Papabear wrote:

martin wrote:

TMS wrote:twist it & turn it? dude, the comments were aired on MSG the other day before the game... are u serious?

What were the exact comments? If forgot.

Was it "Hill is a Bad Rookie?" "I don't play Bad Rookies (in general)?" "Hill was fighting for minutes behind lots of vets and was last in line for minutes".

Those say different things in my opinion.

Papabear Says

I could see Hill not playing if the Knicks had a winning record but my gosh! The Knicks sucked. They should have given Hill more Playing time. One thing I know for sure with the Knicks, if you fall out of favor they throw you under the bus. If Lebron came here and he couldn't get them into the playoffs they'd want Lebron gone and theyd trade him for a 2nd round pick.

LMAO...thats true.

nixluva wrote:There's no way in hell that Lebron would ever call for MDA's head!!!! First of all I don't really think he's going to make any snap judgement based on how things have gone in NY. He's already been coached by MDA and as a lot of other top NBA players have said, they love MDA. He'll play for MDA and he'll give it a fair shot before making any kind of decision about how he feels playing for him.

Lebron has already said he has never played in a system that didn't stress defense & never played with players that didn't make that a priority... draw whatever conclusions u want from that statement but doesn't sound to me like MDA's coaching style are an ideal match.

nixluva wrote:There's no way in hell that Lebron would ever call for MDA's head!!!! First of all I don't really think he's going to make any snap judgement based on how things have gone in NY. He's already been coached by MDA and as a lot of other top NBA players have said, they love MDA. He'll play for MDA and he'll give it a fair shot before making any kind of decision about how he feels playing for him.

Whoa nellie. Let's back this up for a bit. First off, there are so many... issues with your post.

First, Lebron was never coached by MDA. He was coached by Krzyzewski for Olympic exhibition games. You know the other Mike. Yeah he was there too. D'Antoni served as one of his assistant coaches. Are you now suggesting that Nate McMillian also coached him. You know he was there too along with Krzyzewski, who by the way was the guy coaching.

Second how do you know that he'll give MDA a "fair" shot? What basis on you going on? I don't recall Lebron ever putting out statements about how he treats his coach in the present or the past.

Third, he also loved Paul Silas a lot. Hmmm... I guess not enough to make sure management didn't fire him. Cue Tina. What does love have to do with it?

Here is another shocker for you. Sit down. But Lebron James said he loves Nate McMillan too. In fact he requested that the Cavs hire him after they fired Silas but Nate turned down the offer.

eViL wrote:
the way i see it, he hasn't done the best job with a bad team. that's about it. but i don't care about his ability to coach a bad team or to be a developmental guy. that's not what we thought we were getting anyway. i look at d'antoni as the type of guy that will get the most out of a good team. give him some weapons and he'll figure out a way to put it all together in a potent and efficient way. i couldn't care less about his inability to squeeze water from this stone of a team we got right now.

I think we kinda did know what we were getting. I think D'Antoni was available, so Walsh hired him. But arguably, these should have been the "Herb Williams" years - a time to suck, play the rookies and clear cap space. Why hire a guy like D'Antoni when you know the team's gonna suck for 2 years? Maybe so we could attract good players like LeBron? What do we do now that D'Antoni is "damaged goods"?

I think having D'Antoni raised expectations. After all, we've got this hot shot coach, so why don't we win more games? Meanwhile, we started out with a crappy roster, and Donnie has been busy dealing and getting rid of the few good players that we had. Yet somehow, we still think this team should be winning more games.

eViL wrote:

TMS wrote:

eViL wrote:lost in all of this is the fact that, lucky for mike, the knicks don't have the chance to pick any rookies (in the first round of the 2010 draft at least). you see, those picks we traded weren't assets at all. in fact, i think MDA urged donnie to trade more picks just so he wouldn't have to explain why he's not playing them.

little known facts about MDA: he likes losing, he hates developing talent, he prefers to play weak players even though he knows he has better players on his bench, he encourages his players to allow their opponent to score, he is perfect and the results of his actions are all precisely what he intended. he never makes mistakes.

the knicks have to change the ways of the previous regimes. it's time to fire the coach. we must avoid any potential continuity going into this offseason. we're already losing more than half the roster, we might as well drop the coaching staff too.

