Nalod wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

Nalod wrote:
Chaney: Did a very good job with what we had. The Dice thing had great potential but it was not ment to be. Layden to his credit was not starphucking out of panic and saving the assets. WE had picks and expirings. Firing chaney was a starphuch move by Isiah. He was not the problem, it was the roster.

At the time I never forgave Chaney for playing McDyess so many minutes in a preseason game, which led to him fracturing his knee, but nowadays I think the knicks medical/training staff were more to blame, as they cleared players to play when they clearly weren't recovered, and in fact Camby and McDyess criticised them after they had been traded.

IT really screwed him in the end- didn't he let Chaney know he was about to get fired by joking about it on some talk show? He then planned on hiring Mike Fratello, only he turned it down after the story had been leaked to the press. IT then had to scramble, and pick a coach in a couple of hours- went for Lenny, which was a huge mistake. What a way to run an organisation!

Dice broke his good knee I believe.

Sometimes SHIT just happens.

Looking back, if Dice don't get hurt, that team is very good.

Load on H20 was heavy and it wore him out.

Gotta blame someone right?

Blame it on the rain.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/2003.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_NBA_Draft

having Kurt Thomas and Mcdyess, would be similar to Amare and Turiaf in some ways, except Mcdyess has the ability to post up.
I remember Camby kept breaking down for years in New York but to give him up with a draft pick that was Nene or could have been Amare was one of the biggest mistakes
Layden made. Although Thomas and Mcdyess were both solid players, they would be a weak combo defensively, as both would be undersized, and neither was a center.
Thomas was having one of his career years, but he has a vertical jump of 2 inches, I just don't think it would have worked regardless.
With players below being our rotation, it was set up for a failure.

Camby - filled up after he went to Denver, he was a good help defender, but didn't have the size/weight/and strength to guard a legit center/post player.
It would have been nice if we had a younger, slightly more athletic, and better post player than Doleac to compliment Camby, so he could concentrate on help defense.

Doleac
Othella Harrington
Travis Knight
Clarence Weatherspoon
Lee Nailon

To go with that weak that, a rotation of

Houston *horrible defense, gave up more points than he scored at his position*

Spree *always thought he deserved more credit than Houston, being smaller but guarding the bigger/faster/better players in that era, with players like Vince Carter
Tmac on a consistent basis, while playing point/forward/SG. I think he felt ripped off with Houston getting max, while he had the bigger workload
and produced much more consistently than him*

Ward/Frank Williams *i love Ward, but he always get posted up on, as we never had a legit center with Camby's constant injury to help us during his late era. I actually thought Frank Williams with Mardy Collins both had good size to go with defense, athleticism. Think they could have been better players, staying in the league as serviceable had they developed outside of New York and practice a little more/harder. It would a tough place for rookies to learn, with an aged core, and lack of size in our big men to help them. Ward/Childs/ especially Mark Jackson could have been good mentors for them, had they been around for a little longer.

Frank Wiliams was picked up Denver and traded to us as part of the deal for Camby/Nene/Dice, picked at 25, ahead of players like

John Salmons 26
Boozer 36
Miloš Vujanić 37 Knicks
Scola 56 Spurs

honorable mentions

Nene 6
Amare 9
Butler 10
Prince 23
Krstic 24

Looks like the past should be looked in to, as we always have been repeated the same mistakes in the draft years after.
We missed out on so many centers since, including Marc Gasol, McGee, Hibbert, and Bynum...

In the near future, we would need a replacement for Tyson Chandler, with one of our picks....2013, 2015?, 2016?, 2017??

K22 wrote:Possibly might be 8 soon.

This is unacceptable.

Since 2001 - Jeff Van Gundy, Don Chaney, Herb Williams, Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown, Isiah Thomas and Mike D'Antoni (currently).

In each case, the coach has had an agenda or was handcuffed by the front office or just plain sucked.

At some point, we have to get this right.

JVG and WIlkens did a good job here with what they had and should not have been fired. I don't think anyone will argue that we got rid of Isiah too soon. Brown is a good coach but he wasn't trying to coach but grab the GM spot while he was here. I think you have to look at each coach individually and not fire or keep someone because it would be X number of coaches in Y years like this thread suggests teams should do.

nixluva wrote:How about we give this coach a good PG or 2 and get out of his way? If Baron can find success it could be the missing link. We still need to find another good PG or develop Shump or Lin to the point where they can effectively back up Baron. It sounds overly simplistic until you look at the evidence of how bad this team has played in the past when there have been PG issues. Everyone knows and still choose to ignore that you must have at least a decent PG if you have D'Antoni.

He's not inept because of this, most coaches will fail if they don't have a capable PG but his style is even more dependent on having someone who can be the QB out there. It's a bit like needing an accurate QB that can read a defense in order to play the NFL West Coast offense. You couldn't stick Tim Tebow in that situation and expect him to succeed. He can't make the reads fast enough or make the passes accurately enough to make it work. So we've basically handcuffed MDA for all these years, knowing what he needs.

Just last year when we finally gave him a decent, NOT GREAT, but decent NBA PG, look what happened to the offense! With Felton as the PG, the Knicks were 2nd in scoring and 5th in Offensive Efficiency. That was a top 5 offense! Now we have a defense that is at least top half of the league, tho not perfect. If this team scored at it's usual rate, this team would no doubt be a winning club. Why change the coach when all it seems we need is to improve the roster at a couple of key spots?

WB - we missed you.