This only points to one person....MDA

I would love to hear his halftime motivational (or lack of) speeches at the half....Without that 3rd quarter blunder, this game shouldn't have been this close....

OK, I can hear it now...."We need a legit point guard"

I think this only covers up the root problem....It starts with MDA and his coaching staff. I don't think he's good at preparing his players! I just think players have to get themselves motivated under MDA. Which is probably why he never liked playing rookies over his entire career as an NBA coach. Because Vets can motivate and coach themselves.

Just watch and see this year.... our worst quarter under MDA as a knick coach, has always been the 3rd quarter. Then he starts to get animated on the sideline once the momentum turns. It's usually too late by then.

If you know Ray was 1 for something....They were 0 for something from 3.....Shouldn't that tell you to play Ray even closer in the 2nd half? Come on coach, motivate these boys. We need some leadership in our coaching staff. And with that miss defensive play from TD, when somebody was wide open under the basket behind him, that was a lack of communication on Stats part.

We definitely have some cleaning up to do....Meanwhile, I will try to enjoy this game while I can.

RonRon wrote:give them some time to play together. its their first game and Celtics are a tough team, even without Paul Pierce...
We had a great game offensively from

Melo
Amare
TD

to barely win. We can't expect all 3 to play in this caliber to maintain a lead, with our "improved" defense.
TD had the worse game among Melo and Amare. And both Melo and Amare did work...
TD has to improve that mid range game.
Like last year, he usually scores from outside the 3point line and driving in for layups.
His FG% for anything in between is really poor...
Overall it was a good game from TD though, if he didn't catch fire with our 2 "stars" we would have lost to Celtics again.
And that last BS call didn't hurt either for Melo's 2 free throws

I hear you...and I understand that it's early....It just brought back old memories. And I know holding a 15 pt lead is hard against an established team...But we not only gave up the lead, we fell behind by double digits at one point.

crzymdups wrote:lol. it's been one game. might want to wait another game or two before we start noting trends. doc rivers is pretty good at making adjustments as a coach. boston is pretty good. take the win, learn from it, move on.

Come on knick fans....1 game? Try 3 seasons.....This isn't new. We suck in the 3rd quarter. We also sucked in the 1st quarter over the past few seasons. But it appears we always get out coach during halftime adjustments, and come out flat in the 3rd. I'm just stating a trend I've seen since MDA has been here.

blkexec wrote:

Bippity10 wrote:

blkexec wrote:I would like to know why we continue to come out flat in the 3rd quarter? We had the same problem last year and the year before...

This only points to one person....MDA

I would love to hear his halftime motivational (or lack of) speeches at the half....Without that 3rd quarter blunder, this game shouldn't have been this close....

OK, I can hear it now...."We need a legit point guard"

I think this only covers up the root problem....It starts with MDA and his coaching staff. I don't think he's good at preparing his players! I just think players have to get themselves motivated under MDA. Which is probably why he never liked playing rookies over his entire career as an NBA coach. Because Vets can motivate and coach themselves.

Your theory seems off to me. If he's not able to motivate his players why would they start the game well and fail in third quarter. If you want to use the third quarters as a criticism wouldn't it mean that he does a poor job of making adjustments in the third quarter? And if we are building leads in the first and second quarters and blowing it in the third what does it say about the opposing coaches?

They started well for 1 game of this season....they've started terrible during most of MDA's knick coaching career....and terrible during the 3rd quarter as well. I'm just stating the facts, hoping the adding pieces we have will help over come us being out coach in the 1st and 3rd quarters.

if you want to try to pin things on coach, also consider the PHO career. When you got a caca team, you will have caca quarters; that's just looking at the obvious and calling it as such.

also, since you have come to a conclusion, what's the scoring differential by quarters that you were basing your conclusion on?

blkexec wrote:

crzymdups wrote:lol. it's been one game. might want to wait another game or two before we start noting trends. doc rivers is pretty good at making adjustments as a coach. boston is pretty good. take the win, learn from it, move on.

Come on knick fans....1 game? Try 3 seasons.....This isn't new. We suck in the 3rd quarter. We also sucked in the 1st quarter over the past few seasons. But it appears we always get out coach during halftime adjustments, and come out flat in the 3rd. I'm just stating a trend I've seen since MDA has been here.

it's a SLIGHTLY different lineup than we had at the beginning of last season.

blkexec wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:Looks like we really can't. Though this time, we simply lost the whole 2nd half and game.

