Posted by oohah:

Posted by Masterplan:

oohah:

so all you're saying is that brown was the biggest problem? OK.

i'm not saying he didn't mishandle an entire season and set our franchise a year back. in hindsight, he did. at the time, i was crossing my fingers hoping his tactics would get results out of the players. i was severely disappointed in him. i haven't seen anything in the news or on this board to prove whether it was simple incompatibility with the roster or a malicious power play. if you believe you have proven the latter to be the case, then i won't ask you to repeat yourself. if you're (still) asking me to "prove" LB did a good job, it's not what i'm interested in saying at all.

i'm saying we are still left with a flawed roster with players who have huge question marks and a GM in whom i have totally lost faith (since the j. rose and francis moves). marbury, francis, jalen, and to a lesser extent jerome eddy and mo, concern me. i think the other guys like the ones you mentioned will be good employees/teammates during the season but won't necessarily be so kind if/when any of those characters get the boot. kind of like when amare and marion spoke up after that PG left i forget his name but i think he was bald and may have had a 'stache. or maybe it was a shoe print from putting his foot in his mouth.

oohah if i remember your wins prediction for this year it was around 40 wins, like 38+? i think that number must reflect some lack of faith in something in our current team (i.e. not LB). unless it's jeffries, it must be something that was there last year. did that have anything to do with our lack of success? if so, then we're not really arguing.

[Edited by - Masterplan on 09-26-2006 7:10 PM]

t
I've gone through this so many times.... The team was/is mediocre, That is what we have to work with. That is on them and Isiah. If the coach makes them better than mediocre he doing good. If he makes them worse than mediocre that's is (mostly) on the coach. Going from 33 (mediocre) to terrible is mostly on LB.

oohah

I'm sorry, oohah, but am I understanding you correctly in that if we suck again this year it is still gonna be Larry Brown's fault?

Please tell me that I got a headache misunderstanding you.

I'm sorry, oohah, but am I understanding you correctly in that if we suck again this year it is still gonna be Larry Brown's fault?

Please tell me that I got a headache misunderstanding you.

Posted by oohah:

I'm sorry, oohah, but am I understanding you correctly in that if we suck again this year it is still gonna be Larry Brown's fault?

Please tell me that I got a headache misunderstanding you.

Joe with the comic relief!
Normal sucking will go to the players and the GM. Extra-sucking will fall more on the coach.

oohah



[Edited by - oohah on 26-09-2006 7:47 PM]

Posted by joec32033:

Posted by oohah:

I'm sorry, oohah, but am I understanding you correctly in that if we suck again this year it is still gonna be Larry Brown's fault?

Please tell me that I got a headache misunderstanding you.

Joe with the comic relief!
Normal sucking will go to the players and the GM. Extra-sucking will fall more on the coach.

oohah



[Edited by - oohah on 26-09-2006 7:47 PM]

I don't know, bro. You want to blame LB for last season I can actually understand(not agree) with why. You can not possibly blame any of this season on LB. He was gone before the draft. All the players wanted him out, Isiah is in which all the "important" players wanted.

Sorry, I can't fathom why any of this season could be possibly blamed on him.

[Edited by - joec32033 on 09-26-2006 7:55 PM]

Posted by oohah:

Posted by joec32033:

Posted by oohah:

I'm sorry, oohah, but am I understanding you correctly in that if we suck again this year it is still gonna be Larry Brown's fault?

Please tell me that I got a headache misunderstanding you.

Joe with the comic relief!
Normal sucking will go to the players and the GM. Extra-sucking will fall more on the coach.

oohah



[Edited by - oohah on 26-09-2006 7:47 PM]

I don't know, bro. You want to blame LB for last season I can actually understand(not agree) with why. You can not possibly blame any of this season on LB. He was gone before the draft. All the players wanted him out, Isiah is in which all the "important" players wanted.

Sorry, I can't fathom why any of this season could be possibly blamed on him.

[Edited by - joec32033 on 09-26-2006 7:55 PM]

What am I blaming on LB?

oohah

Like I said, it could have been a misunderstanding but it seedmed like you said this-

Going from 33 (mediocre) to terrible is mostly on LB.

So you didn't mean if they have, like a 25 win season, it is LB's fault, right?

