CrushAlot wrote:Syniko wrote:nixluva wrote:The lesson that MDA and Avery showed is that you need to develop a great relationship with your teams best player. It's a death sentence when you lose the teams star player. The star stops playing hard and you can't survive. Magic and Jordan started this kind of thing and it's never gone away. The Star player has to like you and want to play hard for you. MDA will likely have success in LA cuz Nash and Kobe love him, but if those guys are gone and it's just D12, then I see MDA losing that job down the line.
The strange thing was with Melo is that MDA is the most liberal coach in the NBA. He doesn't care if you jack up 40 shots in a game and yet Melo found a way to dislike him.
Knicks were playing terrible last season because Melo was being a Primadonna instead of fighting hard for himself and the team. He only started fighting hard after MDA resigned.
Melo was just upset that as soon as he came back, Knicks went on a losing streak right off the heels of the winning streak during Linsanity.
D'Antoni is extremely rigid. I would not describe him as liberal. Also, I don't think Melo disliked him and I am not sure that he ever knew how much he personally stressed D'Antoni. Personally, I think D'Antoni covers his anxiety/uneasiness with being an authority figure/communicater by putting on a persona of being very easy going. Listen to the olympians talk about him. They see him as a laid back guy that doesn't sweat things. Nothing could be farther from the truth in my opinion. D'Antoni also is all about system. Winning his way seems to be more important than winning. I also think Melo doesn't have the filter or sophistication for the NY media. He is honest in his answers and his words are taken out of context and picked apart (i.e. his comment on the Lin contract). When he said he wasn't trying as hard I took it as he had grown tired of the losing and trying the same thing over and over again when it wasn't working. In a sense, resigned to his fate.
Do you ever get tired of spouting utter nonsense? The picture you paint of MDA is only true in your own head. EVERYONE that has spoken about MDA's "system" has made it clear that he LIBERATES players to just play and not be hemmed in by some rigid or difficult to understand system. In all the years of me breaking down what MDA's "system" is all about you still don't seem to understand it.
As for the Olympic team those guys are saying he's laid back cuz he is. Even his former Suns players for the most part didn't see him as some rigid guy. MDA allows players to play free of worry about making a mistake and he simplifies the game for his players and that's why generally guys play better for him than they did before playing for him. Melo was one of the only guys that didn't want to buy in. Even tho Melo had great stats when he came over in the big trade that 1st yr. Melo has been playing under an MDA offense for 2 years. In the Olympics and even now he's still playing in a system that is basically a version of MDA's system. So we know he most definitely could've thrived under MDA if he wanted to.
As for MDA being all about his system, I think for one thing he should have confidence in a system that he knows works, but he was NEVER 100% rigid in his implementation of that system here in NY. He NEVER was able to truly run SSOL here and made multiple changes to that system to try and accommodate the limitations of the players we had. If you have some proof that he didn't alter his system to fit the players we had i'd like to hear it and a full explanation of this proof. For instance did we run SSOL when we had Zach and Jamal? How about after the trades? What MDA did was run only some of his halfcourt stuff at a much slower pace that Duhon and our other players could handle.
Regarding Avery and Deron which was in some ways similar to MDA/Melo, I think Avery was used as a scapegoat by Deron for his own poor performance, much like Melo did. MDA didn't make Melo shoot poorly for much of last year. That was just him playing bad BB. Avery didn't make Joe Johnson suck, he was responsible for that. When the Nets were winning they looked well coached and solid on D. Who knows what went wrong, but the players weren't responding to Avery anymore. IMO Avery needed a Jason Kidd. IMO the only thing that has saved Woody has been the presence of Kidd, who has covered up some of the teams flaws. If we were only relying on Felton I'm positive we would've lost more games. That wouldn't have made Woody a bad coach.
Woody's thing is defense and yet the Knicks are not really a great defensive team this year. This year the Knicks are #3 Offense and the #16 defense. That MDA inspired offense is what it saving the Knicks bacon right now. Funny cuz right now the Knicks favor an MDA Suns team in terms of how they play. Top level offense and decent defense was how the Suns won. Suns were #1 or #2 on offense every year and were #13-17 on Defense just like the Knicks are right now.