I was really hoping everybody was right and I was wrong....It's the bad roster that creates the 3rd quarter collapse.

I think it's pretty obvious that we continue to get out coached....It's like doesn't have a backup plan, when things go wrong.

It also seems that he's afraid to get in the face of his star players when they get tunnel vision.

Phil Jackson (for example) is real good at controlling star players, and he earned the respect from superstars so he doesn't have that problem.

For example, during a bad run, called a timeout. I was like yes, about time....Guess who he brought back out after the time out.....The same damn players? The next time, he brought in Novak, and kept the same 4 players....

I don't know if he's afraid to treat his star players like he treats his roll players, when they are stinking it up or not following his so called system. I don't think he has the balls to control certain guys like amari...which is why they clashed in Phoenix.

is not a leader...He's a manager. Theres a big difference between the two....It's hard to see when things are going great, but easy to recognize on nights like tonight. Hey, I've been saying this for 3 seasons now, and it's getting old, but I'll say it again....

It's one game....blah, blah, blah...it's still early, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, they will probably blow out the Lakers, but I bet they lose to some bum team right after....

you have your points. I don't think we have the players that have the skill sets to compliment each other. The idea of 2-3 All Stars playing together, took away the team concept
that we played at times with the team Pre Melo. We lost a lot of players that have 2-3 skill sets. We can't stand around and expect Melo and Amare to facilitate the offense.
They are scorers, not facilitators.

The players and coaches are both failing to me and they both deserve the blame. We are missing someone that can penetrate, run a pick n roll, and hit wide open shots consistently to spread the floor. Defensively, we are totally lost as well. We can't allow players to penetrate that easily and we are failing to box out and rotate efficiently.

scoshin wrote:We've had more than 3 seasons now of Mike D'Antoni as coach.

While we haven't always had the pieces to make his system work (most notably an effective PG), at some point you've got to stop with the excuses and analyze the body of work we've seen from him thus far.

1) He doesn't seem to inspire his players. When other teams go on runs, Mike D looks defeated and that same negative energy transfers to his players. How many spirited comebacks have we made under his tenure? Easily dwarfed by the number of collapses we've had with leads going into the second half.

2) He is stubborn in his ways and does not make quick adjustments to the other team. This has been a constant throughout his years here. He'll stick with Shawne Williams on Dwight Howard even though it's apparent to a casual fan that it would be a disaster. Bibby constantly getting burned and forcing us to double team? Keep him in there and better yet, pair him with Toney Douglas in the backcourt to play midget ball.

3) His offensive system consists of 3 players standing around behind the arc, and a 2-man PnR game. Except now we don't even have the point guard to run the PnR so all we see are iso's. I'm sure if D'Antoni had his pieces, ie. Nash, we'd look great, but we don't and he can't adapt to his roster. Off-the-ball screens, curl plays, cuts to the basket? Nope, "stop cutting to the basket, Fields, you're getting in Melo/Amar'es way" Post-ups? Has zero place in this system, despite the fact that those were Melo's primary go-to moves in Denver.

4) He is non-confrontational. A good coach needs to rein in his stars when they're chucking or not playing within a team. Not once have I ever seen D'Antoni chastise Amar'e or Melo for poor play, or even in the media. He's too afraid to. The only player to come under D'Antoni's scrutiny is Toney Douglas. This passive aggressiveness also ties in to how bench/fringe rotation players have consistently complained about lack of communication from D'Antoni about their role or playing time. We called them lazy whiners before, but when it becomes a pattern -- from Marbury to Darko to Larry Hughes to Al Harrington to Anthony Carter and so on, it becomes pretty clear that D'Antoni has trouble communicating with his players. We label these guys as malcontents and cancers, but that's only because they're the ones who speak up about this issue. I'm sure right now Jerome Jordan and Renaldo Balkman are just as confused about their role or how to get out of D'Antoni's doghouse, but are too timid or too high to make any noise over it. The only surefire way to get out of D'Antoni's doghouse is to make a lot of 3's in practice like Shawne Williams until D'Antoni can't deny his raging boner.

very valid points. Would like to add, why not throw a player like Jeremy Lin a chance to produce? Bench him, give Lin a chance, maybe TD can learn what he isn't doing as a PG.
Its the same reason, when we needed Darko, Jordan Hill, or Anthony Randolph a chance for a bigger role.
I was upset Darko never got a chance to defend, block shots, and rebound, when we had no size and needed stops.
He stuck with midgets when it was clear we needed a center to play SOME minutes to change the tempo.