If you talk a big game and you cant get your players up to the challenge--the buck stops with you.

Let's be real here. What has been accomplished with Mike D? Did he honestly accomplish anything?

No number---it's simple as this ---bad year --nothing accomplished.

Posted by islesfan:

Fire D'Antoni

No sense spending the next 3 years pretending that this system works. How many other good players are we going to pass on so D'Antoni can have "his type of players"? Does anybody want to wake up 3 years from now and realize that the Knicks have to blow up the roster again because it's full of D'Antoni type players?

Posted by JohnWallace44:

If you talk a big game and you cant get your players up to the challenge--the buck stops with you.

Let's be real here. What has been accomplished with Mike D? Did he honestly accomplish anything?

No number---it's simple as this ---bad year --nothing accomplished.

He did what we thought he could do. Pump up the value of the existing players and squeeze out a few extra wins.

Isn't that what we thought at the beginning of the year?

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by JesseDark:

In a nutshell I would give him a 6. I don't agree with his philosopy of out scoring without any defense. I do agree that the players have to get mentally tougher. That is something that the coaches have said going back to LB.
I think his decision on Marbury was handled totally wrong. Now that we are in a playoff push and Duhon has shot his wad having Marbury around would have been helpful. His style and the individual players off season effort has aided certain players. David Lee take a bow. But it has also shown his weaknesses. I don't think opposing power forwards worry about DLee inspite of all those double doubles. has established a system. It needs to be tweaked, but he has definitely established a system.

if 90-95% of the players are no longer going to be here in 2 years, did it really matter if a system is established?

Posted by islesfan:

Nobody has learned how to play defense, aside from incessant switching. Most of the available playing time has gone to players with no future with this team, over players who could. The 2 players whose value has been inflated are the 2 players who are restricted free agents this summer and have drastically increased the risk of having them leave for nothing thanks to the new GM. For some reason the focus was on making the playoffs at all costs, which is ridiculously short sighted, and now the players can focus on another failure this summer.

And amazingly enough, yes, that's what I thought at the beginning of the year.

Posted by JohnWallace44:

Posted by islesfan:

Nobody has learned how to play defense, aside from incessant switching. Most of the available playing time has gone to players with no future with this team, over players who could. The 2 players whose value has been inflated are the 2 players who are restricted free agents this summer and have drastically increased the risk of having them leave for nothing thanks to the new GM. For some reason the focus was on making the playoffs at all costs, which is ridiculously short sighted, and now the players can focus on another failure this summer.

And amazingly enough, yes, that's what I thought at the beginning of the year.

Isles, they switch because they're crappy defenders. Hughes doesn't switch.

Craw and Zach were in the top 10 in scoring when they were traded. They don't get moved if they're not scoring like that.

Walsh has some work to do. If he's not going to move Lee or Nate, then this season can be looked at in that light. If he does, then it makes sense to me what's happened.

Its all about this Summer for Walsh and all about 2010 for MikeD.

If we ran Mike out of town no coach would even dare come near this franchise.

Posted by GKFv2:

Posted by islesfan:

Posted by Paladin55:

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by GKFv2:

End of the season is more appropriate. Starting one after a 30 point blowout to a terrible team kinda seems like you want to get some overblown reactions.

2 responses w/o overblown reactions. you see, have faith in uk...

No, it WAS a strange time to start a thread like this one after the game they just played. So what was the score when you came up with this one?

Why not start it after the tough road loss to the Cavs after a nice road trip, as the Knicks were coming home to face the Nets?


You got some decent responses despite the rather obvious timing of this thread.

Why would the timing of this thread have been better after a nice road trip and a tough road loss against a team that has lost only once all year at home?

Doing that would be like extending Isiah Thomas after a hail mary victory over the Wizards put them in the last playoff spot momentarily.

The only thing obvious about the timing is that when you're 28-40, 12th in your conference and the team is folding like a cheap suit, there's a good chance any thread critiquing the head coach would be posted at a bad time.

You must have been expecting big things from a 23 win team who has changed over a majority of its roster during the season. Not to mention new management and a new coach. And of course the players acquired pretty much are here for their contracts and not their talent. So what exactly is so surprising about being out of the playoff race with a junk team of spare parts? Were you really expecting this team to finish between the 4th to 8th seed?

Posted by GKFv2:

Posted by arkrud:

Posted by GKFv2:

Posted by islesfan:

Posted by Paladin55:

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by GKFv2:

End of the season is more appropriate. Starting one after a 30 point blowout to a terrible team kinda seems like you want to get some overblown reactions.

2 responses w/o overblown reactions. you see, have faith in uk...

No, it WAS a strange time to start a thread like this one after the game they just played. So what was the score when you came up with this one?

Why not start it after the tough road loss to the Cavs after a nice road trip, as the Knicks were coming home to face the Nets?


You got some decent responses despite the rather obvious timing of this thread.

