Posted by Cookdcokehop:

Posted by Rookie:

Chandler looks to be a step slow as of late. He tries to get a step on his man and then he moves the ball, what's wrong with that? Would you rather see him force shots or dish to the open man? You don't see him making any excuses and you don't see him taking bad shots. Give the kid a chance to get healthy before you diss him.

Honestly I think Chandler is slow. He is not the smartest player. My perception of him has drastically changed since the season started. He is by no means a SG. He is a SF. He reminds me of Hakeem Warrick but with better range on his jumpshot.

I think chandler is best at the 4. Cause then he is causing a mismatch instead of being the victum of one. On defense he can play 2,3 and 4. But on offense I like him at the 4.

With all the negativity about Wilson lately let me make this point:

I LOVE HOW WILSON CHANDLER CONTESTS ALMOST EVERY SINGLE SHOT ON DEFENSE!!!!!!!

It's something that needs to be appreciated because it has not been done in NY for a long long long time.. weather someone is going for a layup, or he is closing out on the perimeter... Wilson ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS(almost) will contest the shot, Hes alawys jumping at people, making it difficult.. trying to make that effort to put the hand up and jump at the offensive player... Did anyone notice when the bulls had that fast break last night instead of quitting on the play he sprinted down and almost caused LH to miss the layup? Thats what im talking about, the guy is great when it comes to that. Give him some time with the offense its a confidence issue. His man to man D has been very good though.


PS JARED JEFFRIES SUCKS

Briggs _ I resent that you throw out sauch an insult to The Mayor to say "he is not the smartest player". Why not simply call him "dumb"?

But, before you bestow your suprior basketball intellect on the world.

What are you basing your remark on?

Chandler is a rookie and now you choose to insult his intelligence? Why?

Just for the record Briggs, after 67 games Lee averaged 5 points and 4 rebounds.

The Mayor, after only 56 games, averages 10 points and 4.5 boards.

Looks fairly "intelligent" from this angle, wouldn't you say?

Walsh said he was encouraged to see Wilson Chandler, a forward, play effectively at guard against the Nets on Wednesday
.

I dont know what everyone else is watching--but I see a 6-8 shooting guard in the making who will cause mistmatch nightmares.

Posted by Pharzeone:

He is a small forward who has been asked to play the center, power forward and shooting guard positions out of need or because his teammates lack the necessary abilitis to excel at their "set" positions. The guy is forced to jump at the opening tap because his teammates can't jump that high then he has to guard best offensive player because his teammates can't defend that well.

Nice to see the Knicks working hard to develop him, right?

Posted by BRIGGS:

Posted by Pharzeone:

He is a small forward who has been asked to play the center, power forward and shooting guard positions out of need or because his teammates lack the necessary abilitis to excel at their "set" positions. The guy is forced to jump at the opening tap because his teammates can't jump that high then he has to guard best offensive player because his teammates can't defend that well.

I like him at SG. He's got great form--will be able to get his type of shot whether it be a jumpshot post or drive pretty much at will against much smaller players This is where he should play.

Not a bad idea and I understand your reasoning. One thing though - just watching him running all over the place trying to cover Ben Gordon the other night (not that Gordon had a lights out game, but still) give one pause - he struggled defensively. Then on the other side of the ball, he had trouble exploiting the mismatch in his favor - he couldn't even post Ben up without turning the ball over & it happened multiple times. As a FT SG, those smaller, quicker guys might give him problems - I think those guys are a tough cover for him. Maybe he was just a little too keyed up with about 20 of his family & friends in the building, I don't know. He had a real rough game on both ends of the court against Gordon. Not sure what to make of it - I'll have to see more, esp. how he handles smaller, quicker 2s if MDA stays with it...

Had a real nice bounce-back game in NJ though. Kid just needs to stay aggressive. That's the only thing I wanna see. If he does, he'll be alright regardless of where he plays.


[Edited by - finestrg on 12-11-2008 5:43 PM]

Posted by LivingLegend:

Posted by BRIGGS:

His jumpshot is much improved and will get better. He has tremendous athletic size for the position and can either shoot post or get to the hole off the dribble. At 6-8 he would make a hard match up for any two guard on the other side of the court as well.

If anything having Wilson play the 2-guard makes us a bigger team and might help compensate for our height & rebounding issues at other spots.

In the long term - forcing Wilson to handle the ball a bit more, getting him into the post against smaller players and giving him outside shot opportunites could all help his development long term.

I'm a bit dissapointed in Wilson's rebounding and defense this year.

Briggs - I agreed with you in my initial response.

I'm not sure that Wilson is a pure 2-guard by any means but he is a vast improvement on a number of fronts vs. what we've been watching from Jamal for 3-4 years.

- he stays in front of his man pretty well
- he has the length to play off his man but still gets his hand up (something a guy like Jefferies doesn't always do)
- he rebounds like a 3-4
- you can't post him up
- he can post you up
- he can hurt you in the post, mid-range or from 3-point range
- he's not a gunner

Jamal was so bad for so long that even Q-Rich is a welcome change.

I don't know about Wilson at the 2 long term - maybe he sticks but I do like the way we are playing with him in the line-up.

