http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/sports/basketball/28knicks.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

December 28, 2008
Amid Aches and Losses, Knicks Try to Regroup
By JOSHUA ROBINSON

GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Chris Duhon worked through Saturday morning’s practice with a white bandage covering most of the ugly purple mess over his left eye. The Knicks’ doctors stitched him up Friday night as they tried to repair the damage left by a stray elbow from the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Rashad McCants.

Repairing the damage left by the rest of the Timberwolves is a far more complicated task than applying nine stitches and a white bandage. After losing their fifth game in a row Friday — against a Minnesota team that had lost 13 straight — the Knicks are flirting with a crisis.

Since a close game against the Los Angeles Lakers, signs of the up-tempo philosophy that Coach Mike D’Antoni has tried to instill in the Knicks have vanished. On the floor at Madison Square Garden on Friday, they were flatfooted, error-prone players who were hanging their heads by the second half.

“It’s an individual thing,” Duhon said before referring to his teammates Nate Robinson and Al Harrington. “There’s not a lot I can do to get Nate ready to play, to get Al ready to play, to get a lot of the guys ready to play.”

“If we make mistakes,” Duhon added, “we’ve got to make mistakes with energy instead of us being lazy.”

But on Saturday morning, barely 13 hours after they trudged off the Garden floor, the Knicks were not paying the price they might have under another coach. There was no four-hour practice and there were no endless wind sprints. Those punishments are not D’Antoni’s style.

“He knows that’s not going to get anything solved,” said Quentin Richardson, who sat out Friday’s loss with a sprained ankle but expected to return Sunday against the Denver Nuggets.

D’Antoni acknowledged that there had been serious problems with his team’s approach in recent performances, but he said he was convinced the Knicks (11-17) could turn their season around because the will to win was still there.

“I think we’re O.K.,” D’Antoni said. “I see their faces and they want to do it.”

There just are not that many faces for D’Antoni to look at.

Riddled by injuries, the Knicks have been forced to rely largely on seven- and eight-man rotations since they traded two of their best players, Zach Randolph and Jamal Crawford, on Nov. 21. The players they acquired — Harrington and Tim Thomas — have been useful, but the Knicks had also been counting on guard Cuttino Mobley to relieve some of the pressure on Duhon and Robinson. Mobley was forced to retire earlier this month because of a recently diagnosed heart condition.

With eight players averaging more than 30 minutes a game, D’Antoni has watched the focus slip. He called a timeout nine seconds into the fourth quarter Friday, he said, because his team had simply forgotten the defensive scheme he had just given on the sideline — one of the small failures that keep adding up.

“We got demoralized,” D’Antoni said. “And we just didn’t play hard enough.”

I think that is news if Tim Thomas says it. Duhon has worked hard, played more than anyone else and is one of the team leaders. He isn't a loose cannon so he must have felt it needed to be said.

Not saying Du's right in his assessment since there were better guys to call out. But I think it shows the difference in the organization's culture this year as opposed to its recent history. Had last year's point guard done this, guys would have taken it personal because it probably would have been. Now, guys aren't looking over their shoulder to see which player is trying to politic with which front office guy. Coaches aren't fighting over who sits where or flat out not speaking with each other. There's no X's guys vs. Y's guys. Coaches and execs aren't getting caught up in locker room nonsense or angling for each other's jobs. Players aren't plotting and scheming on each other. It makes it a lot easier to be honest when you view a guy as a teammate as opposed to an enemy or oversensitive stat stuffer.

[Edited by - nysportsfan11 on 12-27-2008 10:16 PM]

Posted by EnySpree:

Trying to light a fire up his teamates....so I guess Al Harrington and Natee shoulda both scored 50pts cuz their 26 pts weren't good enough. They just weren't playing hard.

Yeah so Duhon and his leadership can suck my dick.

Its not about scoring 26 or 50. Its how those 26 or 50 are scored. Recently, some of the guys, including Nate and Al have been breaking the offense and going 1 on 1. The ball movement hasnb;t been the same. Selfish play has led to more turnovers and bad shot selection which in turn leads to fastbreaks going back the other way.

