Papabear wrote:

nixluva wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:We all know D'Antoni is going to get fired and Woodson is his replacement.

Mike Woodson = Doc Rivers

Since you don't have any smiley faces or LOL, i'm assuming you really mean this. I don't see any Doc Rivers in Woodson. In what way are you comparing them, cuz I don't see it? Heck he hasn't even reached the levels that MDA has reached as a coach! If the Knicks are dumb enough to try and replace MDA with Woodson, i'd love to know what the rationale is, cuz it can't be based on his coaching career. MDA has done better as a coach than Woodson.

As much as people bash Mike, there are other coaches that respect what he does and actually use some of his system. As much as Popovich owned MDA when they played each other, you see he wasn't above using MDA's offense last year to help his team win games. It's helpful when you're team is smaller or it's strength is on the perimeter. That Spurs team won a lot of games even tho it wasn't one of his strongest teams. They were ranked 2nd in Offense but 11th on D. Popovich had to do something and I think it was a smart move. With an aging Duncan and no other serious C on the team, it was understandable that the defense would start to slide from it's traditional high level. Mike Krzyzewski of Duke uses some of Mike's system and there are other coaches that have been doing the same. You never hear of anyone talking about the trend setting schemes of Mike Woodson!!!

Papabear Says

When Woodson takes over from Mike D you will love and praise him. You will also defend him.

Your comment is nonsense!!! I don't have a default position on the performance of any Knick coach. IF Woodson should get the job, I will base my opinion on what I see. I'd defend him if I feel he's doing a good job but if he's not doing a good job then i'll say so. I never saw anything impressive from him in ATL. He had some talent but I wouldn't say that he always managed that talent to the best of their abilities. He got fired despite the team having a winning record. One thing in his favor is that the team didn't do better without him. They actually slipped back quite a bit during the regular season, tho they ended about the same in the playoffs.

I don't really believe that Woodson will end up being the coach. I think MDA will be successful with this team and most of this chatter will go away. All the complaints seem a bit over the top to me. Why should the Knicks be ready to fire MDA when they knew that it was going to be a rough 2 years leading up to rebuilding the team in 2010? That was the plan all along. So now that they have the team headed in the right direction, you want to fire the coach you brought in to be there when the team finally got good? Why punish him when you handcuffed him for 2 years with bad players and changing rosters?

I think that no matter what happens or what MDA does or says he will always be a HOF coach in eyes of his backers. He could suddenly practice guys untill they couldn't stand and it would be the players poor conditioning to blame.(In other words do everything the opposite of what he does) If he get swept next year the players aren't winners. I guarantee that these guys are incapable of seeing anything bad about MDA. These same people are already bashing on Woodson because he may replace MDA. It's remarkable that he's garnered more criticism from MDA's clique here than MDA has in his triumphant tenure with the Knicks.

martin wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:Just pointing out the inconsistency. I've heard over and over how MDA really is a good defensive coach, but in the end its we need D.HOward otherwise we can't expect anything. And like he said if D.Howard was here you or I could coach D too! coaching and talent are multiplicative but with nixluva if something goes well under mDA it's all his ingenioius system, if not it's all the players. We don't have the squad too be a top defensive team but we do have the squad to put a hand up when a shot goes up, rotate compentently towards an open shooter and the like. That stuff is on the personnel but also alot on the coach.

martin wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:Great so the only way we have defense if D. Howard comes here. Nothing elser coach could do so might as well do nothing. Poor misunderstood MDA. No way a caoch who is better than Jackson, SLoan and RIvers should ever be criticized. If it's all about talent than you'd have no problem if MDA was shown the door right?

nixluva wrote:NYC is where coaches come to die! It's amazing how many coaches that have had very good careers come to NY and get ripped and talked about like they are garbage. Yeah i'm talking about MDA and Woodson too if he ever got to be headcoach here. Does it really matter who it is? This city chews them up and spits them out.

Anyway. I'm apathetic to this hiring cuz I believe that it's not about the coaching as much as it is the talent a coach has to work with. You put D. Howard on this team and I could coach the defense!!! If we do in fact sign Dalembert or Pryz or Aaron Gray then I believe this team can improve.

You don't think talent leads to good offense or good defense? it's just all coaching?

I can't remember where I saw the stats (and don't really have time to look it up) but most all the really good defensive teams have very good bigs. It's kind of a prerequisite.

if that's what you are getting out of the posts, you haven't read them closely enough. Couldn't be further from what is being said.