u still have yet to offer any sound reasoning to explain his curious rotation patterns this season... painting a sarcastic picture doesn't hide the lack of facts to support the job he's done as our head coach... all i've been giving you are words straight from his own mouth & from the mouth of the man whose plan he has supposedly bought into to support my argument... all you have done is offer sarcasm to support yours.

look, i don't support his rotations. i would have played the young guys from the start. but i'm not an nba coach. not even close. and i'm not going to pretend that i know more than him just because he hasn't done well here and i have gripes that he didn't play young guys. so what? let's fire another coach. it works, right? that's a proven fix.

he's not above criticism, but the way some people complain about him, it's as if they think he intended for things to turn out this way. he misread the situation. he thought duhon would be better. he didn't trust the rooks. those appear to be mistakes now, but we can't prove that things could have happened any other way otherwise. best you can say is that we could have developed the young guys quicker. but that's no guarantee either.

the way i see it, he hasn't done the best job with a bad team. that's about it. but i don't care about his ability to coach a bad team or to be a developmental guy. that's not what we thought we were getting anyway. i look at d'antoni as the type of guy that will get the most out of a good team. give him some weapons and he'll figure out a way to put it all together in a potent and efficient way. i couldn't care less about his inability to squeeze water from this stone of a team we got right now.

you're entitled to second-guess him to your heart's content, but you can't prove that we would have done any better had he followed your opinion down to every detail. so really, what's there to argue about? i think this is why people find this tiring. sure, his rotations are head-scratchers. ok. so? fire him? really? now? that's where i disagree. no one is above criticism, but i think people are blowing this way out of proportion.

dude, when i fug up at work i don't go into it intending to fug up, it just happens... & if it happens i'm going to be held accountable for my mistake, regardless if i did it on purpose or not... what kind of defense is that to say he didn't intend to misread the situation? this man is being paid multi-million dollars not to misread situations like this... he's being paid a ton of money to coach this team & get the best play he possibly can out of them... has he done a good job of doing that the 2 years he's been our head coach? i would say definitely not.

how can you not care about him not paying attention to developing our young guys? so why even bother drafting anyone last summer if you had no expectations on that front when we hired this coach? should have just sold those picks for cash savings if you place that little value on having young guys developing in this system... i'm gonna guess most fans of the Knicks probably don't share in that line of thinking dude.

& second guessing him is what fans do... every fan is an armchair coach or GM or whatever else u wanna call it... of course none of us are qualified to make these types of decisions or claim we have all the answers otherwise we wouldn't be stuck talking about it on a message board, we'd be doing it in real life... that's what this man is being paid for, to know more than average fans like you & me know... u don't think even a casual fan of this team could have told you that playing Chris Duhon & Jared Jeffries for 35+ minutes a night was an excercise in futility this season?... i mean this is the same guy who just the other day said "I didn't know he could do that" when Toney Douglas took over the game in crunchtime & sparked this team to a W... REALLY??? you're the head coach who watches this guy in practice all the time & you didn't know your own player could give u that type of play? sorry, but this guy must think people are incredibly stupid if he expects us to buy that excuse... other than Toney Douglas himself, MDA is the first guy who should have known the type of player Toney Douglas was capable of blossoming into... he probably would have seen it much earlier if he hadn't had Toney Douglas wasting away on the bench for most of the season.

btw, i didn't say he must be fired right now so i just want u to know i'm not in that group you're speaking about... i'm willing to give him 1 more season to prove why he was brought here... to me that means taking a team with talent deep into the playoffs... we're too deeply invested into this guy to give up now before he has a chance to coach a decent roster... i'm assuming we'll be making some major wheeling & dealing this summer, so there's no more excuses left for this guy... he either needs to put up or shut up & the same goes for the GM... accountability, that's a word that this organization hasn't known the meaning of for a long time now.

I like that mike is open and talks, i'm just horrified by the crap that comes out of his mouth.

March 22, 2010, 10:06 am
Jeffries: D’Antoni Cares About Knicks Defense
By HOWARD BECK

Jared Jeffries is a modest, soft-spoken sort. You get the feeling that he wouldn’t know how to gloat even if he wanted to. He surely had his chance Sunday afternoon.

Jeffries drew four offensive fouls against the Knicks -– two in the final two-and-a-half minutes -– to help the Houston Rockets secure a 116-112 victory. They were the sort of beyond-the-box-score plays that Jeffries routinely made for the Knicks before they traded him last month.

