Denver
Miami
Golden State
Lakers
Pacers (who are on a damn good run themselves under Vogel and almost beat Miami recently)

The Clippers are up and down just like the Knicks and have competed with some pretty solid squads one night while losing to mediocre teams the next. I think the Sacramento loss was worse than this one. We're somewhere around a .500 team so losing to the Clippers isn't really all that big of a deal.

I think we mainly lost because of that stretch where no one could hit the side of a barn and we had to keep settling for 3s. Those same shots started falling when we made our run to close it to 4. Then Foye got too damn hot. Pretty simple explanation for what happened. We don't go cold during that stretch and we overcome the flaws built into this team (weak defense, rebounding) with our strengths (putting the ball in the bucket). This team isn't going to become a great defensive/rebounding team any time soon so when we go cold..we lose.

TMS wrote:

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:I think we mainly lost because of that stretch where no one could hit the side of a barn and we had to keep settling for 3s. Those same shots started falling when we made our run to close it to 4.

we need to figure out how to get baskets without having to rely so heavily on taking & making so many 3 pointers... teams are defending the PnR a lot better... if that fails we need other options we can go to, can't keep relying on the 3 ball to bail us out of every game, it's such a hit or miss type of strategy... Gallo's 3 for 20 from 3 pt range in the past 4 games, Ray & Wilson's 3 pt shooting has been hovering at or below .300 the past month & a half, that's just not gonna cut it... lately it just seems like if our PnR game isn't going we don't have any other answer but to try & long distance shoot our way to a W.

I'm with ya on that.

What's not working anymore:

Feltons attempts a PnR with Amare. It's not there so Felton passes to the wing where someone chucks up a 3. We have all seen this play a bazillion times this season. It's effective in getting our shooters open looks because their man will usually sag to help on Amare.

1. If our shooters aren't hitting their 3s our offense is ineffective running this.
2. Unless Chandler (who's OK at it), Gallo and Fields get better at dealing with what to do when

a) their 3 pt shot is just off
b) defenders on the better coached squads running out on them

We'll continue to get into these ruts on offense. We all know Gallo needs to improve his midrange J so he can pump fake the 3 and stop and pop that midrange J vs, forcing the drive all the way to the hoop every time. Chandler was doing this well early in the season. Fields, like Gallo, makes good decisions with the ball but needs to work too.

What works really well:

There have been times this season where our offense looks like a well oiled machine. Everyone is moving off the ball. The ball is zipping around.

I know against good teams this can't happen all the time I just don't know why there are times when our team looks completely lost on offense. TD played well last night but there are times when he pounds the ball until there's like 9-10 seconds left on the clock. At times it seems all Felton can do is that failed PnR leading to pass to someone standing outside the 3 pt line and that's it. Are there no plays to switch things up and maybe have someone ELSE set a screen for Amare going towards the basket? Or for Amare to do what Dwight Howard does and spin off his man to go up for the oop? Set screens for anyone on our team to come off a curl and shoot a nice short J?

Nalod wrote:

TMS wrote:

Nalod wrote:
Young teams are not consistant.

the Thunder are a younger team than ours on average, they don't have a problem w/consistency... the difference is they have 2 legitimate star players they can rely on to produce every single night, they don't have to rely on guys like Jeff Green or Rich Harden to carry the offense if Durant isn't on the court while we have to rely on 3rd & 4th option type players to be our secondary options in our offense... we don't have the talent to be a consistently good team right now, it's that simple.

They have almost a two year start on that rebuild. They came together last year in the playoffs.

On paper they are younger but they have been together longer.

Its not an excuse, just a reason. Throwing stars together alone does not get it done. Its chemistry.

TMS, we are not as far a part on issues.

Perhaps im just more patient and think Donnie might have another plan that he can go with than just Melo. Might not happen right away.

What it is I don't know but GM's really are about managing personel based on contigencies. Melo shakes lose you go after him him on whats best for your team.

Like Amare, he was more valueable to us than others and we paid him 40 plus million than PHX.

Do I think we contend this year? Never gonna happen.

Even with Melo? Nope.

Next year? I'd like to think we can be top 5 next year in the east. Even with our roster and some tweeks. Contend? NO. Don't think its possible.

Next year you have Dwight, Deron or Paul shake free.

Keep the cap there and one comes.

Then the core is both tweeked and experienced to make a real run.

Thats my take. I thought all along it would take two years and three off seasonsfor the team to come together. 164 games. WE are at game 51 with two more off seasons.

BUild a true contender in three years from last years mess I think is very substantial. I think was are on pace quite frankly.

If you think we can do it in less time thats great. Its all abstract anyway and we just nothing but opinions talking about it. Some how we thing by arguing we gonna convince each other and Donnie to get-er-done.

Its fun trying!

right now i think we differ in how much we think Melo can help this team... i think if u added Melo we're easily a top 4 team in the EC without any other moves... after that we can tweak, maybe CP3 forces his way here like Melo did this year or some veterans who view themselves as the final missing pieces want to latch on for a title run at less dollars? there's really no way we can know for sure what's gonna happen... all i know (my opinion) is that Melo makes us a better basketball team... that's all there is to it for me.