Knicksfan wrote:Ok, since you single me out, lets dance.I don't understand what you mean by "D'Antoni amazingly has them playing ZIP!" I am hoping that you were just as disgusted as I was after that 2nd Pacers loss in a row and just got carried away with the extremity of that statement. I saw the board in the locker room before the 1st pacers game. It had players on the Pacers listed next to %ages they shot from certain areas of the floor. Your statement literally makes it seem like the Knicks focus 100% of their practice time and film sessions to offense and completely ignore the other side of the ball.I am assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that you did not actually mean to imply that. Maybe you meant something like..MDA probably spends 70% of his time on offense and 30% on defense and he needs to spend way more time on defense in practice? I don't know how we could really verify how much time is spent on defense by the way unless we know an insider on the team who was speaking off the record.
First of all, do you really want me to play the percentage game in saying D'Antoni focuses 0% on defense or maybe 30%? Unless you work for the Knicks and have access to that, nobody can answer that. Now, a series of games like this last home-and-home against the Pacers is a great example of what I mean then I say D'Antoni doesn't even have this team playing average defense. The Knicks had serious issues defending the Pacers in game 1, especially to a guy like Hansborough. Many mistakes were made, like the one you mention because it happened in the first game and was repeated in the second. And there is issue number one: the Knicks, for all the film sessions and practice time they probably had, showed no different approach to the pacers and Hansborough. While you could possibly point out Amar'e for making that mistake in the first game, showing no signs of adjustment in game two has to be D'Antoni's responsability, as he is supposed to show his team their mistakes and tell them where to go to stop a play that continuously hurt them. There was no sign of said adjustment in the second game.
I don't know exactly how much focus does D'Antoni has for defense, but the best you can do is listen to his interviews to pick up his brains on that matter. Every time he is questioned about the reason for our loss he explains they had trouble moving the ball and making shots. He does talk about defense, but every time he tries to explain a defensive strategy to stop a player in a key situation, the best he can come up with is that "you just hope he misses the shot". Think I'm biased? Listen to his interviews and let me know when he goes into full detail about how a defensive play is set and how important is to adjust his defense for the future games.
You say the Suns played average defense and I agree they did. That's why they came so close to the Finals. But does that proves NY plays average defense? Not even close, because in fact there seems to be no discipline, no strategy and no idea what to do on the defensive end. Players switch without regards for the offensive play being executed by the opposing team. Out of timeouts, players don't help when a play that everybody expects to happen is executed, like the Granger shot.
The Knicks have been so bad defensively that their main focus in practice should be on that end. Do you really expect that to happen with D'Antoni?
Tyler Hansborough can not go left. Yet time after time we allowed him to go right. There was one specific moment I remember where he was on the left baseline and ball faked left and Amare bit. Hansborough went right and got a bucket. Is that on Amare or the coaching staff?
How many times did that happen in the last two games? You think this couldn't have been fixed with coaching, with D'Antoni stressing this out in the first game and instructing his players, especially Amar'e, what to do in that situation? Even in the most desperate of times, you think maybe a guy like Sheldon Williams, praised for his D and rebounding, could be used to stop that as an adjustment from game one to the second? Some here talk like this players can do whatever they like once the game starts, but actually they have an offensive and defensive system to play and on that last end NY has shown no type of adjustments from game to game and even during games.
What's the solution? Would a coach like Scott Skiles bench Amare or Melo for either being bad defenders or not remembering something like 'FORCE HIM LEFT!'. If he doesn't then there are negative consequences. If he does it sets off a shtstorm.
If 40% (2 out of 5) of your starting lineup has a reputation for being poor/indifferent defenders, how much does a coaching change really solve? Regardless of who is coaching this team if the entire team starting with the stars who should be the ones that are giving it their all on defense AND holding their teammates accountable doesn't step up how much they study defense and give effort, does it matter?
You assume they were instructed to "Force him left". You say you focused on our stars on defense but you don't have to just focus on them. Watch the whole team take position, give up space, switch constantly and incorrectly, sometimes even with the guy with the ball in front of them, leaving them embarrassingly wide open. Watch the lack of communication, the last resort fouls. Consider specifically this short series, where NY's lack of adjustment from game one to the next were exposed in an alarming kind of way.
