I am going to get this out of the way. When you play with duncan and he is allowed to set moving picks all game, I guess if I am tony parker I should be able to hit wide open jumpers... I think that is pure BS. and to watch the refs refuse to call early fouls on duncan, who mugged both frye and curry early in the game, is just a joke...... No one earns the right to foul, if you are great you should be able to defend without doing so....

anyway the keys:

No passion early, we didn't come over screens, that is a big problem of ours, we leave shooters wide open to take uncontested shots, we don't defend the pick and rolls and tonight that was the fault of frye and curry, twice frye left marbury out to dry and I am going to commend marbury for playing hard defense tonight, and on several occasions he was left out there by frye. Really I don't know what the hell frye is doing...

Free throws. We missed to many, just way to many, and down the stretch balkmans two missed FT's were huge. we get to within 1 but can't close the deal, I think marbs should of drove the ball to the hoop instead of taking that bail out three, not a good decision, but I won't rag on marbury tonight, he did well in the second half...

Second unit: the second unit with collins really did well, and they did the simple things, like chase shooters off their spots. You as a player should know that once you chas idiots like barry and bowen off their spots they are no threat off the dribble, so that is what you do, and mardy collins did that while he was in there. Nate again was great, Q solid but too many missed FT's. Crawford was blah. Francis OK, and curry good in spurts, again we really didn't have any great performances and sometimes we need that, since our margin of error is so small..

I like the way we fought back, I really do, they didn't quit and IT benching the starters sent a message and I like that, we are learning but we are not there yet, but this is a start, guys like collins and balkman who had that block on duncan are showing they have value and can contribute geatly on this team, but again late in the game, we showed our inexperience, but if you want young guys to play. Live with it....

Malik rose played well, I really like what he gave us. Kudos..

Overall, we must avoid the early let downs, we can't keep playing from behind, which has become a trend these last 3 games. we have to contest every posession which I didn't see early tonight and we have to play smarter. Parker is running around picks like a little rat, jump the picks, show the bigs. Brent barry is running to the 3 point like, beat him there, make him play within the arc, and guess what? you make him useless. It is all about playing smarter as well as harder... we just havent gotten that memo yet I guess...

1-3....

The Knicks keys to the loss.

They showed up.

The thing is that defending those picks is going to require that our bigs play them a bit differently too. Sure the guards have to fight over the picks more, but you can't do that forever. They'll just keep running the guards thru pick after pick as they've been doing. The bench players actually defended the pick differently. They closed the lane when a guard came around a pick and then they quickly recovered back to their man or area of the floor. Once we can get the entire team to do that better the team will have more success defensively.

Isiah is also still learning how to use his players. It's not like he has that all down and it hurt the team in certain spots, tho overall he did a good job of putting certain combos out there. Some worked better than others. It's not only a learning process for the players, but for Isiah too. He has to see what he has in some of these guys.

Just remember that this team hasn't begun to click on offense yet and the defense has been spotty, but that won't always be the case this year. In time things will even out and if we keep fighting thru this the team will get better. Then we also will eventually get Jared back and that will help too, to have another good defender. So i know it looked bad, but this wasn't a total loss.

Another classic over analyzed post by TKF.

The Knicks lost because they don't play defense plain and simple. The Spurs did whatever they wanted, missed a ton of open shots, built a big lead, got bored, got tested and then finished owning this pathetic team. Until the team plays defense first and offense second, more so like the second unit they won't win another game for a while.

Posted by SeatsBlue:

Another classic over analyzed post by TKF.

The Knicks lost because they don't play defense plain and simple. The Spurs did whatever they wanted, missed a ton of open shots, built a big lead, got bored, got tested and then finished owning this pathetic team. Until the team plays defense first and offense second, more so like the second unit they won't win another game for a while.

feel free to refrain from clicking your mouse on the thread topic... that usually works...

Excellent analysis TKF, as usual.

The lineup above is what this team needs. 2 solid players who do not need the ball in Lee and Jefferies and 3 scorers. Q also can D up especially on a 2.

I really think that this team is a collective heart away from being pretty decent, regardless of what the haters say.

Great post TKF everything you said was on the money.

Offensively, we needed Curry and Marbury taking more shots.

Curry is shooting 58% on the season, he needs to take more shots, period.

Marbury is our best scorer, he needs to take more shots as well.

Its really all about those 2 and Q is proving to be a reliable scorer as well. I'd focus the offense on those 3.

Hard to run a zone against SA when they have lots of good shooters, and a pretty good guy in the middle ;) But our man to man is so bad I guess thats the only option.

Curry's help defense is improved but still needs improvement.

Posted by tkf:

DJ: you can still push the ball with this group, because Q was on a running team and he can be the spot up guy. Lee is as fast as any big in the league, jeffries can run and finish in the open court and so can curry, who said this has to be a half court team. But since you talk about complete blowup, why don't you tell us how to go about doing that at this point...

objective: to get as much under the cap as possible after marbury and francis' deal expire.

procedure: fire isiah. waive marbury. waive francis. trade jamal, quentin, and eddy for expirings and picks. purchase picks and use MLE's wisely.

so going into the summer of 2009, we have: dlee, nate, frye, balkman, collins, 4-5 #1 picks, and a SH TLOAD of cap room.

we're going to stink for a few years anyway, may as well do it right.

Posted by djsunyc:

Posted by tkf:

DJ: you can still push the ball with this group, because Q was on a running team and he can be the spot up guy. Lee is as fast as any big in the league, jeffries can run and finish in the open court and so can curry, who said this has to be a half court team. But since you talk about complete blowup, why don't you tell us how to go about doing that at this point...

objective: to get as much under the cap as possible after marbury and francis' deal expire.

procedure: fire isiah. waive marbury. waive francis. trade jamal, quentin, and eddy for expirings and picks. purchase picks and use MLE's wisely.

so going into the summer of 2009, we have: dlee, nate, frye, balkman, collins, 4-5 #1 picks, and a SH TLOAD of cap room.

we're going to stink for a few years anyway, may as well do it right.

Ok but no really, like in reality how would you propose to do it. You don't just pay out over 100 million dollars for nothing. Got that LB? The real world doesn't work like that. You wanna get under the cap, trade for expirings, and let guys expire, but waiving guys with huge contracts and years left is just not logical or feasable from any standpoint.