BlueSeats wrote:Paladin55 wrote:knickstorrents wrote:loweyecue wrote:I agree with this. Amare and Melo are not people who will give consistent effort on defense, otherwise George Karl would have had an effect on Melo by now and whoever replaced MDA in PHX would have gotten more out of Amare defesively. But the argument is that we don't need STAT/Melo to be stellar on defense, we need them to be adequate.
My problem with the whole 'surround our two best players with defenders' is name me a championship team in the past 10 years where at least one of the two best players isn't also an excellent defender?
Lakers- Kobe (and Pau)
Heat- Wade (and Shaq in 2006)
Spurs- Duncan
Celtics- Garnett
Pistons- Billups (in 2004)
With our limited cap flexibility and no upside in skills due to lack of youth (players at 26 are not going to get better, let's face it) we are stuck with this team. Stuck. Unless Landry becomes even better, and we get some great waiver wire/D League pickups, we are not going anywhere past the 1st/2nd round.
I did one of my few threads on this and nobody came up with any teams that had two all offense/little or no defense type players like Amare and Melo who won a title.This franchise has dug a hole, and it will take everything Donnie can do to get us out of it, that is if he is actually given the chance.
Magic/Worthy/Divac
I gave a few examples of pairs where only one of the two were good defenders.
Take a situation like Isiah/Dumars. Dumars was the better defender but better than Amare? Amare's raised his D and isn't all that bad now. He'd be a lot better if he had a hint of help in the frontcourt.
Melo is the help in the front court.
Thomas and Dumars were not bad on D, and I seem to recall that Dumars did a good job with Jordan. That was also a team with length and guys willing to get dirty when they had to. Rodman, Salley, Mahorn, Edwards, Laimbeer, etc- ring a bell?
Did Magic/Worthy/Divac win a title? Worthy was not a terrible defender, and Magic put in the effort on D. Divac could block some shots, but he was not a star at the time, and never averaged over 16 PPG in his career. He was a classic Euro player- and never seemed to be a me first guy, from what I can remember.
By the way, the Laker team that lost in the finals to Chicago was the [b]second best defensive team in the league regarding points, and Divac was no real star at the time. You might also look at their roster, especially the length.
No. Player Pos Ht Wt Birth Date Exp
35 Tony Brown F-G 6-6 185 July 29, 1960 5
41 Elden Campbell C 6-11 215 July 23, 1968 R
12 Vlade Divac C 7-1 243 February 3,1968 1
10 Larry Drew G 6-1 170 April 2, 1958 9
45 A.C. Green F-C 6-9 220 October 4, 1963 5
32 Magic Johnson G-F 6-8 215 August 14, 1959 11
14 Sam Perkins F-C 6-9 235 June 14, 1961 6
4 Byron Scott G 6-3 195 March 28, 1961 7
34 Tony Smith G 6-3 185 June 14, 1968 R
20 Terry Teagle F-G 6-5 195 April 10, 1960 8
30 Irving Thomas F 6-8 225 January 2, 1966 R
43 Mychal Thompson C-F 6-10 226 January 30,1955 11
42 James Worthy F 6-9 225 February 27,1961 8
Once again, I would say that we are in a hole as a franchise with two star who will need a lot of help if the Knicks are to even reach the conference finals.
Hope I'm wrong.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities- C.N. Bovee