You mention how can we expect guys with terrible reputation on defense play better D. When a team shows no discipline and strategy while playing D, I would say fixing it to actually stop teams from time to time would be an improvement. He has done it before in Phoenix, where they played enough D to make their potent offense count. But NY is going out there to storm the other team offensively and "expect them to miss enough" to make their O count. That won't get you anywhere.
We lost a few players in Melo's trade that are actually good defenders. We still saw the same 119-117 scores with them. The players are not free of blame, but when the whole team lacks organization on D and don't show any kind of adjustment from one game to another, much of the blame has to fall on the coach.
Dude..you're the one that "started playing the percentage game" when you said that MDA has the Knicks playing zero defense. Your exact choice of word was "zip". That's a bit ridiculous to say no? I don't expect anyone to come up with an exact percentage. You're right. You can't know unless you're with the team. But you seem so confident in saying that MDA has the knicks playing zero defense and is incapable of having a practice focusing on defense. Didn't Melo/Billups say that what little time the Knicks had to practice the first game or two of the Melo era, they focused mainly on defense?
We both agree that the Suns played average defense under this exact same coaching staff.
The Suns, coached by MDA, played averaged defense.
The Knicks, coached by MDA, are playing terrible defense.
How is the logical conclusion from these two statements that the majority of the blame goes to the coaching staff..which is the same..vs' the players..who are pretty much all diff. other than Amare?
You also said
"We lost a few players in Melo's trade that are actually good defenders. We still saw the same 119-117 scores with them. The players are not free of blame, but when the whole team lacks organization on D and don't show any kind of adjustment from one game to another, much of the blame has to fall on the coach."
I get what your saying about the defense being bad before the trade AND after the trade with the constant being MDA. It's the same logic I used above in the Sun/Knicks comparison.
Pretrade Knicks under MDA played horrible defense.
Posttrade Knicks under MDA player horrible defense.
The logical conclusion would be that no matter what type of players we get in here, if MDA is here the defense will stay terrible. But think about this.
Pretrade Knicks lacked size, had a weak defense, coached by MDA (not a great defensive coach by any stretch of the imagination)
Posttrade Knicks STILL lack size, traded away "a few players in Melo's trade that are actually good defenders" , still coached by MDA (not a great defensive coach by any stretch of the imagination)
With the exception of Tom Thibodeau and maybe Scott Skiles, there are very few coaches in the NBA who I think can really demonstrate that they can get the most of out their players defensively regardless of personel.
It would be ridiculous of me to say MDA is blameless and I've already admitted that he should have done something like have ANYONE else guard Hibbert once Amare had 3,4 fouls. I'm not generally a big fan of switching everything on defense unless you have a roster like the Hawks full of guys like Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Josh Smith, Horford who are all rel. quick and strong for their positions.
What I'm saying is a good part of our defensive problems simply comes from the lack of size and the players on your the team. A guy like Shelden Williams doesn't really get minutes under ANY coach unless there are huge problems on your team. So maybe he starts getting more minutes.
If we get a some size then
- Amare doesn't have to guard bigger guys down low, less foul trouble simply from having to foul due to being overpowered. He can maybe play harder (smarter would be nice too) on that side of the ball.
- Guards are too quick and the NBA rules have been changed too drastically since the handchecking era of Riley's Knicks to really prevent Darren Collison/Ty Lawson types from penetrating. Having a Hibbert/Dwight Howard/Bynum really helps with that. Even Joel Pryzbilla would do. If we can't get someone like that I dunno..maybe it is easier to change the coach.
What I don't get is how MDA's coaching staff was able to cobble together an average defense in Phoenix but not here. Maybe it simply takes time and training camp? Maybe it's the simple diff. of what a Shawn Marion type ADDS on defense (remember how he made Dirk WORK during those suns-mavs series) vs. what a Melo type subtracts.
You seem like a pretty well spoken dude. That's why it's just weird to me that you think that just firing MDA would solve everything. Getting this group to play good defense would be a challenge for any coach.
It might help to have a defensive coordinator type but that would be MDA essentially admitting defeat? Who do you think would be a better candidate to coach should MDA get canned?
Let's try to elevate the level of discourse in this byeetch. Please
3/17/2011 4:24 PM