Offense is supposed to be the good news. We are 27th in the league in points allowed. We are also 25th in the league in rebounding differential.

Nicely enough we are 1st in shot blocking and 6th in steals. We also are like 2nd in FT% which means we're great when the other team isn't moving.

So basically we have a mediocre-above average offense and a piss poor defense. This is even with having good offensive minded players. MDA coaches to his strengths well. WHich is neither defense nor offense.

Some food for thought for people who feel that he's some great offensive guru. He's good at making entertaining games when he has a good roster due to the fast pace. He's more of an entertainer than a coach. And you all have bought into the act.

Knicks 6th offensively and 19th defensively.

nixluva wrote:I still think people who look at this team have a false idea what MDA's offense is all about. We haven't really seen it at full capacity. Guys like Gallo and Chandler were just starting to get the hang of it and our PG couldn't really run it on a high level either. As good as Fields is, he is just a rook and was still learning the ins and outs of it too. Does TD have it down yet? So what i'll say is that it's not just a matter of how much talent the player has but his BB intellect.

His offense was super efficient in PHX because the guys running it fully grasped it and could execute it. The #1 guy being Nash. I have the impression that this is why they want to get a PG like CP3 or Deron. You need a PG that can see all of the options and make use of them. I love Billups, but let's face it, he's not tailor made for this either. So we've never seen SSOL here in NY. Not to mention that with all the changes each year, we've never been able to establish the system and continuity. That includes the latest roster change.

Can you imagine how hard it is to try and learn how to use guys you just added and make it work inside of a few games with few practice days? I still believe that this team will improve and show more of it's potential this year. Next year tho, we should see the real level of ability with a full camp and hopefully more roster improvement from Donnie.

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:I think I could have a good offense coaching Nash, Stat and Marion in their primes. So you're saying unless he has 3 elite level players we'll never see how great at offense MDA is? If a PG like Billups isn't capable of running the system, I think the emperor has no clothes.

And Nash was SUCH an MVP candidate before he played for MDA? And Marion has been a perennial All Star since he left the MDA teams. Yes, you would have brought the same greatness in the players.

Give me those 3 and I'll tell Nash, do ur thing. I have no training so maybe it'll only be a top 5 offense. But anyone who thinks MDA had more to do with Phoenix's offense than Nash is high.

Let me ask you this, what parameters would MDA have to meet to actually fail as a coach here? Is it possible? Or can we just shuffle any negative results onto the players. Does his time with Phoenix make him immune to criticism, much like Brown's did when he was here? (He did a bad job when he was in NY, gasp..I know)

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:I think I could have a good offense coaching Nash, Stat and Marion in their primes. So you're saying unless he has 3 elite level players we'll never see how great at offense MDA is? If a PG like Billups isn't capable of running the system, I think the emperor has no clothes.

And Nash was SUCH an MVP candidate before he played for MDA? And Marion has been a perennial All Star since he left the MDA teams. Yes, you would have brought the same greatness in the players.

Give me those 3 and I'll tell Nash, do ur thing. I have no training so maybe it'll only be a top 5 offense. But anyone who thinks MDA had more to do with Phoenix's offense than Nash is high.

I guess I'm high.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/nashst01.html

Look at the difference between his last year in Dallas with his first year in Phoenix. Ohh and BTW Dallas let him WALK away in Free Agency and wanted to include him as a chip in a trade for Shaquille. A few years later under MDA he is winning MVP awards.

Oh and his system didn't take them from 29 wins to 62 wins the next year. Right? The 29 win team BTW had A'mare and Marion.

In your race to be the most negative poster on UK, stop and look at history and the stats for a second. And since MDA left Phoenix, how many playoffs have they won? Hmm?

