The goal is not to beat the nets or the Bobcats or the Bulls. The goal is to teach the young guys the work ethic, professionalism, on court effort(on both the offensive and defensive ends) that it takes to be a long-term winner. There is no compromise. If a player cannot buy into what the coach is looking to do, the coach should not play him just to eke out an extra win to make it into the playoffs and be slaughtered by the Cavs, Celtics or Magic. We are ridding ourselves of bad habits and attempting to create positive ones so that our young guys will be ready to compete when we are a legitimate team. That's how you develop youth. You don't develop them by compromising your principals and saying "I will play you because you have a nice contract, can score and dunk. I will play you regardless of whether you listen to what I want or not, because I want to win 36 games instead of 32".
Are you guys listening to yourselves? This isn't about Nate or any individual on our bench. This is about building a team. A team of guys who will come to games(like the one against the Nets) prepared with a killer instinct. A team of guys that will up their effort across the board on the defensive end. Our core group of players is beginning to develop all of this. In years past because we coddled guys like Nate, we had none of this. When a player jerked off there was no one that would stand up and say "that's not how we do things". Now this core group of 8 or 9 are seeing success because of their efforts. No, they aren't a good team. But they are playing hard, seeing results and even battling with teams far better then them. I can guarantee you that because we built this core of guys, set a standard and D'Antoni did not compromise, it will be almost impossible for Nate to come in and play D the way he was. The coach won't tolerate it, and our emerging leaders(D.Lee) will not tolerate it either.
Subtle thing that coaches notice. For the past 2 years David Lee has had some of the worst body language in basketball. When things go bad he puts his head down, shakes it, sulks etc. Last night it was amazing how different his body language was. Team is playing like crap, he yells at the team(3 times that I caught) to step it up. He claps as he goes down court after the team gave up miserable lay-ups at least attempting to get his teammates going. It did not work last night, but these subtle changes are enormous when it comes to building a team. Others will catch on. I'm personally starting to see Al catch on a little bit as well.
