I think one of the fundamental problems that this team has had is that we are soft defensively, and it's clear that defense wins championships. the 89-90 pistons won because of their defense, the bulls always had jordan and pippen and a strong defensive 4 (either rodman or grant). The rockets had a good defense anchored by hakeem, the spurs had david robinson and tim duncan, not to mention bruce bowen. the lakers had some excellent defense as well, kobe being a great perimeter defender and shaq a great interior defender. obviously the pistons won because of their defense this year, all of which brings me to my point. we shouldn't be focused on adding offensive players - it was our defense that was terrible last year, and without a good defense we won't get out of the second round, period. the only reason the knicks during the Ewing era were good is because we were such a tough, defensive-minded team. in 99 with spree, camby, a younger kurt thomas, and ward, we were able to come up with the key defensive stops we needed. Of course I would be happy if the Knicks signed jamal crawford but his lack of defense worries me. Defense is something you can pretty much always control, based on your effort and intensity. Offensively, ESPECIALLY with a perimeter team like us, the team can go through ups and downs- certain nights, as we all know, shots just dont fall. Right now we've got a point guard in marbury who is capable of being a great defender( he's quick, strong, got great lateral movement, and extremely athletic), but he needs to play defense on every possession - it's almost like he doesnt care about his D all the time. houston is a bad defender, tim thomas IMO is subpar, evne though he too should be able to play D with his size and quickness. kurt thomas and nazr are both overrated defenders, but hopefully KT will be on his way out. Sweetney's got good lateral movement and is deceptively quick, so I have a feeling Aguirre will mold him into a strong defender to compliment his offense. Penny and Frank are solid defenders and are important off the bench. I think this offseason we should focus on adding guys that are defensive-minded, especially at the 4/5 and the 2. it looks like houston's days are numbered and it's important to have a swingman that can shut down an opponent, since so many of the best players in the league play the 2/3 (kobe, lebron, carmelo, tmac, iverson, etc.). when KT is gone I would like to add a player like Camby (even though he probably will resign with denver) or even stromile swift - someone who is athletic, is good on help defense, and who can block shots adn get us rebounds - someone who can play the 5 when sweetney is in at the 4 and play the 4 is sweetney is out and nazr is in. I think we should look to see if there are any more defensive-minded 2's that can score, but even more importantly play defense. with a guy like marbury we dont need two or three 20 ppg scorers - look what happened to the lakers this season. we have the capability now to have a sufficient offense, but if we ever want to win a championship we need to focus our efforts on our team's defense.

Etan Thomas seems to also fit the profile of what you're looking for. Keon Clark, if healthy, does too.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by VDesai:

Etan Thomas seems to also fit the profile of what you're looking for. Keon Clark, if healthy, does too.

Adding Jamal C and Etan would be a perfect offseason

Definitely...