Someone posted elsewhere that we were out coached....

i'm not even sure what that means, to be honest.

we were outplayed more than anything to me.

that falls on d'antoni, sure, but how is it that if d'antoni is out coached he is forced to play 2 rookies and landry in the 4th quarter?

where the heck are our so-called vets?

he is being forced to play guys he doesn't want to, which i am struggling with seeing how is an example of purely coaching when one also has to consider the reality that players we expected to carry us are not performing up to anywhere near such a level.

i dunno what it is, but i would not be surprised to see it being problems relating to contract and not being with the team long term.

kam posted something hughes supposedly said joking about how lebron on the knicks would mean something ridiculously stupid would be "better."

tell me that isn't in the back of their mind and possibly effecting knick players' games. psychologically that's actually normal, and i will admit i didn't want to think this since i wanted to see the team strategy for this year to win a bit work.

hence why you notice rookies playing hard and vets perhaps not feeling full confidence despite what they are saying.

i hoped it would work, but i think it's difficult for us to ignore the reality that a huge number of our players are essentially hired guns for 1 year.

let's give d'antoni guys who are felt to be believed in remaining with the team...for real...not what is stated to the press in interviews so fans like us think things are la di da di (when they're not), etc. and THEN see how he does.

as Kam has properly stated, we cannot rationally look at this team and gauge where we will be in a year or 2.

there are other things i'd like to say, but even as beyond disheartened i am about our year and perhaps our future, i dunno what will happen next off-season, and what we are doing now anyone with some sense of reality had to suspect COULD be a disaster with so many hired guns and few real leaders other than the coach....which you will see is not enough in the NBA. You need a star to really be a leader, which we lack.

Grin and bear it Knick fans....

This reminds me of the years experienced as a Yankee fans through much of the 80s and 90s. We were the joke and the Mets were the glamor team. That year when we lost 95 games was torture, and it took years to build that team + unlimited salary cap, but the Knicks are recovering from a decade of decisions that are killing us even a year or so removed from that period. Who in their right mind thought it would turn around instantly?

Did we get hoodwinked into thinking D'antoni would instantly turn us into a winner?

I think so, actually, and that was part of the idea behind his hiring...

yet, he is also a smart, players oriented coach...and the reality is we are not roster-wise over that hump yet in a league where roster management is more important than probably anything else.

that's why byron scott is fired, perhaps van gundy left us, and jackson is the "greatest coach [slick positioner for success] ever]. coaches are easy 'escapegoats' (thank you, steph).

coaching, to me, in the nba is about relationships with players and smarts. D'antoni has that, but the problem is player wise you HAVE to have superstars. Where are ours?

I wanted Jennings (as I had begged here multiple times), and we took Hill (which i could understand), who could work out, and maybe Gallo will be that, but basically we have none.

I cannot name 1 "great" coach who has lacked great players and succeeded consistently

I wanted Jennings (as I had begged here multiple times)

I could have sworn you stated multiple times that you wanted Rubio, and when I said I would prefer Jennings, you told me I would fail a logic class.

oohah

PresIke wrote:true, i wanted rubio 1st (not the 1st pick over blake, btw), but then either jennings or curry.

but there was no way rubio would last and you expected jennings to be there.

i have the old posts saved somewhere if you want to check.

i argued for him many times on this forum and the nytimes forum.

I haven't been around here much but I can only go by what you discussed with me. In any case, Jennings was the smart pick and I am glad that other teams saved the Knicks from drafting Rubio and Curry.

oohah

Every team in the NBA has a "star" player that is leaps and bounds better than whoever is our featured player of the moment.

This league is dominated at this point by amazingly skilled point guards. When our chance came up to get one, we blew it. Look at the Hawks, they passed on Roy and Paul and would have been contending for a championship if they had taken one of them. In our case, we would have been competitive with Jennings and to a lesser extent with Bayless/Teague/Holiday/Lawson/Beaubois/Maynor...

We didn't address that position. We're terrible.

Not a shocker.

Last year when MDA made Duhon look like a decent PG, MDA obviously decided that he didn't want that anymore and told Duhon to stop doing everything he was doing and just play like a dead fish out there. LOOK MOST of what a team does is on the players. The coach sets them up for success and guides them, but the individual players have to do the heavy lifting. Since we all know how important PG play is to MDA's style of play it's imperative that we had Duhon improve on what he did last year. If he did that even just a bit, we'd be in much better shape. He's gone the opposite direction and thus we look like crap. Duhon was supposed to teach TD how to play the right way by example and instruction and he just hasn't done it. This is why we're losing so bad.

Great pick Don. That Jenning criticism that he's getting is mild, wait until they start bringing up his whole record a la Isiah/Layden.

This team is just in schambles right now. Walsh is building a squad of players that have a low cieling, which should not be shocking since he's coming from a team that has a lot of players who fit the same mold.

The "raw" term being used to describe Hill usually implies that someone has a lot of room to grow. However, its not like you watch this guy and his raw ability jumps off the screen at you. Raw is Stromile Swift. Raw is not Hill. You could say that about anyone. If any drafted forward could hone their skills to play like 'Sheed, then they'd be great players. Does that mean you can draft any forward without those skills in the lottery and just call them "raw?" That really bothers me. Derozan/Jennings/Holiday/Williams/Johnson/Clark don't have enough room to grow?

This GM is terrible. Lucky that he doesn't have to make any tough decisions in the Summer.