One thing this line-up allows us to do is basically just switch everything (except maybe Duhon).

Because all of the guys are similar in size and shape - we can just switch and if the other team wants to post we can either stay 1 vs 1 or double team. What we don't have is big guys picking and rolling and taking Jamal down on the low blocks.

It's scary when the other team is shooting the ball well but I like the way D'Antoni packs our D in and gives the other team the outside shot rather than a ton of layups and dunks. I think the notion is - we'll live with the 15-18 footer but lets not get beat for layups and dunks all night.

Plus misses on jump shots turn into layups on the other end and drives to the hoop turn into foul shots -- packing the lane and collapsing keeps us from fouling a whole lot.

If you look at this year so far -- we really haven't been dogged by fouls or turnovers -- more often its been either piss poor effort or bad shooting.

LivingLegend - we're talking about The Mayor here.

I find it difficult to be disappointed in a virtual rookie seeing consistent minutes for the first time in his NBA career. Don't hate the 2-12, hate all the family members and homeboys begging for free tickets.

I can't be disappointed in Gallinari not playing if it means he corrects the problem and returns without causing more damage to his psyche.

Seeing them on the floor together will be a beautiful thing. I can wait.

Posted by JohnWallace44:

Does it make a difference who is the official 2, 3 or 4 on this team? They're all going to have basically the same size, speed, handle.

Chandler, Al Jr, Q

Q Rich can't handle the 3 spot because he is not strong enough to handle the 3 on defense but he he can't effectively guard quicker 2s because he is too slow to get over screens. He is more effective at the 2 guard spot on offense because he can post. The problem is Q Rich. D'Antoni should just accept that Q Rich's man will get their points and move on.

Posted by martin:

Posted by Pharzeone:

Posted by JohnWallace44:

Does it make a difference who is the official 2, 3 or 4 on this team? They're all going to have basically the same size, speed, handle.

Chandler, Al Jr, Q

Q Rich can't handle the 3 spot because he is not strong enough to handle the 3 on defense but he he can't effectively guard quicker 2s because he is too slow to get over screens. He is more effective at the 2 guard spot on offense because he can post. The problem is Q Rich. D'Antoni should just accept that Q Rich's man will get their points and move on.

Q has been handling the 3 spot for the past 3 years, he is strong enough.

That's not saying too much. I think there is a difference with having size and being able to be strong enough to defend his position. He routinely got abused by opposing 3s. Either they post him up or take him off the dribble.

Posted by Pharzeone:

Posted by Finestrg:

Posted by BRIGGS:

Posted by Pharzeone:

He is a small forward who has been asked to play the center, power forward and shooting guard positions out of need or because his teammates lack the necessary abilitis to excel at their "set" positions. The guy is forced to jump at the opening tap because his teammates can't jump that high then he has to guard best offensive player because his teammates can't defend that well.

I like him at SG. He's got great form--will be able to get his type of shot whether it be a jumpshot post or drive pretty much at will against much smaller players This is where he should play.

Not a bad idea and I understand your reasoning. One thing though - just watching him running all over the place trying to cover Ben Gordon the other night (not that Gordon had a lights out game, but still) give one pause - he struggled defensively. Then on the other side of the ball, he had trouble exploiting the mismatch in his favor - he couldn't even post Ben up without turning the ball over & it happened multiple times. As a FT SG, those smaller, quicker guys might give him problems - I think those guys are a tough cover for him. Maybe he was just a little too keyed up with about 20 of his family & friends in the building, I don't know. He had a real rough game on both ends of the court against Gordon. Not sure what to make of it - I'll have to see more, esp. how he handles smaller, quicker 2s if MDA stays with it...

Had a real nice bounce-back game in NJ though. Kid just needs to stay aggressive. That's the only thing I wanna see. If he does, he'll be alright regardless of where he plays.


[Edited by - finestrg on 12-11-2008 5:43 PM]

What are you talking about Del Negro credited Chandler's defense on Gordon for him getting off to the slow start in the game. The guy stayed up in face. One thing I do like about D'Antoni right off the bat the guy understands that Chandler is his best defender no matter what. Harris begins to light Duhon like Lite Brite, he put Chandler on him. His perimeter defense are the main reason why they stayed in the Bulls game and stayed with the Nets because Harris was about to have one of his biggest games of the night before Chandler shadowed him all over the court.

OK, he wasn't terrible against Gordon I suppose (I do remember Chandler popping out challenging some deep three-point attempts, some misses/mostly makes), but still, to me Gordon was off more than anything else - Gordon weaved his way through many screens to free himself at times and then just wasn't able to connect once he sprung himself. Plus, his one-on-one pull up game and his catch-and-shoot perimeter game was off too. You wanna say it was all Willie's defense - I'm not sure about that. That might be being a little too gracious bro. But you're right - I guess Willie did a pretty good job considering now that I think about it. Like I said though, he wasn't able to exploit the mismatch on offense which was big & overall I still need to see more against smaller 2-guards on a steady basis before definitively saying it could work or not. But, sure, it could work. When you're a team like the Knicks, you experiment to the fullest and give anything a try. I'm down with it.