Who hasn't seen Al Harrington and Nate playing out of control and more individual than team play hasn't been paying attention. Too many turnovers, too many forced shots, too little ball movement. Yeah, Duhon can say what he said.

Even more when he is playing with a long list of injuries and tired legs.

D'Antoni acknowledges the poor shot selection. Its not about jacking up a shot as quickly as possible, its about taking the best available shot. We haven't been doing that of late.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/basketball/knicks/ny-spknix285979937dec28,0,1310859.story?track=rss

Uptown...Dantoni SAID it is about jacking up shots too quickly (and pointing fingers at Nate and Al HORRIBLE, yes I will take a page from the Cosmic book of haterade). See the NY Times article. Here is some more food for thought:

In a previous era, Friday's loss to the Wolves would have had everyone yelling 'Tim-ber!' That performance was the definition of a fire-able loss. No question.

But we know Mike D'Antoni has job security at least up until the 2010-11 season, when wins and losses will have greater emphasis over the R & D (research and development) project going on this season.

Let me remind you of something Quentin Richardson said to me in the preseason:

“If we don’t get the job done, I don’t look at it as it’s on Coach. I look at it as it’s on us, because after three or four coaches, it’s not the coach. It’s not his fault, the team ain’t listening. If we don’t want to listen, we’ve got to get guys that want to listen. That’s just the bottom line.”

The players are "tired" because of the tight seven-to-eight man rotation? That's a poor excuse. Only Chris Duhon (39:31) and Al Harrington (37:28) -- both tireless athletes -- are averaging an obscene amount of court time. Everyone else is in the mid-30s, which is exactly what any NBA player - especially ones looking for a new contract - would tell you he would want to average in a season.

Fatigue is the easy angle. Yes they must be exhausted. Maybe they're just not that good. Maybe more than three-fifths of this roster won't even be here after next season, if all goes accordingly. Maybe there is a need to see all of the warts in young players such as Nate Robinson, David Lee and Wilson Chandler to get a full understanding of who they are as players and what they are worth going forward?

Trust me here, Fixers. When Danilo Gallinari is finally ready to play, you have to expect the kid is going to play. A lot. You have to find out what he is, what his strengths are in this system and what his limitations might be.

Look, this isn't about being easy on the coach and his system, this is about understanding reality: the new regime isn't going to be on the hot seat here for quite some time. So whatever you're seeing right now is, as Q-Rich said, all on the players.

We see now that Harrington's POTW run earlier this month might have been fool's gold and, subsequently, gave him a sudden sense of entitlement to almost 20 shots per game (now that's how you get fatigued). You love Al's passion for being a Knick, but for three games I've noticed he also has an appetite for gettin-his, which is an attitude that will make you look really bad in this type of offense.

My fellow Fixers who see this game like Kasparov sees a chess board would have recognized two major issues that have hampered the offense, aside from poor shooting (which, I will argue, is a result of taking bad shots more than it is simply just not being "on"). The first issue is spacing. Duhon and Lee were working the pick and roll to near perfection about two weeks ago, mainly because the middle of the floor was so wide open. But if you watch the team now, you're finding more bodies near the painted area, more clutter.

[Say what you want about opponents scouting the Knicks and adjusting to the pick-and-roll, but with the right spacing and the defensive three-second rule, there is no way to easily defend that play if you have shooters in the corners. It's fundamental basketball.]

Harrington said he wanted to put more of an emphasis in his post-up game and in scoring down low and not take so many threes. Commendable. But while his inentions are in earnest, his methods have been detrimental. He goes into the post, sometimes after Lee has already completed the dive-down off the screen. Now the offense has to re-set with half of the shot clock already gone.

Another issue I've noticed is this group has taken the "up" out of up-tempo. This system is predicated on running hard. Not just fast-breaking like the And-1 Golden State Warriors. I mean running hard on makes and misses to get to spots on the floor. Both corners have to have bodies there spotting up for kick-outs well before the ball gets to the top of the key.

