Woody has been doing better with less. I think this stretch is basically teaching him that he can trust the guys that he's had in this rotation. I don't know how he'll handle things when more of the players come back, but if I were him i'd have to keep things the same and only fit in guys to save minutes if we're winning or if someone is really having a bad game or stretch of games. He's been slow to recognize when certain lineups are working, but he's gotten better.

One case in point about Woody's being forced to use Murry is that it's now given him MUCH improved defense on the perimeter. Shump, Felton, Murry, JR and THJ is a very good core of guards. I'd only slip in Prigs to preserve guys legs if needed. But for the most part this is the rotation he needs to stick with.

Woody has gotten a LOT out of Melo, STAT, Bargs and KMart. Tyson will only help to round out the group. I don't think those of us who liked this roster were wrong. The start of the year was horrific, but now you can see what the potential of this roster really was. It's not perfect and no one said it was, but it was better than some believed and better than how it looked to start. Can Woody finish this year off strong and the team stay relatively healthy? That's gonna be the big question.

Well last year we started off so fast, people expected the same.

Well we had injuries later in the year and playoffs where guys were wore down.

This year we are starting off slow and injuries have taken place early in the season.

Hopefully this is a good sign that we will be strong at the end of the year and the 2nd season called the NBA Playoffs !

knicks1248 wrote:

playa2 wrote:People were just concerned where has this team been.

Well last year we started off so fast, people expected the same.

Well we had injuries later in the year and playoffs where guys were wore down.

This year we are starting off slow and injuries have taken place early in the season.

Hopefully this is a good sign that we will be strong at the end of the year and the 2nd season called the NBA Playoffs !

when we lost 9 in a row, the only person missing was tyson, as a matter of fact, were playing better with more injuries..

the difference is not the injuries, it's the overall game play of melo, shump, stat, and felton, not to mention Kmart seeing better minutes.

the roles are starting to be define and guys aren't trying to do it on there own

Not true, Along with Chandler, Felton was out for half of those games,4 or 5 and his hamstring wasn't 100% for the other games...Shump and JR minds wasn't on basketball...Trade rumors etc...

Dagger wrote:

dk7th wrote:

fishmike wrote:

tkf wrote:we are 13-22, beating the heat doesn't make this roster good... we are 13-22.. The nets have beat some quality teams of late and I still think that team is a mess right now.. no difference with this team that has a worse record than them...

so when we are 13-22 you are what the record says you are. But if we win 54 games its lucky circumstances and a one-off. OK.. got it. You are truly consistent with your drivel

not quite... that is a parcell's quote and i agree with that when it comes to football, which, at 16 games per season, makes it difficult to hide the true nature of a team. yes sometimes teams get hot at the right time, but they are not playing 82 games.

secondly, the nfl has 32 teams but how many teams make the playoffs? 12 teams only, or 37.5% of the teams. not only that but it is one and out, not a 7-game series. so upsets are more likely in the nfl.

nba with 30 teams meanwhile rewards mediocrity by allowing 16 teams or over 50% of all teams into the playoffs.

translation: a regular-season nba team is not necessarily going to be predictive of playoff performance, therefore it becomes a question of looking at the team and using advanced metrics to see how good the team actually is. for instance, the spurs may not be as good as their record indicates, although i would never bet against popovich and his great group of fundamentally solid players.

last season i kept saying that the knicks do not look like a conference finalist, although in spots they looked like a pretty good if not genuine second round performer.

54 regular-season wins? <meh>
second round annihilation is a better measure of how good the knicks were.

For someone that claims to look at numbers it seems basic statistical principles confuse you. The NBA has an 82 game season, the NFL has a 16 game season; so how can you be so clueless to say that an NFL record, with its grand total of 16 games serves as a superior barometer to the 82 game record of an NBA club. The NBA sample size is more than 5x as large!!! There are many more games for a team to truly prove where it stands in comparison to the rest of the league, a far slimmer margin of error in terms of representative accuracy. I mean do you understand anything about sample sizes at all? I'd say I'm shaking my head but that would be an understatement.

