First off, I was very excited and relieved that we have some fresh faces playing for us. Just watching the game gave me a new feeling and hope that we can salvage this season. However, winning basketball games one at a time still remain the goal of having an NBA team, thus let me breakdown how we could have easily won Saturday night if three fundamental facets of the game were stressed.
1. Defensive rebounding and boxing out
Now of course you will read that and waive it off as something that is so elementary, however the Knicks get burnt heavily because of it. First let me go through the numbers. Saturday night: Oklahoma outrebounded the Knicks 51-42 but that is not the problem. Specifically, Oklahoma outhustled the Knicks in to 16 offensive rebounds vs the Knicks only getting 9. Of those 16 offensive rebounds that Oklahoma earned, 9 were then coverted in to baskets with 5 of them on high percentage, easy put back tips or dunks. BOX YOUR MAN OUTTTTTTT!!! If you watch game film of the Knicks, when a shot goes up, all of there heads quickly turn and watch the ball hit the basket, bounce out, and the Thunder grab it. When the shot goes up, take the man you are guarding and check him, clear him out and then REBOUND. This way wherever the ball bounces the guy you are guarding will be behind you, hence not able to get a rebound/put back dunk, or tip in. When you allow a team to extende there positions 7x more then you and 80% of those extensions are high percentage baskets, it will be hard for any team to win, especially a team like the Knicks.
This is very easily expressed in watching the game and what I said above. Simply DVR the game and rewind it when you see the other team get an offensive rebound. Play it back and watch what our Knicks do when the shot is put up. It is quite amusing, but even more frustrating because I am sure D.Antoni is not showing them these clips in film session and he SHOULD.
2. Game Management at the End of the Game
The Knicks held a 6 point lead with roughly 1 minute left right? Green hits a three so we are up 3 now. Chandler misses an open layup (things happen). Within 6 seconds the Thunder get the rebound and Westbrook drives in for an easy layup. It only took six seconds which is totally unacceptable. But still this is our game to lose not theirs to win at this point. House makes two FT's and we sit up three with 12.8 seconds left. Oklahoma calls a time out. IF I WAS D'ANTONI THE ONLY THING I WOULD HAVE EXPRESSED IN THAT TIMEOUT IS HOW TO GUARD SCREENS OFF THE BALL SO WE DO NOT GIVE UP A DAMN THREE POINTER. DON'T EVEN ALLOW THEM TO SHOOT ONE, LET ALONE A WIDE OPEN ONE FROM DURANT. They come out of the timeout, David Lee's man sets a screen at the top of the key and what does David LEE do???? He sits back in the key as if he was told to help in and allows DURANT to come off and drain a wide open three to tie it. What should David Lee had done? He should have hedged all the way thru the pick and over the top completely eliminating DURANT from even catching the ball. His man proabaly would have slipped and they would have gottena a layup (2 points) (up three-2= up one with 5 seconds left)
Then to make matters even worse, some idiotic play was drawn up which ended in Gallinari shooting an off balance three from Hoboken NJ. I JUST DON'T GET IT. Get the ball to Mcgrady and let him go to work, don't run some fancy hand off play with David lee attemtping to get him the ball and then in a bailout passing to Gallinari at half court.
3. DO NOT LET DURANT TOUCH THE BALL WHEN THE GAME IS ON THE LINE
SELF EXPLANATORY
In conclusion, you can pick a part several reason why they lose, or why they lost Saturday night, but the above are three simple ways the Knicks can control an outcome of a game that ends so close like Saturday night. Let me know what you think.
-d3fundamental
"No scholarships, no girls, no TV time, same amt of practice, same amt of sweat, for love of the game"
