Posted by codeunknown:

Of the questions posed by Bippity, I'll take two.

First, in terms of style of play, Bippity is 100% right in suggesting that there isn't one. "Sharing the ball and covering for players on defense" is not a style of play. Playing hard is not a style of play. If you don't do that on a given night, you're likely to be blown out by 40.

To me, style of play is a comprehensive question that should be grounded in specifics. 1) What are the top 3 offensive plays you run or project to run with our current team? 2) Are you more comfortable either a) trapping the pick and roll, b) switching on the pick and roll or c) going under the pick and showing/recovering with a big man? 4) do you like to force dribble penetration to the middle or baseline? 5) Do you have the personnel to either crash the offensive boards or consistently get back in transition? 6) do you have the athletes, defensive rebounding and transition defense to gamble in an up tempo game or do you try to minimize possessions to negate transition?

In order to answer those questions, you need to start maintaining a stable roster where strengths and weaknesses are readily known. We, however, still don't know who our starting point guard, coach, 2 guard or small forward will be next year.

The other question Bippity posed was about leadership. I'll keep this short but I don't think you need an on court leader. The coach can be the leader as long as you don't have insubordinates on the floor. In fact, I think its sometimes better when you don't have a dominant personality on the floor that distracts from the coach's orders. Regardless, obtaining leadership is less important to me than quelling insubordination. Marbury and others have shown that they can be insubordinate and, if they stay, its should only be contingent on the understanding that they follow instructions blindly. The coach is paid to make the plan, the players to obey it strictly.

Good post.

Holfresh: I type that "Marbs can help us win. Of course he has the talent to lead teams in the playoffs every year. But until he stops having excuses made for him and he actuslly accepts that even if he hates the coach he has to lead he will retire with everyone making excuses for him.
I am rooting for the guy to succeed as much as anyone here.

You reply:
"You even agree that Brown may be even more accountable than Marbs for last year's debacle...But Marbs should be the one shipped out of town and Larry gets to continue coaching..."

This is what I mean when I say you and the other guy(can't remember his name) have one tracked minds and really don't read anyone's posts. Talking with you is sometimes an absolute waste.


[Edited by - Bippity10 on 06-12-2006 1:00 PM]

Posted by rvhoss:

I think, if brown stayed, our style would be similar to the Pistons, Crawford off the curl, marbury bringing it up to initiate the play, screen and rolls with Channing, fill passing lanes and full court pressing on defense.

Could be the same should he leave.

rvhoss, that's a start, but I think there's A LOT more to it. We've been trying to figure out a style of play with this team for 2 years now. At the beginning of both seasons, we thought we would be the perfect fast break team, but the problem is, we don't have the defenders or MONSTER rebounders to do that. Look at all the teams who run at times, or a lot. Clippers, Suns, Mavs, maybe a little Miami, Denver. All those teams have either Dominant rebounders, shotblockers and/or guys who can swarm around on the defense and make fits for all opposing offenses. The fast break starts on the defense and we didn't play a lot of defense, therefore, that takes away one kind of style of play.

If we want to do that, we may need to look at a player like Reggie Evans this offseason, just to start.

We also have the personel to play the halfcourt offense, I honestly think, but to me, the main thing is that we need our young guys to continue to develop and we'll be fine in that category. And there's a lot of ways they need to develop.

Therefore, I think if we are going to develop any sort of identity, we need to go out and get maybe a couple of shooters (H20 looks better and better everyday) and some defensive minded players, like Evans, or a Jared Jefferies. I'm not really interested in K Mart b/c of the knees and attitude.

Who presses nowadays? Pressing is for certain situations, but pressing for entire games is insane. When you press and either get beat or get lost in a pick, you have to have the rest of the team rotate QUICKLY. WE DON'T HAVE THE DEFENSIVE PERSONEL FOR THAT!

Uh no, I expect every player in the league including Allan to play defense, but the Allan arguements are for a different thread.

You just admitted we don't have the defensive personel but you still expect us to press? We have maybe one athlete on our roster that could be a good pressing guard and that's Nate Robinson and in no way was he ready for the big minutes and in no way was he ready to be a real good defensive player. He tried though. Jamal and Marbury would get burned completely and the entire defense would collapse and then we'd be blaming that on Larry Brown too.

So pretty much, it's Larry Browns fault that the Knicks don't press, even though we don't have defensive minded players, but it would have been fault if we did press and we got destroyed everytime, and instead of losing by 20, we lose by 40 each game.

Lee and Q Rich press? lol

When you press every game all year long you must have a shot blocker

Who dat?