yellowboy90 wrote:

loweyecue wrote:When you don't have a reliable second option is when you need to try getting everyone involved early in games and ride whoevers hot for that game in addition to Melo. If Melo is cold the this offense is dead out of the doors. Our PGs suck and there's nothing woody can do about it.

Unfortunately I missed the full game yesterday didn't even read the game thread.
While STAT/Lin are out JR and Novak are your two biggest threats. We need to try and establish both EARLY in the game. Shrimpers good for a few but the most reliable option is going into the post with TC.

It has to be two out of these four guys every night from now on out for us to stay in this. I don't think we have real game plan to get and keep them involved. The PG situation compounds the problem.

They tried that early in the 1st and it was ugly. Same for the third and early 4th. The shooters are not taking advantage of their mismatches and open shots. It is what it is though.

Outside of JR none of them have a reputation of a great offensive player. Novak gets a lot of respect now but these guys need to be worked in to the offense. Baron Davis is a high caliber PG and we can't give him a pass for much longer. He needs to work on getting everyone involved on offense whether he is a 109% or not. Woodson needs to rip him a new one if he keeps this sh1t up. To think we thought he would be our starting PG before the season started.

mrKnickShot wrote:

SupremeCommander wrote:science has come a long way. they should just clone Melo

Then people might have 12 reasons to hate this team as opposed to one.

CrushAlot wrote:Shumpert is such a beast on d that I think his impact has to be relied on. Tyson is always reliable on both ends of the court. J.R. has been hitting huge shots of late. I also wouldn't count out Baron down the stretch. He is always diving on the court for loose balls and his shot selection is improving. Hopefully his health continues to improve as does his rythm.

None of those guys are "reliable" offensive options.

mrKnickShot wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:Shumpert is such a beast on d that I think his impact has to be relied on. Tyson is always reliable on both ends of the court. J.R. has been hitting huge shots of late. I also wouldn't count out Baron down the stretch. He is always diving on the court for loose balls and his shot selection is improving. Hopefully his health continues to improve as does his rythm.

None of those guys are "reliable" offensive options.

loweyecue wrote:Our offense is designed to maximize Melo and Amar'e and minimize/marginalize everyone else. We are not going to win games when Melo and Amar'e(when healthy) can't win them for us. Melo doesn't need a PG to set him up. Amar'e does and his offense is definitely being missed along with PG play. A half court grinding offense is not heavily PG dependent.

I completely disagree. While Melo can go ISO and he is able to create his own shot, not having a PG who can even get the ball up the floor with any time remaining on the shot clock and who can't get the Knicks into their offense (even with ISO) kills the knicks, and kills Melo. Especially in crunch time. Todays game was a perfect example of this.

Lin returning (and to a lesser extent Amare) will probably mean Melo scores less but he will probably have more assists and we would not need to solely rely on him.