TripleThreat wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:The reason woodson failed is because the buying in resulted in early losses, that resulted in to stop buying in. Then the line up changes come, with bad rotations, disgruntle players = selfish players.

IMHO, the reasons that Woodson failed is because

1) The talent simply isn't on the roster, not now and not last year, to really build a winner and contending team. Woodson has no control over what the front office does and whom they pick up and trade for, etc.

2) Woodson became the default coach left standing. Clearly Melo and CAA simply wanted Jeremy Lin out. And anyone associated with Lin, Linsanity and taking away the spotlight from Melo. It was a brutal culling. D'Antoni, whose system would favor Lin, Fields, Lin's closest friend on the team, Novak, Lin's go to gunner, Jeffries, Lin's veteran enforcer. An elite player can get a coach fired, however you can only do it so many times before you get called a coach killer ( Look at Deron Williams, look how people consider him a lazy broken down POS after he basically drove the beloved Jerry Sloan from the game)

3) Woodson gave Melo what he wanted, which was to play as much hero/iso ball as he wanted, and as little defense as he wanted.

You could cobble together a reincarnated John Wooden along with parts of Chuck Daly and they still couldn't win with last year's Knicks.

IMHO, the key player is Dalembert.

Your starting center sets the tone defensively for your team. Doesn't matter how much the Knicks score if they can't stop anyone on defense. Dalembert has to be the stalwart veteran with a cool head and anchor for that D. He's not getting help from STAT or Bargs, and it remains to be seen if Smith and Aldrich can really help.

Without Dalembert pushing hard and staying healthy, it's going to be a free layup line against the Knicks D all season.

Im not sure where you going with your Lin theory, but it has nothing to do with last yr when woodson truly lost control of his team, or just long stretches where he had know idea what buttons to press.

I'm sick and tired of people saying this team has no talent, when the core won 54 games and advanced to the 2nd round. Especially after hearing more than half the team wasn't buying into the switching and , the Iso's last season. If woodson had a strong leader on his roster, or in his locker room, we would have made the playoffs, and Fisher would have been woodsons assistant.

What some of you need to do is go back and pull up every single one of PHIL JACKSON championship rosters, and see how many stars were on it besides the obvious.

EVERYBODY KNEW THERE ROLE, you have to know how important that is. There is going to be a different role player every night that should have a huge impact. the rick fox's, the robert horry's, the bj amstrongs, the kerrs, the fishers, the longly's, this guy "Stanislav Medvedenko" what about mark madsen. On everyone of phil jacksons championship roster, no more than 3 players avg double figure's

The 2G and the SF in the triangle seems to have the most success, we already know about kobe, jordan, and pippen, but did you see THJ in summer league. If jr starts this season, and he's healthy, he will be an all star, I'm 110 % sure of that.

AND

DOLAN, to stay out of basketball decision and refocuses/utilize his network/business's to attract future stars/players and even role players/vet min deals to make up for our HIGH STATE INCOME TAX and LIVING EXPENSE in NYC/MANHATTAN

We are not playing for this season, we are playing for our next couple of seasons after, we have a lot of players playing for contracts and a system to install after not having one at all for 2 seasons +
Still, we need to show we are making progress, developing/improving, and doing what we can to attract future options/players/talents
Possibly pulling mid season trades as we can gain more asset's/improve player ratings/value's along with cutting future contracts, and getting back players we can use in trades that will be part of our future

After seeing Paul George/Derrick Rose/Brandon Roy and their injuries, it will remind players especially talents that have yet to recieve their 1st large contract that they it could be their last CHANCE to ever cash in as ANYTHING could happen

Looking back at the road of recovering for players like Grant Hill and Livingston, not every one is as fortunate
Hill could have been looked upon as ONE OF THE GREAT's/ELITE's along with Penny Hardaway if they had not suffered great injuries
Though they at the very least had a great financial career, though players like Iverson/Antoine Walker are struggling despite making 1,0000x more than the lifetime of an average family in a NBA careers

nixluva wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:IMHO, the reasons that Woodson failed is because

1) The talent simply isn't on the roster, not now and not last year, to really build a winner and contending team. Woodson has no control over what the front office does and whom they pick up and trade for, etc.

This really is a copout for what Dolan did to Woody and then Woody did with the Team. It wasn't a lack of talent. Not when it comes to at least making the playoffs last year. No one said they had the talent for a title, but they should've made the playoffs. Woody was so messed up by the things Dolan did he was all over the place. Woody had no support from Dolan and so when he went out there he just wasn't able to make the tough decisions. He saw what was going on and in the past he at least went back to what was working, but last year he kept forcing lineups that clearly did't work. He was freezing in critical decision making moments. How can you just ignore those extremely obvious events from last year? It was a tough situation but Woody proved he wasn't up to the challenge. He should've told Dolan to shove it when he saw he was left out hanging.

TripleThreat wrote:3) Woodson gave Melo what he wanted, which was to play as much hero/iso ball as he wanted, and as little defense as he wanted.

You could cobble together a reincarnated John Wooden along with parts of Chuck Daly and they still couldn't win with last year's Knicks.

