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Finestrg
Posts: 27296
Alba Posts: 1
Joined: 1/1/2006
Member: #1069
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- The way we closed out this game was a disgrace. Especially to that team - let's be honest, the Heat isn't a good team. Wade had an off-night and he doesn't have nearly enough help anyway. When you got a team down, the good team's smell blood and go for the kill. Look at the Lakers last night. They had Portland (a much better team than the Heat) down early and kept them down all night, eventually winning by 20.
- Other than the lack of a good close-out, there were a lot of positives. Lee gave you his double-double and really passed it well, Zach scored at will and rebounded the ball, Craw played well overall (when he takes good shoots he's looks like one of the league's better off-guards but he still takes too many bad shots), Nate played well in the end (his ball-handling & FT shooting down the stretch was the difference), Duhon had an impact and Chandler played awesome. Stuff to build on...
- I've done nothing but sing D'Antoni's praises so far (and rightly so) but you gotta call him out on two things tonight:
(1) He really jerked Steph around badly tonight and embarrased the guy and it shouldn't have come to that. Look, Marbury's a loon and it's clear he's not part of this team's future but the way he was treated tonight was unnecessary. Although he doesn't start in the pre-season (outside of one game at home against the Celtics), it was clear he was part of the rotation, playing 20-25 mins. and playing pretty well to boot. Then he doesn't even get in tonight. Very weird. Again, I don't care because I've come to the realization that Steph's gone after this season, but come on Mike, if this is what you knew you wanted to do you tell the guy what your intentions are (I hope he did but somehow I doubt it) and you let him know where he stands. Now you pull this and you're really running the risk of Steph becoming a real malcontent and cancer, things I associate with last year's team, hopefully not this year's. When asked about Marbury's DNP during the post-game press conference, D'Antoni had this to say (in substance): "There's two directions the team's going, the now and the future...I don't blame Steph if he was upset, I don't really have an answer for you." Come on bro, that's weak. You know what, no problem Mike, a lot of us are on board with that, but you gotta tell Steph that. Say what you want but unlike a complete stiff like Eddy Curry, Marbury's in optimum shape and can still play at a pretty high level. If Steph just found out tonight like we all did, that's wrong. I expect a little more from D'Antoni. I mean at least Isiah told Steph on the plane last year that he planned on starting Mardy. Mike's gotta sit down with him and clear the air & lay the law down. Any player, no matter how difficult or immature, deserves that much from their coach.
(2) You gotta find a way to get Gallinari more than a few minutes in the first half. When you're up 19,20,21 points in the second half, you get that kid back in the game for some more minutes. Suppose he did that and Gallo put some points on the board or even got hot, then all of a sudden we're talkin' how good Gallo looked and not how we almost coughed the game up. Bottom line we were up 20 well into the second half at home - get this kid back in the game. No excuses...
[Edited by - finestrg on 10-30-2008 12:41 AM]
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