It worries me when the team plays no D and the reason is that shots weren't falling. Being above 0.500 and making the playoffs are no longer good enough. MDA could be out for the rest of the season and the team would accomplish that. Especially when even a little progress in the defensive end will have a great impact.

nixluva wrote:We actually still have a winning record as of this date. We're still in the playoffs. Given that most expected a bit of struggle after the trade nothing that has happened is that hard to understand. They basically took the foot off the pedal against the Cav's and have been burned each time. It's psychological. The Knicks don't respect the Cavs and haven't really put forth a serious effort on D. Every game they've let the Cavs hang around and gain confidence. They should've pummeled them into the ground, but they didn't. The Knicks should beat the Cavs on pure effort alone. Even if I was coaching the team. This isn't about Mike. It's about the pride and dedication to do what it takes to win from the players. They're the ones on the floor that didn't show pride and instead let scrubs beat them.

Still I fully expect that with more time together a lot of these things on Offense and Defense will smooth out. Once they do, this looks to be a very strong team. 15-20 games together sounds about right.

FIelds gets his stats off hard work and motor. Nothing great about his technique. The only reason he plays is he happens to be able to bag a 3 pretty well.

Well the teams that are playing smart and disciplined are in contention. LA, Spurs, Boston are the epitome of such play. So sloppy and stupid is the way towin? To claim that its overrated is beyond dumb. Really. Please...

SO you fire a coach if the players don't like him and you keep him if they do. So unless you have a Detroit situation you keep the coach. With that philosophy Isiah would have a 50-50 shot of still being around. That statement suggests that even Dolan would have sent him packing before you would.

I'll examine Porter a bit more and get back to you.

toodarkmark wrote:What has he accomplished? Well let's see...

NO ONE was talking about A'mare being an MVP candidate last year, and Phoenix wasn't even all that devastated that he left.

Landry Fields was a second rounder, now he's an above average SG. Raymond Felton, did Charlotte cry when he left? Yet earlier this year he was in the conversation for an all-star berth. Who is Shawn Williams? Point is MDA, even on Phoenix, took whatever he got, and made better players out of them.

We are a contender now that we aren't in the process of rebuilding. Chris Duhon, David Lee, Al Harrington is hardly the nucleus for a contender, so he did the most with what he had. We DO have a top offensive system. We are not a defensive team, so therefore we are no good? Is that what you're saying? The Phoenix team he coached to 62 wins wasn't good because they didn't play great defense??

And playing "smart" and "disciplined" is overated. Boston was playing "smart" and "disciplined" ball and winning 15 games until Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were traded there. Lakers were playing "smart" and "disciplined" ball and in the Lottery until Pau Gasol was given to them. Please.

And I am not happy about MDA's lack of defense. I wish he would hire a defensive assistant coach to work with the players. But....You can critique all you want, but to say that YOU COULD HAVE WON with the teams he had in Phoenix is just preposterous. Because Terry Porter had that team right afterwards, implemented a "smarter", more "disciplined" system with a defensive mindset and they went on to lose so much and he was fired mid season. So you're a better coach than Terry Porter?

What would make him a bad coach is if players didn't play better under him, if he had stars who didn't want to play for him, and that he loses the confidence of his team. That's why you fire a coach.

nykshaknbake wrote:Well continue to be high then. Fact is he hasn't accomplished squat without Nash. I actually like our team and think we have good pieces so don't label me. I don't think we have the right coach. Since he's been here what's our record been? We've been a contender, right? We've had a top offensive system and we've looked good, right? We've been adequate on D and made good adjustments in game, right? Our players play smart disclipined ball, right? That's what I thought.

Let me ask you this, what parameters would MDA have to meet to actually fail as a coach here? Is it possible? Or can we just shuffle any negative results onto the players. Does his time with Phoenix make him immune to criticism, much like Brown's did when he was here? (He did a bad job when he was in NY, gasp..I know)

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:I think I could have a good offense coaching Nash, Stat and Marion in their primes. So you're saying unless he has 3 elite level players we'll never see how great at offense MDA is? If a PG like Billups isn't capable of running the system, I think the emperor has no clothes.

And Nash was SUCH an MVP candidate before he played for MDA? And Marion has been a perennial All Star since he left the MDA teams. Yes, you would have brought the same greatness in the players.

Give me those 3 and I'll tell Nash, do ur thing. I have no training so maybe it'll only be a top 5 offense. But anyone who thinks MDA had more to do with Phoenix's offense than Nash is high.

