nixluva wrote:This whole thing is tough. You could go in different directions and neither one could work. There's no book on the best way to blend in new starters that play a different style of ball than you play. Trying to figure this out on the fly has to be tough, especially when you factor in the pressure of doing it in NY.

As much as some want to bash MDA, I can't imagine top coaches like Phil, Doc, Sloan or LB wanting to deal with what Mike has had to deal with his 2+ years here. To have your team make major moves every year you've been there and have to keep going thru the process of figuring out a rotation over and over. You figure things out, then a trade you have to start over, rinse and repeat 2 more times. The last one was the hardest, cuz he was getting comfortable with his team and this new group is a totally different animal. I think he deserves a chance to go to camp with this group and some help and see what he can do. It's not much to ask considering the circumstances.

Papabear Says

I know that you want to see your boy Mike D stay but he is going. He is the wrong man for this team. The lowest score for a first quarter in 55 years!!! can you explain that?? He didn't call enough time outs or have a plan to get them out of the funk. 55 years Low in scoring!! Explain that. I would have benched the whole starting lineup!! What difference would it have made??

Papabear wrote:

martin wrote:

crzymdups wrote:

Marv wrote:and as far as carmelo goes it's time for him to realize he's on a dysfunctional team and go out there and put up the 35 a game he's capable of. let the coach utilize your advantage on the court and let him get the rest of the team to complement your game.

Ithink the problem is that Carmelo wants to do that and Mike doesn't want him to.

I think Mike D'Antoni is the main problem right now. He's like, "Melo, you're on MY team." Without realizing that A) they traded his team to get Melo and B) Melo's contract runs about 3yrs longer than D'Antoni's and he has far more pull with Dolan at this point.

not sure how you got that sense at all. MDA has slowed down the offense and changed it enough so that both Melo and Billups would feel comfortable. Maybe I am missing something that you could point out. Hahn has a similar take: http://bit.ly/eiHxEc

Here is the thing that we have seen with Melo: He has not 100% shown that he is a leader. He threw an on-court tantrum at JJ and another at TD over that past week. Now, to be fair, all high level guys do that from time-to-time out of frustration, and there is no prob with that, but you also have to do it at the proper time and not so publicly all the time and I think Melo erred on these 2 recent occasions - more like pouting than anything.

Papabear Says

Melo is playing with a team of strangers that has not played together very long.All I can say is that all the while Mike D was here he could have taken us to the playoffs when Zach and Crawford was here we would have won more games than we will win this year but Walsh blew up the team looking for lebron. We said that Zachs price was too high well Zaxh is averaging 20 points a game and more that 10 rebounds a game. That equals Amare and Zach was cheaper. Crawford who all of you hated played just as good as defense a Melo and can score almost as many points at a cheaper price. So what did we gain??? 1. A lost playoff season.And we even had David Lee.

haha.. good post papabear...

sounds like we went backwards.... rofl...