Your next point is even more ridiculous, you say the NFL Playoffs are one and done and you yourself acknowledge that many more upsets occur in the NFL postseason as a result of this, but then say that an NFL team's record is therefore more indicative of how a team will fare in the playoffs. I mean seriously, in a one-and-done how can any team's record be a better predictor of success than a seven game series, in which the better team almost always will win. In one game anything can happen, have you not seen an inferior team beat a far better opponent in one game in both the NBA and NFL playoffs? It happens all the fcking time. Have you never heard the phrase "on any given Sunday"? In a seven game series, the NBA team that has shown better success over the course of the longer season will very likely dominate over a team that gets lucky and wins one game in the series, as a longer series leaves less to randomness and chance. I mean how could you possibly post something so uninformed.

I've read your posts, I'm sure you're not a dumbass, you've raised good points before. I know I'm being somewhat nasty here, but I just honestly cannot believe you posted that. Wow. Come on man, you can do better than write nonsense like that to try to justify your pessimism.

lets try this again: the nba is a bloated mess with a significant dilution of the talent pool. you can search the world over and you still won't be able to stock a roster with enough talented and skilled players.

do you agree?

if you do then this means that regular-season records are going to suffer from inflation if you have an above-average team.

inflation= overvalued.

especially vulnerable to this fool's gold phenomenon are teams who are in the second tier-- teams who are ranked 5th to 10th league-wide. again, insofar as the nba playoffs reward mediocrity by allowing more than half the teams into the playoffs, first round series wins are really nothing to trumpet since the first rounds are all too often teeming with playoff fodder teams who nonetheless generate revenue. this is a cheap form of competition.

last season the knicks were basically considered the 6th best team in the league and certainly above average... but falling right in to that grey zone that i am talking about. were there closer to twenty teams or even 24 teams, then the 5th to 10th ranked teams would be much closer to legit than they are. do you agree? so, as it is the dilution actually creates a certain kind of sparseness outside of the top 5 teams instead of creating a concentration of better teams.

so again the crux of the matter is that when there are so many bad teams in a league, as is the case with the nba, a larger sample size doesn't really give you a decent idea of how good the team is in terms of playoff basketball beyond the first round. second rounds are the beginning of real playoff competition.

holfresh wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:

playa2 wrote:People were just concerned where has this team been.

Well last year we started off so fast, people expected the same.

Well we had injuries later in the year and playoffs where guys were wore down.

This year we are starting off slow and injuries have taken place early in the season.

Hopefully this is a good sign that we will be strong at the end of the year and the 2nd season called the NBA Playoffs !

when we lost 9 in a row, the only person missing was tyson, as a matter of fact, were playing better with more injuries..

the difference is not the injuries, it's the overall game play of melo, shump, stat, and felton, not to mention Kmart seeing better minutes.

the roles are starting to be define and guys aren't trying to do it on there own

Not true, Along with Chandler, Felton was out for half of those games,4 or 5 and his hamstring wasn't 100% for the other games...Shump and JR minds wasn't on basketball...Trade rumors etc...

exactly and on top of that Stat and Kmart were playing limited minutes every other game ... not a good thing for continuity

playa2 wrote:Where are those people who hated this roster, speak up or forever hold your piece.

playa2 wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

playa2 wrote:Where are those people who hated this roster, speak up or forever hold your piece.

Hate is a strong word but I don't like the composition of most of the roster.
We should make the playoffs but this isn't the roster I would have given up all our picks and cap space for.

Many thought this team wouldn't even MAKE THE PLAYOFFS and were heard saying

The usual suspects.

Bonn1997 wrote:

playa2 wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

playa2 wrote:Where are those people who hated this roster, speak up or forever hold your piece.

Hate is a strong word but I don't like the composition of most of the roster.
We should make the playoffs but this isn't the roster I would have given up all our picks and cap space for.

Many thought this team wouldn't even MAKE THE PLAYOFFS and were heard saying

The usual suspects.

Who? There was a thread with the predictions and I don't remember one person saying we wouldn't make the playoffs.

Go pull up the tread then.

Knicks won 54 games last year, they Suppose to be in the playoffs!!!

"Marshall law?" "we talking marshall law!!"