I guess I'm high.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/nashst01.html

Look at the difference between his last year in Dallas with his first year in Phoenix. Ohh and BTW Dallas let him WALK away in Free Agency and wanted to include him as a chip in a trade for Shaquille. A few years later under MDA he is winning MVP awards.

Oh and his system didn't take them from 29 wins to 62 wins the next year. Right? The 29 win team BTW had A'mare and Marion.

In your race to be the most negative poster on UK, stop and look at history and the stats for a second. And since MDA left Phoenix, how many playoffs have they won? Hmm?

nykshaknbake wrote:Amare was beasting without D'Antoni last year. In fact, you could say the reason he has been such a bad defender is because he learned ball under D'Antoni.

FIelds gets his stats off hard work and motor. Nothing great about his technique. The only reason he plays is he happens to be able to bag a 3 pretty well.

Well the teams that are playing smart and disciplined are in contention. LA, Spurs, Boston are the epitome of such play. So sloppy and stupid is the way towin? To claim that its overrated is beyond dumb. Really. Please...

SO you fire a coach if the players don't like him and you keep him if they do. So unless you have a Detroit situation you keep the coach. With that philosophy Isiah would have a 50-50 shot of still being around. That statement suggests that even Dolan would have sent him packing before you would.

I'll examine Porter a bit more and get back to you.

toodarkmark wrote:What has he accomplished? Well let's see...

NO ONE was talking about A'mare being an MVP candidate last year, and Phoenix wasn't even all that devastated that he left.

Landry Fields was a second rounder, now he's an above average SG. Raymond Felton, did Charlotte cry when he left? Yet earlier this year he was in the conversation for an all-star berth. Who is Shawn Williams? Point is MDA, even on Phoenix, took whatever he got, and made better players out of them.

We are a contender now that we aren't in the process of rebuilding. Chris Duhon, David Lee, Al Harrington is hardly the nucleus for a contender, so he did the most with what he had. We DO have a top offensive system. We are not a defensive team, so therefore we are no good? Is that what you're saying? The Phoenix team he coached to 62 wins wasn't good because they didn't play great defense??

And playing "smart" and "disciplined" is overated. Boston was playing "smart" and "disciplined" ball and winning 15 games until Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were traded there. Lakers were playing "smart" and "disciplined" ball and in the Lottery until Pau Gasol was given to them. Please.

And I am not happy about MDA's lack of defense. I wish he would hire a defensive assistant coach to work with the players. But....You can critique all you want, but to say that YOU COULD HAVE WON with the teams he had in Phoenix is just preposterous. Because Terry Porter had that team right afterwards, implemented a "smarter", more "disciplined" system with a defensive mindset and they went on to lose so much and he was fired mid season. So you're a better coach than Terry Porter?

What would make him a bad coach is if players didn't play better under him, if he had stars who didn't want to play for him, and that he loses the confidence of his team. That's why you fire a coach.

nykshaknbake wrote:Well continue to be high then. Fact is he hasn't accomplished squat without Nash. I actually like our team and think we have good pieces so don't label me. I don't think we have the right coach. Since he's been here what's our record been? We've been a contender, right? We've had a top offensive system and we've looked good, right? We've been adequate on D and made good adjustments in game, right? Our players play smart disclipined ball, right? That's what I thought.

Let me ask you this, what parameters would MDA have to meet to actually fail as a coach here? Is it possible? Or can we just shuffle any negative results onto the players. Does his time with Phoenix make him immune to criticism, much like Brown's did when he was here? (He did a bad job when he was in NY, gasp..I know)

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:

toodarkmark wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:I think I could have a good offense coaching Nash, Stat and Marion in their primes. So you're saying unless he has 3 elite level players we'll never see how great at offense MDA is? If a PG like Billups isn't capable of running the system, I think the emperor has no clothes.

And Nash was SUCH an MVP candidate before he played for MDA? And Marion has been a perennial All Star since he left the MDA teams. Yes, you would have brought the same greatness in the players.