Yeah I read the article giving the merits for not having shoot arounds and it has been covered before. However,this coach is always giving his team breaks. They have short practices and according to a player once every two weeks they have a working practice where they are together for two hours. Where most coaches are blurry eyed from excessive preperation this guy seems like a part timer. Not a lot of time is needed because guys just have to understand the 'system' and as soon as that happens everything will be fine. Why try when there aren't guys on the roster that can play the 'system'? If Mike D'Antoni could get his team to react on defense as quickly as guys do hear defending him the Knicks would be a lot better.

nykshaknbake wrote:It's beyond ridiculous. We've heard that MDA is better than Sloan or PJax(therefore HOF caliber++). G.Pop actually bases his coaching around MDA I've read from some posters. During the season after every Knicks win all the credit to MDA. When the Knicks lose the players are low BB ball IQ and lazy. Very light practice is to be expected(Even though it doesn't seem to be practiced by other NBA coaches) because this is the NBA and things are different whatever the heck that means. We have two top tier players but the talent isn't there for MDA to succeed. We always look to the great MDA success with the SUns despite him having a better team than the Celtics under DOc RIvers who won a championship. (MDA was just a mere 2 series away from that).

2. Popovich did use some of MDA's offensive principles because it made sense. Duncan is starting to slow down. His team was smaller and more of the talent fit that style of play. It was effective in helping them win more games. They ended up 2nd in the league on Offense.

I got to the arena just in time to catch the horde gathering around Gregg Popovich. This is where the gladiator quote came into play.

Pop had other things to say as well.

On the Spurs’ up-tempo offense: “We decided before training camp that’s what we wanted to do. We’re never going to be Phoenix or New York or anything like that, but we just felt that we needed to pick the pace up and the guys have responded pretty well to it.”

Did he talk to Duncan about changing tempo?

“No. I didn’t talk to him at all. Not a bit. Timmy’s the ultimate coachable guy. If I said we were going to shoot within six seconds or we were going to walk it up the floor every time, he would do it. That’s just the kind of guy he is.”

What does it mean to change the pace of the offense?

Hit cutters, break out, have different guys bring the ball up the court.

3. No one has said that there isn't enough talent for MDA to win games. They're saying we need more in order to be an NBA Champion. If you know anything about BB then you'd know this is true.

5. There's no way in HECK MDA's Suns teams were better than the C's with KG, Allen, Pierce, Rondo and Perkins!!! If anything MDA got his teams to overachieve. Proof of that is his 2005-06 team that went to the WCF's without a real C. If you get that far with Diaw and KT as your Centers, you've done a great job of coaching.

6. Most of us realize that the most important part of any winning team isn't the coach, but the makeup of the roster.

There are a ton of fans like you who don't really look deeper than the surface and go on rants about how bad MDA is. No examination of the situation, just see things in the papers or hear stuff in the media and make a decision that it must be the coach. "Change the Coach" has been the mantra for years. We've had quite a few different coaches and it doesn't make a difference. As i've said it starts with the roster. This team has a chance to win big, but we have to finish the job. We MUST find a solid starting center for this team!!! This is the key to the Knicks chances of going deep in the playoffs. If we don't improve on D then we can't win a title. The offense needs to tighten up but it's already good enough. We'll learn all we need to know about MDA this coming season, if we have one.

CrushAlot wrote:

Popovich did use some of MDA's offensive principles because it made sense. Duncan is starting to slow down. His team was smaller and more of the talent fit that style of play. It was effective in helping them win more games. They ended up 2nd in the league on Offense.

I am pretty sure Don Nelson, Doug Moe and Paul Westhead were running an uptempo offense pre-D'Antoni and Westhead did win a title with the Lakers.

I don't even know what your point is except to try and kick dirt on D'Antoni!!! We all know that there have been uptempo styles in the past. MDA's particular version was new and unique and no one was doing it quite the same way. If anything you mentioning that Westhead won a title only serves to prove that you can win with an uptempo style!!! It doesn't take away from MDA at all.

MDA's system actually works even if you don't have great individual scoring talent like Tim H, M. Richmond and Mullin. The Knicks had a high scoring offense even tho we didn't have a bunch of REAL All Stars in years 1&2 (Lee is not what i'm talking about). There's more to it than just running up and down and playing fast. So many people make that mistake. MDA's system puts pressure on a defense due to use of the spread floor in combination with PnR and other motion. Teams are forced to adjust faster than most are able to do in order to keep up with the offense. Here in NY we haven't even seen the best of his offense due to not having PG's that can run the offense at a high level. It's not a green light to just have guards calling their own number like Monta Ellis.