It was never enough, however, to endear Jeffries to the Madison Square Garden crowd. Over the last five seasons, no Knick was booed as often as the offensively challenged Jeffries. Fans groaned any time he launched a jumper and shrieked at the occasional air ball from the foul line.

More than anything, Jeffries was a symbol of the excesses of the Isiah Thomas era. Thomas signed him to five-year, $30 million contract in 2006, although Jeffries had produced modest statistics in four years with the Washington Wizards.

Thomas promoted him as a glue-type player and asserted, somewhat comically, that Jeffries “balances the plane ride.’’

Jeffries indeed proved to be one of the Knicks’ hardest-working and most selfless players. But all the fans saw was an overpaid player with no true position.

“I think it was about the contract, I think it was Isiah, I think it was us not winning,’’ Jeffries said. “What I do on the basketball court, if you’re winning, is a lot more respected and a lot more appreciated.’’

Gracious to a fault, Jeffries said he missed the passion of Knicks fans, no matter what form it took. He also noted that, at the time he was traded last month, in the deal for Tracy McGrady, he was having his best season as a Knick.

It’s worth noting that Jeffries was a bit of an anomaly: the only Knicks starter who was on the court purely for his defense. Coach Mike D’Antoni loved Jeffries’ length and his versatility – he could guard all five positions and switch on every pick-and-roll.

Jeffries, in fact, presents a strong counter-argument to those who contend that D’Antoni cares only about offense. Jeffries was easily the Knicks’ least skilled offensive player. Yet he started 37 of 52 games this season and was sixth in minutes per game (28.1). He led the Knicks in charges drawn.

On Sunday, Jeffries also used his defensive skills to offer a spirited defense of his supposedly offense-obsessed former coach. D’Antoni, he said, is simply using the tools he has.

“I think that Mike’s a realist,’’ Jeffries said. “Defending, like anything else in the NBA, is a talent level. And you can’t have people that are not great defenders and expect them to be great defenders. Just like you can’t have people that aren’t great scorers and expect them to be great scorers. He put me out there to be a defender and he puts guys out there to be scorers. He does focus on defense, but if you don’t have defensive players, then you’re not going to be a great defensive team.’’

He added, “It’s not like he tells the guys, ‘Don’t go out there and guard anybody, just try to score.’ That’s not the case at all.’’

Jeffries was traded purely for bookkeeping reasons, to help the Knicks open more salary-cap room this summer. Jeffries said it was the right move but added, “I did want to be here when things turn around, because I feel like it will turn around.’’

With Jeffries off the books, the Knicks have a better chance to make that happen. They could have enough cap space to sign two superstars, with LeBron James and Chris Bosh the top targets.

“I think Mike is an incredible coach,’’ Jeffries said. “Once he gets the pieces that he needs, I think that he’s going to do very well here.’’

BasketballJones wrote:

eViL wrote:
the way i see it, he hasn't done the best job with a bad team. that's about it. but i don't care about his ability to coach a bad team or to be a developmental guy. that's not what we thought we were getting anyway. i look at d'antoni as the type of guy that will get the most out of a good team. give him some weapons and he'll figure out a way to put it all together in a potent and efficient way. i couldn't care less about his inability to squeeze water from this stone of a team we got right now.

I think we kinda did know what we were getting. I think D'Antoni was available, so Walsh hired him. But arguably, these should have been the "Herb Williams" years - a time to suck, play the rookies and clear cap space. Why hire a guy like D'Antoni when you know the team's gonna suck for 2 years? Maybe so we could attract good players like LeBron? What do we do now that D'Antoni is "damaged goods"?

I think having D'Antoni raised expectations. After all, we've got this hot shot coach, so why don't we win more games? Meanwhile, we started out with a crappy roster, and Donnie has been busy dealing and getting rid of the few good players that we had. Yet somehow, we still think this team should be winning more games.

I think the idea was to get an established coach in the mix prior to 2010. Mike was available, is a pretty good coach, and you never know what might have been available in 2010. Maybe no one.

So it was two fold: Get the coach and GM together at an early stage and set the foundation. Not pass up on a good coach not knowing if there would be a good coach to hire in 2010.

I don't know what the uproar is over Mike D. I just don't. Every single coach does things fans don't like. Mike is no different. But he ain't the devil!

Amazes me how many fans want Walsh and Mike gone because we had two consecutive losing seasons. Those same fans seem oblivious to the fact that we had every intent on stripping the roster bare and starting over from the moment those two were hired.