Posted by oohah:
i thought they played hard to start last year too. and there were plenty of games where the starters fell behind by 20 and the kids charged us back. i think you are trying to draw great differences in "heart" between this point last year and this point this year that are greater than exist in reality.
in fact, if anything, i thought the first several games of last season they exhibited GREATER defensive intensity than this year.
Oh Blue, you're just needling me!
You're right they did show some nice defense at the beginning of last season, but they never showed us they had what it takes to threaten in a game where they were down by 23. The kids did show they could fight back somewhat early on, but you-know-who saw that and put the Kibosh on that noise poste-haste lest anyone think these guys could actually play.
oohah
He did exactly what Isiah did, let the kids fight us back until they needed a rest, then put in starters to see if they could keep it up. On this night Marbury happened to hit a couple of perimeter Js at the right time, and that is the major difference between last night and early in the season last year.
That's really all there is to it. Now of course last year we also had Marbury chose to not listen to anything LB had to say after the 8th game of the season, so other dynamics came into play later on. Bt at this point in each season, I see a lot of parity.