GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:

TMS wrote:the way to defeat a high octane offense is by playing suffocating defense... it's been proven many times in postseason play in many different sports... great defensive teams dictate the pace of the action & beat teams by taking away what their opponent is trying to do on offense... adding a player like Melo makes this much harder to do for teams playing against us... if u try & stop Amare in the post or take away the PnR w/Amare, u have Melo on the other side ready to torch you... if u double on Melo in the high post, Ray Felton will either kill you with his penetration or dish it off to Amare for an easy dunk underneath the basket.

IMO given the fact we've invested our future into hiring an offensive minded coach & the unlikelihood of ever being able to match up with Miami or Boston's defense, our likely best option right now would be to overload the team with great offensive players that will make their job of defending us all the more difficult.

sure there are negatives to adding Melo in terms of his defensive deficiencies, but you'd be a fool to ignore the positives he would bring to this franchise... there is no way that DW is going to gut our roster to get Melo here if you believe what he's said up to this point, he's waiting things out & playing it the right way by being patient... all the doomsday panic that you hear on the forums about how we're going to have to give up every young player we have to get Melo here is based on nothing but pure speculation.

There's still a sliver of hope we can be competitive defensively with Melo + Amare but most likely we'll have to just outscore everyone. It'll be fun to watch if it happens.

I can't imagine the amount of debate when we have to decide on extending Felton vs. making a play for Paul or DW. I do love me Felton's attitude.

i think our only real chance to beat the Heat is to just bombard them with shots the way Denver did last night, using Ray as a catalyst like Ty Lawson was last night, & having Melo & Amare get the Heat defenders into early foul trouble... both of those guys are awesome at getting to the FT line & are almost impossible to guard one on one... we would have to play to our strengths & try & dictate the matchups in our favor... that would go for any team we play in the postseason.

i agree about Felton too... love his game & his bulldog mentality... it fits our team perfectly... it's gonna be tough trying to decide whether to hold onto him or spend the dollars & assets to go after CP3 or D Will in a couple years, but we got enough to worry about right now w/Melo... we can't worry about what's gonna happen in 2012 right now... we need to be in win now mode now while Amare's playing at an elite level.