Instead of Bashing Marbury and The Knicks, Why Not Simply Take A Vacation?
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nixluva
Posts: 56258 Alba Posts: 0 Joined: 10/5/2004 Member: #758 USA |
8/7/2007 11:20 AM
Posted by Bippity10: You know I touched on this last summer and to be honest, Isiah never really said we'd be a running team like PHX. His offense which he's had since his days in Indy, isn't a pure running offense. He merely meant that the team would look to feature more quick hitting plays and be more opportunistic about running. He wanted the pace to pick up in terms of getting the ball upcourt and getting into their sets early. In fact he felt that their plays really started before they even got to the halfcourt. This excerpt I transcribed from a TV interview with Gus and Clyde: http://www.msgnetwork.com/knicks_summerleague.jsp Gus explained that Isiah told him the offense employs parts of these 3 offenses, the UCLA High Post Shuffle Cut, Bob Knights passing game and Tex Winters Triangle offense. It wasn't presented as this team would run any of these concepts exclusively or even in their purest form. This is a paraphrase of what Isiah said: "Its a full court offense not a half court offense. It starts from the moment the ball is rebounded. Players will be on the move and already starting the play before they reach halfcourt. We'll run some two guard fronts and bring the low post up to the mid post, splits out of the high post, 2-1-2 sets. We'll teach them how to make shots off of splits, distort the court on angles, hit, split, screen and cut, speed up the offense. Good offense will beat good defense. We'll play at a higher tempo and plan to use 10 players every night to keep people fresh." He said a lot in this interview. For one thing even tho he said it's not a halfcourt offense, in essence the principles it's based on are indeed halfcourt sets. He just added the component of actually wanting to start running them earlier. So they weren't ever going to play like PHX, who look to run even off of made baskets. But he did expect that the offense would have to ability to be quick hitting if run right, which we saw it wasn't many times. Now when we have more of our quick and athletic players in the game, guys who play better D and thus get more opportunities to run, then you'll see more fastbreaks. This is why there was so much running in last year's preseason and Summer League. Once you go with the starters those guys are clearly halfcourt players. From my vantage point, they were only partly sucessful in running his offense. I think Steph got better as the season went along, but it's clear that Isiah made some concessions with his playbook and what he felt the team could actually do. At another time Isiah also said this about how the team would play offense and defense: http://www.nba.com/knicks/inthepaint/isiah_060710.html NEW YORK, July 8, 2006-- Stylistically, the Knicks are going to be a different team under Isiah Thomas. At times that might include playing at a faster pace, but according to the Knicks President and new mentor the changes are really going to amount to more than that. “We want to be efficient,” said Thomas. ”On both ends of the floor, offensively and defensively. We are not so much interested in pace as we are in being efficient. We want to be good on both sides of the ball. We want good execution so when we’re going to call a play we go out and do it -- and if we don’t do it there is a penalty for that. We want to be able to execute defensively. So if our defense is able to get us out into some kind of transition to move the basketball up court in a quicker fashion, we will do that.” “We are not looking to create pace. We are looking to become a good basketball team again on both sides of the ball.” “I wouldn’t say we don’t have defenders,” said Thomas. “I would say that we have to give them a scheme that they feel comfortable in playing defense. I’m not going to let the players off the hook by saying ’hey, you are not a good defender’. I’m from Indiana University where I played under Bob Knight. I played in Detroit where we started James Edwards at center and Bill Laimbeer at power forward -- and they became good defenders. So we are going to be better on defense. And the guys are not going to get a free pass. Players will decide their own playing time. And to play, you’ve got to defend.” “The guys we have, we’ll make them better,” said Thomas. “We’ve got a job to do. I do like our guys. My job now is to get their confidence back. I believe that they can perform at a higher level than they did last year.” |
Instead of Bashing Marbury and The Knicks, Why Not Simply Take A Vacation?