Getting back to Richardson, he mentioned in the preseason how players may have a tendency to not run as hard if they aren't getting the ball. But not running hard hurts the rest of the team. It's like a wide receiver loafing on a decoy route. Once the defense sees that you know you're not getting the ball, they can cheat off you. Plus, you never know, sometimes the decoy route suddenly becomes the best option.

The rotation just hasn't gotten set since the two big trades went down, for various reasons (injuries are a prominent one). I think D'Antoni made a mistake in starting Nate Robinson at the two because you lose his energy coming off the bench, where he is clearly much more valuable. Nate, like Al, tends to try to do too much -- the wrong thing for the right reasons -- and it needs to be corralled.

AND

Yet, Duhon said, much of Saturday also focused on individual responsibility for the kinds of breakdowns that snowballed Friday.

"There's not a lot I can do to get Nate [Robinson] ready to play or Al [Harrington] ready to play," he said. "Then when we're out there, we've got to work together. … If we make mistakes, we have to make mistakes with energy."

Posted by Queeniepop:

See King1's comment below on who the SL will be today...he usually is right (nice that we traded out starting SG and PF for what is now a bench player, a retired guy and simply FUGAZY...and Cosmic, I hope you relax with your incessant Jamal hatred, its sorta scary and don't make me pull stats and 82games stats).

I would start duhon, wilson, thomas Jeffires and Lee. It will help us defensively and maybe we can share the ball more on offense.

[Edited by - queeniepop on 12-28-2008 10:55 AM]

JC&Zach were never part of this teams future. They were good trades when they were made and still are today.

You simply can't start a team with duhon, wilson, jefferies, lee, and thomas.........all those guys are going to be looking for the pass....not one guy can create. Its not about passing the ball around until someone is open. It doesn't quite work that way.

Whatever.......I know I'm highly upset Duhon had the nerve to throw Nate and Al under the bus. Both guys are playing hard and show the most emotion and balls out of any player on the team. If I was his teamate I would be cursing him out for it. How in the world does those comments help anything? Its not like Duhon has been puting up 15pts and 12 assist during the slump.......

Duhon is the one that needs to get motivated to play. How bout lets stop getting destroyed everynight on defense by every point guard he faces? How bout breaking down the defense and getting guys buckets? I really don't get how a guy can call out teamates that are playing hard and carrying the scoring load.

Again note to Duhon........play your position and shut the **** up.

Sure Jay, good trades for the FUTURE and cap space but no one here should think that any player here TODAY won't be traded at any given time for the FUTURE or that in spite of what management is telling you isn't just smoke up your arse. All I am saying is that the guys that were here helped Duhon and this team way more than any fan seems to want to understand or accept. No one can predict what the record would be with them, for better or worse. And it isn't what they are or how their new teams are doing, it is what they were doing to help this team, our team.

Personally, since evryone here who has an opinion is RIGHT in their own eyes, I think the fact that Al forced his way out of GS, is BAD KARMA. Similar to why Baron Davis is not helping LAC or Brand on Philly is not really working out (even before his injury). JC wanted to be here and was STUNNED when he was traded (after incessantly ebing reminded by Dantoni that he was the "lynchpin" of this team...and yes, I can pull the article in which Dant states this) and Zach who was truly helping this team with high percentage shots in spite of the somewhat reduced black hole effect.

As LBJ said, If you guys want to go to sleep right now and not wake up until July 1, 2010, then go ahead because it’s going to be a big day,” Oh and by the way, he is boys with Jamal and was "very surprised when the Knicks traded him."

[Edited by - queeniepop on 12-28-2008 11:27 AM]

Posted by Queeniepop:

No one can predict what the record would be with them, for better or worse. And it isn't what they are or how their new teams are doing, it is what they were doing to help this team, our team.

You may not be able to predict the record, but this team was a 1st and out if lucky. And we were locked into that until we moved Zach and JC. Now, for the future, the sky is the limit.