The thing is that Woody didn't have to keep limiting what he was doing to ISO Melo. Late in the year Woody started to get a handle on things and the team started to function a lot better. Not great but much better than earlier. They closed the year 16-7 which shows that the team DID HAVE TALENT. They just weren't playing up to their capabilities for a number of reasons.

TripleThreat wrote:IMHO, the key player is Dalembert.

Your starting center sets the tone defensively for your team. Doesn't matter how much the Knicks score if they can't stop anyone on defense. Dalembert has to be the stalwart veteran with a cool head and anchor for that D. He's not getting help from STAT or Bargs, and it remains to be seen if Smith and Aldrich can really help.

Without Dalembert pushing hard and staying healthy, it's going to be a free layup line against the Knicks D all season.

I think you really are understating what the team should be able to do defensively. It's not just about a guy being able to block shots at the rim. They need to execute better team D and work together as a unit. They don't have a team full of defenders. In fact they have a bunch of poor defenders. Still they have enough to at least slow teams down if they give max effort.

I've posted this before but when Tyson was out for stretch and Bargs was playing Center the teams defense was actually good and they won games only giving up scores of 80, 85, 92, 92, 96 in consecutive games. That was a good defensive stretch against some good teams. They also beat the Spurs on the road tho they won that game 105-101 still the point is that they were in fact able to play defense with the very bigs you say they can't defend with, STAT and Bargs. The key was having KMart along side Bargs in the starting lineup in addition to Shump. There is a way to make it work. This year Jason will likely play the KMart role as will perhaps Acy in some situations. You just need an active defender to mix in.

Good Post, Nixluver, agreed + 1000

F500ONE wrote:

Sambakick wrote:Jason Smith

Possibly, considering Phil really wants to move Amar'e

Ian Begley is pretty pro Knicks and not too bad of a writer

I did pick up on the drop in his article comparing how bad

Calderon's defense was in comparison's to Felton's///////

Who we chalked up as maybe the worst in the league

This is why I feel Calderon's presence won't reach peak results here

He'll be what he is, nothing more and nothing less

I like to look at what a player does on both ends and in comparing Jose and Felton for their careers I like to look at their Offensive Rating verses their Defensive Rating.

2013-14   Jose  Felton
Def Rtg   112   111
Off Rtg   120   103
+/- Diff  +8    -8

It's something that you can literally see but also just looking at the stats it's much clearer this way to see the difference between Felton and Jose.

He will also be the one that allows Melo and JR to operate more freely in the Triangle.

I agree, Fisher is the X-Factor, but if picking a player, i'd have to go with Amare.

F500ONE wrote:

dk7th wrote:Fisher is an x factor since he is an unknown quantity.

So far as the player who I think MUST excel it has to be Bargnani. He has been so bad and/or mis-utilized that much of the Knicks success will be based on how much he can turn his career around.

These are the numbers we need to see, assuming he starts:

58%TS or higher
3-4 assists per game
5 rebounds
a usage:assist rate ratio of 2:1 or lower

That's my pick in order for things to go extremely well for us

Phil Jackson said last week he thinks Bargnani will “surprise” some people this season. He also called the seven-footer “overlooked.”

“We think he's going to really do well in the kind of system we have,” Jackson said in an interview on MSG Network. “We've got a couple guards he likes to play with in Jose [Calderon] and Pablo [Prigioni] because he's played with them before in situations. I think he's going to be a surprise and I think he's going to be a pleasant one for our fans.”

Phil better be right.

Bargnani has been a career empty stat player, I don't see it changing this year

At the same time there has to be a player or players in this league who'll turn their game around.

He's as primed as anyone

ha ha philspeak "he's played with them before in situations." what does that even mean if it isn't redundant? but seriously if bargnani doesn't show something this season he should never make it onto another nba squad, or certainly not more than 3-5 million.

dk7th wrote:

F500ONE wrote:

dk7th wrote:Fisher is an x factor since he is an unknown quantity.

So far as the player who I think MUST excel it has to be Bargnani. He has been so bad and/or mis-utilized that much of the Knicks success will be based on how much he can turn his career around.

These are the numbers we need to see, assuming he starts:

58%TS or higher
3-4 assists per game
5 rebounds
a usage:assist rate ratio of 2:1 or lower

That's my pick in order for things to go extremely well for us

Phil Jackson said last week he thinks Bargnani will “surprise” some people this season. He also called the seven-footer “overlooked.”

“We think he's going to really do well in the kind of system we have,” Jackson said in an interview on MSG Network. “We've got a couple guards he likes to play with in Jose [Calderon] and Pablo [Prigioni] because he's played with them before in situations. I think he's going to be a surprise and I think he's going to be a pleasant one for our fans.”

Phil better be right.

Bargnani has been a career empty stat player, I don't see it changing this year

At the same time there has to be a player or players in this league who'll turn their game around.

He's as primed as anyone

ha ha philspeak "he's played with them before in situations." what does that even mean if it isn't redundant? but seriously if bargnani doesn't show something this season he should never make it onto another nba squad, or certainly not more than 3-5 million.

Not sure

What has his previous experience playing with Pablo produced in the NBA

We know the result with Calderon in Toronto produced miserable ones

jrodmc wrote:Larkinsanity!

Lol, then there will be a flood of Larkiniacs on this board defending him to their last breath.