killa4luv - the Knicks practiced on Thursday.

Sure, it is the first day of training camp but no matter who the coach is, there is a huge void in frontcourt depth. The Knicks best defenders are in the backcourt. Toney Douglas and Landry Fields are fundamentally sound and excellent rebounders at their positions. Captain Chauncey knows the angles but at 34 he will need to pick his spots and focus on managing the floor.

The undeniable fact is that the Knicks frontcourt talents at the 4/5 are paper thin in defensive depth. Turiaf is good for 20 minutes. Carmelo conserves his energy for offense and Amar'e will never be confused with Dave DeBusschere. There is no center. None. The tallest player is 6'10. After those three who is there? Shawne Williams?

Sheldon Williams has played on seven different rosters in five seasons. That is a clue.

Until the roster is restocked with size and height, the Knicks are not stopping anyone. No way you can sugarcoat it, being out boarded by 20 is embarrassing.

Killa4luv wrote:He will figure out how to make our offense pop. He can't do the same things he was doing before because we have different personel and im pretty sure he realizes that. The 3 is still going to be a feature of the offense, obviously, as well as the pick and roll, but I think hes gonna put together some nice schemes for us to keep our offense rolling.

I have the utmost confidence that can put an offense together tha maximizes the strengths of our new team. I also fell very confident that Chauncey will execute in a way that gets the most out of our guys.

What I am less confident about is his ability to get our defense together. They know they need to defend. We can get them to put in the effort because they want to win. But can he teach and develop defensive schemes that make sense for our team?

I've always felt that with MDA we needed a defensive coordinator like in football.

We haven't looked sharp, and that loss to the Cavs stings, but we haven't had a practice yet, guys haven't learned their roles yet, MDA hasn't figured this thing out yet. We need rebounding badly, but if there is one thing I think he can figure out, its how to make an offense work.

Melo plays offense like Melo plays offense. Don't know how much you can change the guy. This team's offensive spacing will continue to be an issue.

He and Amare are never going to be real defenders- hope I'm wrong- don't think I am. Amare stepped up a bit yesterday in terms of shot blocking, but his awareness on D is sporadic. As for Melo- the only time I got angry at all yesterday was when Jamison schooled him down low.

This has less to do about coaching, though, and more to do with players.

The Nuggets D was weak too, until they got a player infusion from the Knicks. We sent our best defenders (minus Douglas) to them and it shows.

I'm not so worried about the offense. Yeah it's gonna be different but Mike usually figures that out. Until we get some help on the roster, the D can only get so much better. That's why i'm hoping adding Jared and maybe Barron will help. We won't be great, but if the D is just good enough we can win with this style. That's usually the formula. Literally just a couple of key rebounds and stops and we win yesterday. I have to think adding Jared and Barron would help in that regard. I hope they can do it.

Knicksfan wrote:Im not a D'Antoni fan either, but it seems to me that this isn't his team anymore and the main pieces we have don't fit that system anymore. For D'Antoni to remain the Knicks coach, he will have to adapt to it and prove he can get more defense our of players not necessarily known for it.

Once the Knicks made the Melo trade, they crossed the line from perennial pretenders to really trying to win a championship. The main pieces of Amar'e, Melo and Billups along with solid role players like Turiaf and Fields give you a sense of getting close to contending. Not that we are there yet, but we are two or three solid role players away.

Now, it feels like we moved completely away from Mike D's system. The person with the biggest challenge of making this work, IMO is D'Antoni. And the biggest one may be making this team work more on defense, whether he likes to or not. Coaches of contending teams tend to make most of their players, whether they are known defensive players or not, work hard on their D. Im not sure he can do this or if he can let a defensive specialist join his group of assistant coaches.

You guys say he cares for defense and he probably does, but can he teach his team and make them give their all on D?

We will probably reach the level we want to with a new coach. I hope Mike D makes me change my mind.

The Cavs didn't shoot a high % at all. What killed us was a lack of rebounding and Fouls. We didn't have a good enough approach to stopping penetration. In the past that was something Mike was able to get done using Jared, which is why he wants to have him again. We only have a few guys with real range on D. Which is why he has them switch so much. They can't keep up with opponents. The rebounding thing is only gonna change when we bring in rebounders, which I believe Donnie will do. If we didn't give up Timo it would've helped a bit.

Mike has to have some time to figure out what he has and how to best use these players. I'm positive that he'll figure that out, but it takes time. It's too soon to expect a perfect solution.

ramtour420 wrote:Our big 3 scored 84 points. That doesn't seem like it needs much work. We still lost to the Cleveland Lotto-liers. They took our rebounds together with our lunch money

nixluva wrote:Well he did adjust to the players in his 1st 2 years. We didn't run SSOL. When it was clear that it was too fast for the players to execute he slowed things down and they played better. He changed the D and for a good stretch the team played better D. He's shown flexibility, but now he has a new situation and not much time to figure it out. This team may struggle with its identity this year, but next season they'll have a better opportunity to set things up from the start.

Right, if they get it down by this year I will be surprised, we are a big away from being legit next year plus we have a number one which we can keep or trade come December next year.

Eventually Billups will retire and we need to snag either Paul or Deron or whoever.

But im impressed with the effort on defense and rebounding.