Give me those 3 and I'll tell Nash, do ur thing. I have no training so maybe it'll only be a top 5 offense. But anyone who thinks MDA had more to do with Phoenix's offense than Nash is high.

I guess I'm high.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/nashst01.html

Look at the difference between his last year in Dallas with his first year in Phoenix. Ohh and BTW Dallas let him WALK away in Free Agency and wanted to include him as a chip in a trade for Shaquille. A few years later under MDA he is winning MVP awards.

Oh and his system didn't take them from 29 wins to 62 wins the next year. Right? The 29 win team BTW had A'mare and Marion.

In your race to be the most negative poster on UK, stop and look at history and the stats for a second. And since MDA left Phoenix, how many playoffs have they won? Hmm?

nykshaknbake wrote:No at this point you would wait till' the end of the season to reassess. But he really has to get the team defending. Whether it's a lack of X and Os'(at times). or players not buying in it's his job. What seperates good from bad coaches usually isn't the brillian tplays they design but getting the players to buy into it. Occasionally you get a bunch of unteachable players, but this isn't the case here.

nixluva wrote:The last thing we have to worry about is D'Antoni's coaching. He's doing his job and we need to the players to also do theirs, which it appears they are. SO long as everyone is on the same page and they hold each other accountable, this team is going to get better. There's no reason to change the coach based on what i'm seeing. We've only got a small amount of time left to get ready for the playoffs, but so far the team seems to be making the adjustments they need to make. The effort on D has picked up considerably. We just need to get healthy and keep working on consistency.

We don't need to reassess anything. Mike is a good coach period. No coach in the NBA has had to deal with the amount of turnover he's had in his last 3 seasons here. Coaches need a certain amount of stability in order to feel comfortable and maximize what they have on their roster. The whole idea was to have the coach in place when you finally built the title contending team you wanted. It would make no sense not to give that coach a full training camp with the team you brought him in to coach! He wasn't here to coach the teams we had the previous 2 seasons. The team we have now is the team that he was brought here to coach.

The team is 7-3 in the last 10 games. The defense has clearly been showing signs of coming around. We had more great defensive efforts than bad ones in the last few games. The defensive effort was inconsistent, but from an X's and O's standpoint Mike has done some good work. Guys aren't bumping into each other anymore and the rotations and help look solid. We've recently had games we held teams to 86, 88 and 79 pts. and our point Differential has been increasing. The team is up to +1.2 on the season, but over the last 10 games the team is a +7.1. I'm more interested in how the team is playing right now and how it's playing when we get to the playoffs. Over the last 10 games the team is playing at a high level. Even with the bad losses to Cleveland.

nykshaknbake wrote:Wow so you went from let's wait untillt o th end of the season to MDA is good period. I think we've seen alot of MDA coaching and it's more than fair to give him the rest of the season and the playoffs. I would be happy if we made it a comoetitive series..It'd be really hard to heat the top 3 in the east. But if we get blown out of the water, it would be unreasonable to bring him back. You've never been interested on how the team is playing currently when it's been bad in terms of evaluating MDA. When they're down it's like look at Phoenix of years ago, so don't start with that now. If he makes the playoffs competitive and D improves and stays for the rest of the season it's a no brainer he should be back. But if the team regresses from here, even you would have to concede it would be time for him to move on. Again, most coaches are decent X O people. But the good ones get their team to buy in. He's got the rest of the season to do that;something he hasn't really done for 2.5 years.

Why are you talking about the team regressing? It's not like the team has been playing poorly. Given the changeover and injuries, i'd say that Mike has done a great job so far with the new roster. He seems to be overcoming all the issues that keep coming up. He's adjusted to the strengths of the guys he has now in fairly quick fashion.

I've been a supporter of Mike, because he's a good coach. Before the trade the team was pretty much on target for what most thought the team was capable of. Despite the young players being clearly effected by all the trade talk. So far the post trade situation has been handled fairly well aside from the Cavs games. I'm concerned about the remaining tough schedule, but I think the team is gonna pull thru. I'd feel better if we were more healthy.