo really did not have a good second half, you are being a bit too nice (maybe based on the flack you get for constant melo bashing? )

Even the numbnut ESPN radio announcers noticed Me70 was facilitating noticably better this game, even when KP and Jose were bricking open shots.
The 124 million dollar man making sure our 2nd year NBDL star gets his game going.

Things be looking up. Thank God, dk doesn't listen to 98.7FM. Melo's post game would have set him running for his Paxil.

jrodmc wrote:

mreinman wrote:Melo really did not have a good second half, you are being a bit too nice (maybe based on the flack you get for constant melo bashing? )

Didn't not notice how he integrated the little melo bash in the comments on KP?

Even the numbnut ESPN radio announcers noticed Me70 was facilitating noticably better this game, even when KP and Jose were bricking open shots.
The 124 million dollar man making sure our 2nd year NBDL star gets his game going.

Things be looking up. Thank God, dk doesn't listen to 98.7FM. Melo's post game would have set him running for his Paxil.

Give it a rest jrodmc. NO one is hating on Melo.

Dude had 3 assists all game, all in the 1st half. We (meaning all Knicks fans) appreciated that. He looked for his teammates first, he facilitated, he trusted the system.

2nd half he sucked COK.

yellowboy90 wrote:Who cares what his ast totals are when people don't care about his total when it doesn't fit there agenda. It's about ast attempts how he moves the ball. To me Melo didn't pass as much in the 4th as he did through the 1st 3 qtrs. Despite that I seem to remember a pass to Calderon who took his time on a corner 3 that was blk by Johnson, a cross court pass to Gallo for a 3pta, and a pocket pass to Lopez who missed. I also remember a pass to Lopez on the one that was a to when he thought Lopez was rolling but instead he popped.

I would Give Melo a C+ to B-. He made some big steals after his mistakes that helped mitigate some of his bed offensive blunders.

C- is more accurate, I think he was 0-7 in the quarter.

RoLo and LT bailed him and the Knicks out, big time.

Knixkik wrote:My observation is Fisher needs to stop treating this team like a grade-school team, where he let's everyone play. Not everyone deserves to play. He needs to cut this down significantly. Amundson did not need to play, neither did Seraphin at this point. Early brought some nice energy for a few mins, but otherwise he's not a rotation player. When Afflalo comes back tonight, Sasha needs to be shut down. Calderon needs to be reduced. Galloway and Afflalo need to play 30 mpg minimum. Time to tighten things up and establish a rotation to get some chemistry and rhythm. Other than that, a 4-4 start against all playoff teams except for LA is a start we can be very satisfied with.

Over all the bench played poorly last night. Bennett, Biyomumbo... they played some real scrubs. I thought we should have done better against that group.

Derek Fisher's 2 point win is measured against the 15 point win with superior style points the team SHOULD have scored if he has just done everything a fan thinks he should have done.

Someday some smart NBA team is going to have their head coach watch the game on TV (never running practices or having any interaction with the team) and text the assistant coach on the floor substation patterns and plays so the team can benefit from the superior, unbiased perspective we all have.

ChuckBuck wrote:Better to win ugly, then not at all, right? I whole-heartedly agree with that. At the end of the day it's about W's and L's.

There are no ugly wins for a team that won 17 games last year, on the road, against the division leader.

It's an oxymoron.

That said, are we not allowed to pick apart and analyze what happened during that 48 minutes?

You're allowed to do whatever you like. The problem is the premise is false. The premise is the head coach had NOTHING to do with all the things that kept the Knicks in the game and got them leads, and only had influence on the things that prevented them from having a bigger lead.

The premise is, Fisher can ONLY have negative influence. The positives are solely the work of the players.

Knicks are .500, exactly where most everyone would have wanted the Knicks to be before the season started.

And in the NBA you don't win and lose clean games. This is what we all wanted and what we all wanted looks like.

mreinman wrote:

bigbasketballs wrote:

ChuckBuck wrote:Better to win ugly, then not at all, right? I whole-heartedly agree with that. At the end of the day it's about W's and L's.

There are no ugly wins for a team that won 17 games last year, on the road, against the division leader.

It's an oxymoron.

That said, are we not allowed to pick apart and analyze what happened during that 48 minutes?

You're allowed to do whatever you like. The problem is the premise is false. The premise is the head coach had NOTHING to do with all the things that kept the Knicks in the game and got them leads, and only had influence on the things that prevented them from having a bigger lead.

The premise is, Fisher can ONLY have negative influence. The positives are solely the work of the players.

Knicks are .500, exactly where most everyone would have wanted the Knicks to be before the season started.

And in the NBA you don't win and lose clean games. This is what we all wanted and what we all wanted looks like.

we would like to win but also, we would like to play fundamentally sound basketball and build the correct culture.

One can be tickled pink at the win and at the same time point out the great, the good, the bad, the ugly. There was plenty of ugly to discuss.

How many times do we have to say this is a process? We know that these guys are being taught how to play TEAM BALL. The problem is that this isn't an easy process. Especially against good teams and while some of our players are trying to develop and adjust to the NBA level. Then you add in struggling vets and the absence of Afflalo and you can somewhat understand the Knicks not always looking great. Still they play hard every night and have been in every game.

nixluva wrote:

mreinman wrote:

bigbasketballs wrote:

ChuckBuck wrote:Better to win ugly, then not at all, right? I whole-heartedly agree with that. At the end of the day it's about W's and L's.

There are no ugly wins for a team that won 17 games last year, on the road, against the division leader.

It's an oxymoron.

That said, are we not allowed to pick apart and analyze what happened during that 48 minutes?

You're allowed to do whatever you like. The problem is the premise is false. The premise is the head coach had NOTHING to do with all the things that kept the Knicks in the game and got them leads, and only had influence on the things that prevented them from having a bigger lead.

The premise is, Fisher can ONLY have negative influence. The positives are solely the work of the players.

Knicks are .500, exactly where most everyone would have wanted the Knicks to be before the season started.

And in the NBA you don't win and lose clean games. This is what we all wanted and what we all wanted looks like.

we would like to win but also, we would like to play fundamentally sound basketball and build the correct culture.

One can be tickled pink at the win and at the same time point out the great, the good, the bad, the ugly. There was plenty of ugly to discuss.

How many times do we have to say this is a process? We know that these guys are being taught how to play TEAM BALL. The problem is that this isn't an easy process. Especially against good teams and while some of our players are trying to develop and adjust to the NBA level. Then you add in struggling vets and the absence of Afflalo and you can somewhat understand the Knicks not always looking great. Still they play hard every night and have been in every game.

you don't have to keep saying it, were not stupid

There really is no excuse from breaking and freelancing from the offense. Especially when it's 4 or 5 seconds into the 24 second shot clock.

That's what Fisher has to do at some point this season. Pull Melo to the side or pull him out of the game entirely, if he continues to be a selfish prick.

We're trying to build a culture here...