Cosmic wrote:

Bippity10 wrote:D'Antoni had a rotation that included Hughes and a sprinkling of TD. It was a line-up that was centered around defense and effort. Every night we competed. We hustled on D and moved the ball. We looked like a team for about 30 games. Certain guys weren't playing but the TEAM was playing. The games we were losing were against better teams and for the most part was understandable.

Then on a dime, without the team struggling D'Antoni went away from this line-up and back to a one on one, no defense model that proved it couldn't win before. This current line-up is less focused on defense and ball movement and is now centered around the one on one skills of Nate, David and Al. Down the stretch of games we are no longer getting stops, we are instead relying on these three to use their offensive skills and decision making to try to win games for us.

I noticed the same thing and I don't understand it.

If we were featuring players for trade it didn't mean we had to abandon what we were doing - so that can't be it.

Douglas played well at the start and there was no reason to stop playing him. Now when he does play OF COURSE he is a mess because he HASNT PLAYED.

Hughes, took his initial benching like a man, came in and played great, then got hurt. Was NOT given a chance to get back to what he was doing. Was FORCED to play while still recovering. Of COURSE he stunk it up then got benched and then it got personal.

Mike has certainly picked a few unnecessary battles this season. He's a bit too arrogant.

But I will say this: The players he picked battles with really ARE KNUCKLEHEADS. (Harrington, Hughes, Nate)

So, well, make of it what you will.

The vanishing of Douglas wasn't right though. That is really the one big one.

The problem is that we are a team of role players so it's very tough for any coach to make the right decisions. You can justify sitting almost anyone on this team because no one player seems to have any effect on wins and losses. But when the coach finds something that is working, why would he go away from it? I personally don't think Hughes has any complaint if he is told to go to the bench because he wasn't playing well. But when you take a step back and look at how we look now as opposed to how we looked a month ago it reallly looks like two different teams. The move to bench TD/Hughes took us from a team oriented approach to a one on one focused attack. It almost feels like we made a midseason trade and I think the players are actually responding on the court as if we did.

JohnWallace44 wrote:You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, Hughes and Douglas could have saved our season.

Douglas was taken out of the lineup because he's too small to play in the zone and can't play PG. The zone defense, keyed by Jeffries is what got us winning for a while and up to 9th in the East.

This team is god awful. D'Antoni can't do much about it.

I'm not killing Douglas--but who the H thought he was going to play PG and who bypassed Blair for him--which guy in management did this?

BRIGGS wrote:

JohnWallace44 wrote:You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, Hughes and Douglas could have saved our season.

Douglas was taken out of the lineup because he's too small to play in the zone and can't play PG. The zone defense, keyed by Jeffries is what got us winning for a while and up to 9th in the East.

This team is god awful. D'Antoni can't do much about it.

I'm not killing Douglas--but who the H thought he was going to play PG and who bypassed Blair for him--which guy in management did this?

Briggs, I'm sick of reading you crying about spilled milk in EVERY SINGLE THREAD. This thread has nothing to do with who should have been picked, you've created about 50 of those threads, post your thoughts on all of your spilled milk in those threads.

now regarding the main POINT of this thread... i agree bip. i'm not sure why miked messed with the rotation, it was working and working pretty well, it got us back into the playoff hunt, but then when hughes got hurt, it seemed like miked just forgot about him when he came back. you would have to think that if he had the chance to do it over again, he'd probably would never have benched hughes when he came back.

i will say that the guys playing in hughes abscense were playing well while he was hurt, but that it wasn't going to last and it didn't. that probably did put the first nail in the coffin for our season though.

I do have huge problems with the use of douglas. He has played well no matter where he's been put. For that matter, hill should have been getting much more time as well.

Regarding 1-on-1 play, almost all our starting 5 configurations have dug early holes for us. Nate and al have had to come in gunning off the bench to try to close those deficits.

Uptown wrote:

nyk4ever wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

JohnWallace44 wrote:You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, Hughes and Douglas could have saved our season.

Douglas was taken out of the lineup because he's too small to play in the zone and can't play PG. The zone defense, keyed by Jeffries is what got us winning for a while and up to 9th in the East.

This team is god awful. D'Antoni can't do much about it.

I'm not killing Douglas--but who the H thought he was going to play PG and who bypassed Blair for him--which guy in management did this?

Briggs, I'm sick of reading you crying about spilled milk in EVERY SINGLE THREAD. This thread has nothing to do with who should have been picked, you've created about 50 of those threads, post your thoughts on all of your spilled milk in those threads.

now regarding the main POINT of this thread... i agree bip. i'm not sure why miked messed with the rotation, it was working and working pretty well, it got us back into the playoff hunt, but then when hughes got hurt, it seemed like miked just forgot about him when he came back. you would have to think that if he had the chance to do it over again, he'd probably would never have benched hughes when he came back.

i will say that the guys playing in hughes abscense were playing well while he was hurt, but that it wasn't going to last and it didn't. that probably did put the first nail in the coffin for our season though.

Even though I wasn't born yet, I'm still ticked off that we picked Mel Davis with the 14th pick in the 1973 draft and let George McGinnis slide to the 2nd round.

Didn't we then lose a no.1 pick as penalty for signing him as a free agent when the ABA folded when somehow Philly owned his rights? The guy just mailed it in when he got his big NBA contract.

What really gets me was we could have had Dr. J as payment for the Nets coming into the league but instead took the 3 mil.

Can't blame dolan or Layden on that one!!! ITT owned the knicks then.

markvmc wrote:I thought the lineup changed because Hughes got injured, and then flat out sucked when he came back.

i'm glad someone is reading my posts

My feeling has been we have the talent that could win 40, but as we've seen it's not balanced enough and it's been almost impossible to get the consistent play out of this group to get the wins we need. Guys can play, but just not that well enough together on both ends. The BIGGEST issue has been the lack of a true leader. No guy in crunchtime to take the ball and take or create that winning shot. We kind of knew that any semblance of that kind of player left with Jamal.

TMS wrote:MDA's rotations haven't made sense all year... he's messing around like the Knicks are a toy chest, he gets tired of one toy he throws it back into the toy chest & grabs another one to play with.

well when the team has like 3 good players, what else do you expect? it was the same when larry brown was here.. we don't have any good players.

nyk4ever wrote:

TMS wrote:MDA's rotations haven't made sense all year... he's messing around like the Knicks are a toy chest, he gets tired of one toy he throws it back into the toy chest & grabs another one to play with.

well when the team has like 3 good players, what else do you expect? it was the same when larry brown was here.. we don't have any good players.

Larry Brown had a personal agenda IMO... he wanted to be in full control of the team & was trying to undermine Isiah... he was also having issues w/his lead player... i don't think MDA is trying to undermine DW, but i do think he has his own personal agenda... i don't buy that he's just trying to win games or that he's being true to his word like some of the blind sycophants do on this forum... if he were being true to his word then Jordan Hill & Toney Douglas would have been seeing much more playing time in the 1st half of the season & he wouldn't have "messed with guys careers" the way he did with Nate & Larry Hughes... i find MDA to be highly contradictory in his words & in his actions, & that is the #1 problem i have w/the man... this has nothing to do with his coaching ability like some guys always want to make it out to be.