I disagree the assertion that Brown hasn't attempted to adapt to the players. Most people who say that mean that we should be running MORE, but please remember that Brown started the season with Steph advancing the ball MUCH FASTER than last year or now, but we were averaging like 30 TOs per game!!! Guys like Frye and AD told Larry that the PGs, instead of running set plays and settling things down, were making up plays and everyone was getting confused. Then because we were out of position we also weren't able to transition defense when the inevitable TOs turned into opponent fastbreaks.
Check this out from Oct. 20th (preseason)
Brown again acknowledged it will take time for the players to learn his system, but he seemed to indicate it might take longer than he first assumed. While the team is learning how to play defense, he wants them to temporarily play a more deliberate half-court offense in order to slow the game down and prevent teams from scoring 114 points, as the Sixers did Tuesday.
He started that process yesterday, which he doesn't like to do because he likes to run the ball at the defense as much as possible. But after watching Tuesday's game, he came to the realization that the team isn't learning what he has been teaching.
Then here we are again in mid Novemeber:
Brown lamented the Knicks' lack of organization on offense and pointed out that even a rookie like Channing Frye could see it going helter skelter. Brown said Frye approached him at the airport after Wednesday's loss and said, "Coach, it's amazing. When things get tough, instead of us slowing it down and executing to get a good set, very rarely do we get in good position to run a play."
Brown has become so uncertain about what his players can do, that he said he will pare down the Knicks' playbook to just a handful of sets. He already has taken to calling plays from the bench, something he hates doing, and on fastbreak opportunities he will limit them to two options.
In practice, before games and in timeouts, Brown has been hammering home his most basic tenets in the hope that repetition will lead to execution.
"If you say it a hundred times, you've got to say it a thousand times until they get it," he said. "I want to be specific so there's no indecision at all. That's what I told them again today. We're going to limit the things we do."
So Larry slowed things down and simplified the playbook, and to explain why he noted someone didn't even know where the shot clock was and that he didn't have "heads" out there.
Some have used those comments to justify the unforgivable behavior of quitters, but in fact he was explaining why he needed to dumb down to a Junior Varsity playbook.
That WAS him adapting to his players. Make it slow, make it simple, try to get them to handle the basics, then take things back up. But they've NEVER gotten the basics.
Thus, just days ago we hear him talking of simplifying things even further still, like walking the ball up every play or going to zone defense. None of that is Larry Brown ball, those are LB's adaptations to ineptitude.
4/5/2006 1:36 PM