Posted by newyorknewyork:
Posted by BlueSeats:
I have no problem with us playing at the tempo of the 6 game win streak. That's about the tempo we started the season at too. It wasn't a fast tempo, just peppy and energetic. It came one game after one of our most sluggish performances of the season when Marbury dogged it in Orlando. The biggest turnabout in the two games was not tempo but effort and leadership from marbury. That's what was lacking all season, and no 'system' can work when your best players are dogging it.
So it's not like I don't think we could do just as well with an increased tempo, it's that I think it's moot relative to issues of effort and commitment. Tempo is not a cure all for our ills. We'd do much better in a slow system with effort than a fast one without, and vice versa.
I could agree with this. Though it wasn't just Marbury. It was the whole team, including the coach. Everyone thinks of the Suns or Nets when they hear uptempo. Push the ball every single time up the court. I probably used the wrong word. But I was thinking more of just a quicker pace. Force that energy out. By letting the guards do there thing. Instead of bringing the ball up the court. Passing around waiting for Eddie Curry to finally get position. Finally feed him the ball. Then watch him commit the offensive foul. Or he happends to take to long to get in postion running so now the shot clock is running down.
It all came down to Larry Brown letting Marbury-Crawford & even Nate actually try and controll the game and have everyone else feed off of it. Playing to our strengths for a change. Combined with the new found energy and motivation. And the shortend rotation. It made some really nice basketball on our part.
What I don't get NYNY was where was your support all last year when I dogged Plodbury's pace? I don't once recall you supporting me. The "system" was built around Steph's stregths: let him crawl it up on his sore knees and ankles, lull his defender to sleep while pounding the ball on the perimeter, then finally with little time on the clock one of four things would happen.: 1) a perimeter pass to Crawfrd for a contested fall-away 3 pointer. 2) Pick and pop with kurt on the left elbow. 3) Explode into the paint to dish or dump off right. 4) Explode into the paint to finish himself or draw a foul.
That was our entire snail's pace offense last year under two coaches, and I HATED it and I railed against it everyday and none of you guys (on realgm anyway) who now want Steph "set free" offered one word of support to my efforts.
Nor did Steph once complain of it himself. Instead I was told that no way could we run because TT, Kurt and nazr can't run. And how interesting it is that we now see TT and KT doing just fine with the runningest team in the league and Nazr and the Spurs out ran even them the year prior in the semifinals.
But somehow now, after adding guys like Curry we're now a better uptempo team?
Now why did I rail against the pace last year more than this? Few reasons: 1) however much one hates the pace of this year it was faster than last. 2) I saw us go 16-13 and then 17-34 at the same tempo. The tempo is so secondary to the other considerations. 3) brown tried to have us play uptempo. We started the season that way and got off to a 2-6 record before marbury started b/tching the system was too hard, he wanted a new position, and we led the league in TOs.
LB does not like a snail's pace. Anyone who knows his philosophy understands he likes to pressure the defense and maximize the use of the shot-clock. he had a quicker tempo for all of Indy, Philly, and Detroit. i see no reason we should be designed to play markedly faster or slower than any of those teams. They all played at a peppy but controlled pace under Brown. Exactly the mantra he's trying to sell Nate on - play hard, play fast, but play with composure. So what happened here? This is something I originally posted elsewhere when some were declaring LB would not "adapt to his players":
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[i]Isiah and LB are on the same page to the extent that they both believe in bringing the rooks along slowly, not putting too much pressure on them, and at the same time making them earn their minutes so they don't end up like the spoiled veterans that are already sinking us. Also, to the extent that Isiah knows the roster is unbalanced and is happy to make the kind of changes Brown seeks.
Isiah is even on record saying it's the player's job to adapt to their coach and not the other way around, and those who won't, or can't, will be moved.
Where I disagree is the assertion that Brown hasn't attempted to adapt to the players. Most people who say that mean that we should be running more, but please remember that Brown started the season with Stiffy advancing the ball MUCH FASTER than last year or now, but we were averaging like 30 TOs per game!!! Guys like Frye and AD told Larry that the PGs, instead of running set plays and settling things down, were making up plays and everyone was getting confused. Then because we were out of position we also weren't able to transition defense when the inevitable TOs turned into opponent fastbreaks.
Check this out from Oct. 20th (preseason)
Brown again acknowledged it will take time for the players to learn his system, but he seemed to indicate it might take longer than he first assumed. While the team is learning how to play defense, he wants them to temporarily play a more deliberate half-court offense in order to slow the game down and prevent teams from scoring 114 points, as the Sixers did Tuesday.
He started that process yesterday, which he doesn't like to do because he likes to run the ball at the defense as much as possible. But after watching Tuesday's game, he came to the realization that the team isn't learning what he has been teaching.
Then here we are again in mid Novemeber:
Brown lamented the Knicks' lack of organization on offense and pointed out that even a rookie like Channing Frye could see it going helter skelter. Brown said Frye approached him at the airport after Wednesday's loss and said, "Coach, it's amazing. When things get tough, instead of us slowing it down and executing to get a good set, very rarely do we get in good position to run a play."
Brown has become so uncertain about what his players can do, that he said he will pare down the Knicks' playbook to just a handful of sets. He already has taken to calling plays from the bench, something he hates doing, and on fastbreak opportunities he will limit them to two options.
In practice, before games and in timeouts, Brown has been hammering home his most basic tenets in the hope that repetition will lead to execution.
"If you say it a hundred times, you've got to say it a thousand times until they get it," he said. "I want to be specific so there's no indecision at all. That's what I told them again today. We're going to limit the things we do."
So Larry slowed things down and simplified the playbook, and to explain why he noted someone didn't even know where the shot clock was and that he didn't have "heads" out there.
Some have used those comments to justify the unforgivable behavior of quitters, but in fact he was explaining why he needed to dumb it down to a Junior Varsity playbook.
That WAS him adapting to his players. Make it slow, make it simple, try to get them to handle the basics, then take things back up. But they've NEVER gotten a handle on the basics!!!
Thus, just days ago we hear him talking of simplifying things even further still, like walking the ball up every play or going to zone defense. None of that is Larry Brown ball, those are LB's adaptations to ineptitude.
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Did he take things too far or for too long? Maybe, I don't know. The players may have been happier, but we don't know the long-term results.
Some consider jerry Sloan to be a high caliber coach of good character and he was faced with similar concerns, he answered like this:
Asked how hard it is to coach without the certainty of seeing the precise execution that became synonymous with the Jazz in the John Stockton-to-Karl Malone years, Sloan told me recently: "That's not anything I didn't expect. If I didn't think that would happen, I'd have tried to get out and go somewhere else. That's just part of coaching. I knew it was going to be a hard-fought thing to try to teach [young] guys. I'm sure we could probably open things up a little bit and play a different way sometimes. But I'm not sure it's a good teacher for playoff basketball."
So I'm not opposed to us picking up the pace, I'm sure some guys would enjoy it and it might be more fun to watch. But at the same time during some of our attempts we were getting 30 TOs a game and giving up 70 pts in a half. That's NOT fun.
Mostly I just see the tempo thing as a bit of a ruse. Guys who had nothing bad to say about the snails pace under Lenny and Herb now see it as a large part of our downfall under Brown.
And most important I just find it so secondary to things like effort and execution.
[Edited by - BlueSeats on 05-25-2006 9:45 PM]
