Posted by Pharzeone:
Cosmic as far as I am concern "the fall of the Knicks" begins and ends with the play of their point guard. You can directly traced the Knicks bad play to his huge dip in production and increase mental breakdowns. The last good game I actually saw him play was the Golden State game. He has struggled mightly against younger quicker guards but also had trouble against older guards recently. There are his defenders who refuse to access any blame towards him for some reason. Gus Johnson called him out on Sunday. Maybe Nate's return has hamper his progress or maybe he is just tired but so are all the other players.
I agree....somewhat...and it was covered "somewhat" in that Duhon thread. Was it quality of opponents? (not likely, we seen good play against all qualities). Was it minutes? (Hey, Duhon never played this much, so it's a theory that has legs). Was it the trades? (nope, cause, they played even HARDER after those.) Was it the fact they played hard but kept losing? (Sure, but, you never want a team, especially a team of professionals, to give into a MENTAL side of things!). Who knows...? Too short of a sample size I say to call it more than a Lapse and say it's a Trend.
Yet I still maintain, and maybe this is subsequent reaction as a result of Duhon's breakdown or maybe not (the conflict I have with the idea): That Nate began to freelance more and more and go 1-1 more and more. Once that happened I think Harrington, who is prone to do the same, started to also go 1-1 to "get his". Chandler then followed.
It seems to have been a domino effect and maybe you are correct that it began with Duhon.
It began somewhere but I still maintain that as a whole the team had given up on the moral victories and started to just go through the motions. The Laker loss - didn't sting them individually....but it was a final game in a string of games that they could have very well gone 5-0 but had just enough breakdowns to go 2-3(right?). I think that did them in.
I don't like the conclusion as to why: They went mentally soft. For that means nobody on this team is worth keeping. I hope it was just a LAPSE and not a TREND.
Time will tell and I think the Charlotte game showed some evidence that it was a lapse. For the Charlotte game was kind of a mix of that moral-victory-hard-fighting-team and the oh-whoas-me-we-cant-win-anyway-so-why-try-team.
We'll see as time goes on (yeah, cliche from hell) as to which it is.
One thing I have noticed, and I meant to make a thread of it but had not done enough research to do so, is that old Knicks team of 3 quarters of solid play had resurfaced! Where there's just ONE quarter in every loss where we got DESTROYED - but - the other 3 quarters we won or were at least even in play.
I guess the bottom line is there's a LOT going on here and so many reason why we're not playing "up to potential" if you will.
Charlotte game was better, but, those previous six games reeked of "who cares just pay me so I can go home" and those are the games that murder you as a fan...and, lo and behold (lol, picks up poking stick again) leads to THREADS LIKE THIS! (racist hatters be dammned!)