Posted by joec32033:

Posted by oohah:

Okay, that's one. What did Lee, Malik and AD say?

Sorry, I am not at my base computer and I don't have time to search and quote, so I will have to paraphrase.

Rose: It's kind of hard here. In SA, we knew what our roles were, but we do not this year.

Lee: I was surprised that I was starting and doing well, then I was benched, etc.

AD: They gotta figure out the game plan. Young or Old? Fast or Slow? Decide godammit!

oohah

I hate to be a stickler for details, but exact quotes, and context are important.

For instance the AD quote is just as much a condemnation of isiah as Brown. He simply stated the obvious that they weren't on the same page. And let us remember it was isiah, not Brown, who insisted upon AD playing here when Brown would have bought him out or let him retire. And his comments about things being a 'circus" were in regards to the sexual harassment situation. Perhaps most significantly (with regard to Brown), he said was he felt glad to be in Toronto where guys listened to their coach and tried to win:

After Antonio Davis finished his first practice as a Raptor on Tuesday, he had some parting words for those who run his former team, the Knicks.

"Larry and Isiah, they need to get on the same page," Davis said of coach Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas, the Knicks' president. "Is the team going younger or older? What are they doing? Where's the team going?"

Davis was speaking publicly for the first time since Thomas traded him to the Raptors on Friday for the 33-year-old small forward Jalen Rose and for what will probably be a mid-first-round draft pick.

Davis, a 37-year-old forward, said the Knicks' organization was "a mess."

He also said he had been taken aback by his trade to Toronto, where he played for more than four seasons starting in 1999. He has also played in Indiana and Chicago.

Davis said the Knicks had gone to great lengths to coax him to report last fall after acquiring him and Eddy Curry in a trade with Chicago. At the time, Davis, whose family lives in Chicago, was considering retirement....

Davis said the recent tumult in Knicks management -- Thomas has been accused of sexual harassment by one of the team's former front-office employees in a federal lawsuit -- had not affected the players.

"It's definitely a circus there, but it's not something players are really too involved with," he said. "You get a few questions about it, but there's really not much more than that. I wouldn't say it's been a distraction."

"I feel it's a lot better," he said. "Obviously, this [Raptors] is a young team trying to get somewhere and trying to be competitive each and every night."

Hinting at his unhappiness with the Knicks, Davis said: "I was telling the guys, this was the first time I've got to run up and down and enjoy myself in a long time. It was nice to see some fresh faces and see guys who really cared about playing and listening to their coach, trying to do everything they can to help each other and to win basketball games."



You see that as ripping Brown, I don't. I see that as speaking to the differences between Isiah and brown, the circus atmosphere around Thomas' indiscretions, and players who are quitters.


I'm less familiar with the passages you paraphrase by Malik and Lee but I am familiar with these quotes from Malik:

"It's pretty hard to play when you're not playing for anything. We have to deal with it," Malik Rose said. "Nobody did it to us. We did, and we have to be accountable for it."

And this:

Jamal Crawford and Knicks are off target again as record dips to 19-54.
WASHINGTON - It isn't just Larry Brown who is disgusted by the Knicks' lack of professionalism and pride. Several players expressed similar thoughts during a postgame team meeting that included Brown, Quentin Richardson and Malik Rose, accusing some Knicks of not caring and not competing.

"I played for the Clippers and we were bad, but I don't remember being around anything like this," Richardson said following Washington's 105-90 victory last night. "I never lost games like this. It seems like we don't care."

The Knicks, who dropped their ninth straight game and fell to 19-54, barely challenged the Wizards. They fell behind by 31 early in the fourth quarter and finished the game with 28 turnovers and 30 field goals.

Rose, who won two championships with the San Antonio Spurs, couldn't let another dreadful performance pass without saying something.

"Will it make a difference, I don't know," Rose said. "My gut is, I doubt it to be honest. It's at the point where I have to say something. If it falls on deaf ears so be it."

When asked why his message would fall on deaf ears, Rose added: "Maybe some guys don't want to hear it, some guys don't want to do it. At this point I don't really care. I'm going to do what I can to make this team better. I can't control people's attitudes at this point in the year. They're so set in what we've been doing. If you want to do it that way, do it."

