“We’re always going to be a little bit of an iso, one-on-one kind of a team, which, to be honest with you, is pretty good,” D’Antoni said, a declaration that would have made jaws drop in Phoenix. (D'Antoni) followed with some important qualifiers: that the Knicks cannot “totally fall into” a one-on-one game, that the ball still needs to move, that the floor should be spaced and that the scoring should be shared.

“I think we’ll meet some place halfway in between,” he said Thursday, “because we don’t want to lose what Melo and those guys do the best. A lot of it is going one-on-one. They’re the best in the league at it.”

If a smaller player is guarding him, Anthony said his “natural instinct” was to take him in the post. But he fully embraces a system of ball movement and pick-and-roll plays that can get him open shots without grinding through defenders. “I didn’t have that in Denver,” (Melo) said. “It was just, go down there, get a bucket in the post and bully your way through. I did seven years of bullying, man, and my body, I can’t take it no more.”

“It’s kind of hard to double-team guys in this offensive set that we run,” Anthony said. “I like it, and it’s only going to get better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/sports/basketball/04knicks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

misterearl wrote:If a smaller player is guarding him, Anthony said his “natural instinct” was to take him in the post. But he fully embraces a system of ball movement and pick-and-roll plays that can get him open shots without grinding through defenders. “I didn’t have that in Denver,” (Melo) said. “It was just, go down there, get a bucket in the post and bully your way through. I did seven years of bullying, man, and my body, I can’t take it no more.”

I always thought Denver played a similar uptempo style to the D'Antoni's... and we currently do not have anyone who can shoot the ball as well as Afflalo... so not sure what he's thinking here.

Suddenly it's a bad thing to want to take the ball into the post.

Not sure I get the point of this thread - should a coach make adjustments for his personnel or not? I think he probably should.

This quote, from the same article linked above:

D'Antoni: “Really, there’s all kinds of different ways you can play it, and we’re going to try to maximize just what the players do.”

sounds like a coach with the right idea to me.

Mike is such a great offensive coach that he can adjust to any type of roster, but the key is do you have good players or not. Now we have good players and so he'll make use of their strengths and look to maximize them as always. People really should get his playbook and checkout all the cool stuff in there. MOST of Mike's offense is in the halfcourt. It's just that he likes to get into early offense, but if the defense gets back, which it does on most possessions, he's got tons of quick acting sets that can lead to a score fairly quickly, just not under 7 seconds. I just browsed thru my copy of some of his plays and I saw more and 50 plays he's got for the halfcourt and that wasn't all of them.

The biggest change is the use of the PnR, which has not been as prevalent as before the trade. We've seen the offense minus the fast pace when we had Duhon who almost never pushed the pace. SSOL or not, Mike's got plenty of nice stuff for this team which isn't suited as much to run SSOL.