Why would the timing of this thread have been better after a nice road trip and a tough road loss against a team that has lost only once all year at home?

Doing that would be like extending Isiah Thomas after a hail mary victory over the Wizards put them in the last playoff spot momentarily.

The only thing obvious about the timing is that when you're 28-40, 12th in your conference and the team is folding like a cheap suit, there's a good chance any thread critiquing the head coach would be posted at a bad time.

You must have been expecting big things from a 23 win team who has changed over a majority of its roster during the season. Not to mention new management and a new coach. And of course the players acquired pretty much are here for their contracts and not their talent. So what exactly is so surprising about being out of the playoff race with a junk team of spare parts? Were you really expecting this team to finish between the 4th to 8th seed?

Isles expect to be always right, so he will always be wrong.
Misery is always self-inflicted; so leave the man in it; he is the muster of making himself miserable
.


[Edited by - arkrud on 03-21-2009 10:39 AM]

LOL. Yeah, which is why I don't expect a response to the question either.

Posted by islesfan:


First of all, I never considered wins and losses to be important for this year. That is until D'Antoni put wins ahead of developing players and the team in general for his shortsighted goal of making a playoff run.
Agree with your first statement, but who was he supposed to develop? Chandler has played 33MPG and Gallinari was unable to be "developed" because of his injury. Lee is out of position, but the Duhon/Lee pick and roll was a staple of our offense for much of the year. Nate has seeminly clashed with MDA over how the game should be played, and Duhon, who was MVP of the team early on, has wilted. Q knows the system, but is too inconsistent to play big minutes anymore. The real problem is the fact that we don't have enough guys 25 and under who will be on this team in a few years. This is not the Trailblazers' lineup.

From Day 1 of training camp, the only things I considered important for this year was putting his system in place, teaching defense and developing players that have a future with this team beyond 2010. Right now, it's safe to say that D'Antoni has failed at all 3.
The "system" seemed to be in place at one point, even though our personnel limitations kept us from winning. Again- we just don't have that many guys who are going to be here beyond 2010. The team has played good D at times, but there is a lack of focus on the part of some and a lack of ability on the part of others.

What you're seeing from them now is not his system. It's the same old 1 on 1 garbage that the Knicks have been playing for years now. And don't bring up the new players because the player most guilty of this is a player who has been with D'Antoni since he's been here, Nate. There's no flow, no movement and not even the SSOL stuff that D'Antoni likes.
Hard to disagree with this based on recent play. Even some of our wins were sparked by 1/1 performances by guys like Nate, Hughes, or Harrington. Lots of people dump on Duhon because his play has declined, but when the Knicks were at their best in terms of MDA's "system," Duhon was the guy directing things. With his decline the "systen" declined.

Do I really need to explain how there's been no defense taught or demanded? How many of the worst FG% teams in the NBA play the Knicks and have their best games? Just check out last night's game for an example. It's not a coincidence.
I just don't know if you can say this simply based on what you see. I have not had the chance to sit in on a Knicks practice, but I do know that MDA is always yelling at guys who f'up on D- which makes me think that there is a philsophy they go by. Not having a shot blocker is a killer, though.

D'Antoni has done little to develop players. He forced Gallinari back before he was 100%, when he said he wouldn't do that because he wanted to do what was right for the player, and when he did play his minutes were jerked around in terms of total minutes and when he would get them during the game. To a lesser extent he's done the same with Chandler. After a full year with D'Antoni, I would have expected him to have been integrated more and have given a larger and more defined role.
Chandler is getting 33 MPG, and we really don't know what kind of coaching he is getting during practice. I'm not sure what a "defined role" is for Chandler. He has probably done too much shooting from the outside- I would like to see a post-up game from him and see him use the backboard more when shooting, and also see him drive on a consistent basis, but we don't know how much that is Wilson and how much MDA. Gallinari should probably not have played this year. I thought it funny that people criticized his game when it was obvious to people who had watched clips of him that he was not able to do the things he did in Europe, and the things I expected to see, because he was injured. I'm surprised you did not talk about Nate's development. He has had a breakout year in some ways, but it is obvious that he is not a "system" player. It would have been nice if Nate's ability had been intergrated into the team concept MDA claims to promote, but Nate has been a hard player to reform. The same can also be said of Harrington

I am also a coach and teacher, and no matter what you teach, how you teach it, and how often you reinforce it, there are people who do not do what they are supposed to do come a test or a competition.

Overall, I don't think I was expecting much but nonetheless have been greatly disappointed by the lack of progress of this franchise moving forward.
Ultimately any progress we made or didn't make this year has to be seen in light of the fact that so many of the players on this team will not be here in a few years. The lack of quality in the East made the playoffs a possibility and Walsh and MDA went for it. I think that Gallinari's injury is one of the biggest factors which makes me say that we have not made the kind of progress this season that I was hoping for, but there have been a number of high moments this year, and we have usually been competitive.