Rose, who last week called the season an embarrassment, was visibly upset throughout the game and took his frustration out by kicking the scorer's table. Earlier this season, Richardson wanted to take his frustration out on Stephon Marbury before being restrained by teammates.

"I can't even explain it, man," Richardson said. "I've had a horrible season but I'm going to come out and play hard. You can tell I want to win, you can tell I care about the way we're losing and the whole situation. It just feels bad because you don't feel that the whole team feels that way."

Brown never sounded so embarrassed by his team's performance and attitude, saying, "Somehow you got to find five guys that care enough to compete. You got to hope you have enough pride to compete. I never in my life thought I'd have to be in a position where you're begging guys to play.

"I've never been in anything close to this. It's my responsibility."

A majority of the players, led by Marbury, tuned out Brown long ago. Now, players are acting insubordinate toward him and displaying a lack of respect. Players openly talk back to Brown during games or just ignore him completely.

Nate Robinson's relationship with Brown is deteriorating. After being criticized for taking ill-advised shots, Robinson attempted just one shot in 26 minutes last night. Robinson's defiant behavior was similar to what Marbury did during a game against Orlando in December.

"I told (Nate) it's just as selfish not taking an open shot as it is not passing the ball," Brown said.

Brown went on to call the game "one of the worst" while Steve Francis compared the mood around the team to a funeral. Richardson made a point to defend Brown and place the blame on the players.

"This has been going on the whole season so I don't want to say that coach is losing the team," he said. "I take my hat off to coach and the whole coaching staff. I don't know how they made it this far with us.

"I think a lot of people in that position would say forget it. None of the coaches have done that."


We know last season was tough on the players, as it was for everyone associated with the Knicks. And we know Brown was, as coaches always are, the front-man for blame. The thing you forget is how the same held true for Wilkens and Herb before him. That's why dolan was in such hot pursuit of a premium coach. There's been zip for chemistry since this team was swept by the Nets and that's why Isiah is desperate to unload as many malcontent veterans as he can (sans Goldenboybury) before the season takes hold, so he doesn't have to coach through that.

Anyway, enough about Brown for me. He lost; it's over. As bippity says, our fears can be cast aside, with Brown gone everything should be perfect, and the hype mill is about to start bigtime with camp about to begin.

Posted by oohah:


There is also a thing called right and wrong. Yes, we all are expressing opinions, but if you provided me with incontrivertible evidence that Brown did a wonderful job and everybody else was a schmuck, my opinion might change.

It's very obvious that LB did everything but coach the damn team last year. As the evidence mounts from people who were actually dealing with him, I would say the evidence is I-N-C-O-N-T-R-I-V-E-R-T-I-B-L-E, that he was the biggest problem with the team last season.

oohah

Posted by BlueSeats:

Anyway, enough about Brown for me. He lost; it's over. As bippity says, our fears can be cast aside, with Brown gone everything should be perfect, and the hype mill is about to start bigtime with camp about to begin.

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Anyway, enough about Brown for me. He lost; it's over. As bippity says, our fears can be cast aside, with Brown gone everything should be perfect, and the hype mill is about to start bigtime with camp about to begin.

See this is where you guys always go overboard. Everything else you wrote was fair and a valid take on the situation, whether I agree or not, but this last statement is just not necessary.

No one expected LB to create a miracle, just start the process of developing this team. We had 8 new players on the team last year, so to me there's no need to make comparisons to the Lenny and Herb Knicks. In terms of everything being perfect now that LB is gone, no one is saying that either. We still have an imperfect team that's full of young players still finding their way.
We're fortunate in that we also have some capable vets too, so that should help to make this year a decent one. We aren't starting from scratch.

Isiah to me is a better fit for this team and he should be since he put it together based on his personal philosophy of what he wants in a team. That's not to say this is the exact team he wanted, but its closer to it now than at anytiime since he's been here.
He like his players and I think it will show in his coaching. LB didn't like the players and it showed in his coaching last year. I think the players will be more receptive to Isiah and in part because his concepts are ones that fit the type of players we have as opposed to what our other coaches may have wanted. Isiah coaching may have always been inevitable from the start. I'm just glad that its done now and one way or another we'll see if he knows what he's talking about or he'll be out of here.