Just look at how successful Lee was in the same role as STAT. A big part of that is the spread offense keeping the floor wide open. So even tho we had Duhon and Lee instead of Nash and STAT, it still worked on a high level. The style of past Run n Gun coaches relied more on individual scoring talent. In essence MDA perfected the concept and made it more highly efficient. MDA's system has made success out of more nondescript players over the years than a little bit.

Offense isn't our problem so really this is all about what this team can do to improve on D and that's is. We all know the deal. If a combination of adding a solid C, more dedication from STAT and Melo and better focus with Woodson can help improve the D then we'll be in great shape.

CrushAlot wrote:

MDA's system actually works even if you don't have great individual scoring talent like Tim H, M. Richmond and Mullin.

When has his 'system' worked when he didn't have tremendous talent? I alos think Marion, Stat, Nash and for part of the time Joe Johnson trumps run tmc.

do you ever look at a situation with any type of objectivity?

First, offensively speaking, does any system work without some sort of talent?

Second, this past year, the Knicks started Moz/Turiaf at C, Amare, Gallo, Fields, and Felton for most of the year and were one of the most efficient teams offensively. Besides Amare, that team started caca at C and a rookie at SG and still were one of the best. That points to a system that is pretty good without really overloading the talent.

CrushAlot wrote:

martin wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:

MDA's system actually works even if you don't have great individual scoring talent like Tim H, M. Richmond and Mullin.

When has his 'system' worked when he didn't have tremendous talent? I alos think Marion, Stat, Nash and for part of the time Joe Johnson trumps run tmc.

do you ever look at a situation with any type of objectivity?

First, offensively speaking, does any system work without some sort of talent?

Second, this past year, the Knicks started Moz/Turiaf at C, Amare, Gallo, Fields, and Felton for most of the year and were one of the most efficient teams offensively. Besides Amare, that team started caca at C and a rookie at SG and still were one of the best. That points to a system that is pretty good without really overloading the talent.

I am not sure where your coming up with who started at center. Moz started 13 games for the Knicks and Turiaf 21. Chandler started half of the games he played in for the Knicks last year, more than both Rony and Moz. D'Antoni chose to go small quite a bit last year and it he did have some success doing it. That being said Turiaf and Moz didn't start for most of the year.

my god you are pointless.

CrushAlot wrote:

martin wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:

martin wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:

MDA's system actually works even if you don't have great individual scoring talent like Tim H, M. Richmond and Mullin.

When has his 'system' worked when he didn't have tremendous talent? I alos think Marion, Stat, Nash and for part of the time Joe Johnson trumps run tmc.

do you ever look at a situation with any type of objectivity?

First, offensively speaking, does any system work without some sort of talent?

Second, this past year, the Knicks started Moz/Turiaf at C, Amare, Gallo, Fields, and Felton for most of the year and were one of the most efficient teams offensively. Besides Amare, that team started caca at C and a rookie at SG and still were one of the best. That points to a system that is pretty good without really overloading the talent.

I am not sure where your coming up with who started at center. Moz started 13 games for the Knicks and Turiaf 21. Chandler started half of the games he played in for the Knicks last year, more than both Rony and Moz. D'Antoni chose to go small quite a bit last year and it he did have some success doing it. That being said Turiaf and Moz didn't start for most of the year.

my god you are pointless.

I think a lineup of Chandler, Felton, Gallo, Amare, Fields is a pretty efficient offensive line up and the one used most often up until the trade deadline. I will try to be more direct when I respond to your posts.

outside of Amare, that is not "tremendous" talent. And yet the team was still one of the best offensively. System worked.

You can win with any system or no system really, it's about getting players to buy in, give effort and to play unselfishly. Larry Brown doesn't really have a system, in fact he always just says play the right way and no one is able to explain just what that is. It's about the basics and playing smart. I think there are only a few NBA coaches that can get more out of their teams than the talent suggests. IMO MDA is one of them. That doesn't make him the best or the only coach that can do well with this team. I just think he's not really the biggest problem we have. So many NY fans keep thinking its the coach and calling for change, but at a certain point you just keep switching out coaches and that's not the key to why the team isn't playing for a title. The best teams seem to always have at the least a solid starting center to anchor the team. That's what we need and have been trying to find. If we could've had a solid C last year we surely would've won more games. IMO that's the missing piece.