Ben Wallace comes to mind as a guy who routinely impacted games singlehandedly with his defense.
If you look at Nixluva's posts from last season or search KnicksFilmSchool tweets for Frank's defense, you will see something similar. Granted he's not like absolutely lock down on D, and had a very poor showing in this regard against the Jazz, but when you have players playing average D and one playing great D...the overall defense WILL be impacted positively.

Similarly, if you have Knox who is poor defensively but expected to grow in all aspects, and Kanter AND Hardaway in the starting lineup, the overall D is going to be terrible, nothing you can do about it.

And its not like Kornet is the epitome of defense at center so switching personnel there doesn't make a big difference to overall team D.

Mudiay has been sucking a bit at D the past few games. I feel that both Mudiay and Knox somehow now feel that PG and SF are their positions to lose for the rest of the season. I wouldn't mind Fiz doing another pull of both of them to keep them on their toes.

It's clear that Fiz is not interested in continuity and winning games this season as much as he is interested in them playing the right way and seeing which personnel fit best with which ones so he can determine the starting lineups for NEXT season.

So to start this season, Burke got the PG spot, failed miserably on D.
Then Frank got the start, failed miserably on O.
Then Mudiay got the start and suddenly for a few games, it looked like there was an actual balance on O and D.

What is Fiz supposed to do now that Mudiay has regressed a bit...go back to Frank or Burke who still haven't shown to be consistent 2 way players? One plays the right way on D and the other doesn't play the right way at all. What are Fiz's options here?

Knox and Hezonja and Dotson...to me, someone who has been in the league for a few years like Hezonja..he's expected to perform from the get go, but he's been so bad. Knox, I wasn't expecting this level of performance on offense in the first year, but I'll take it. I wasn't expecting the best D, I'd say a little bit below expectation there right now. Dotson...thats one dude who plays hard on O and D and is undersized for SF, so it means starting him at SG, but wouldn't that mean FO has to agree to allow Fiz to bench Chuckaway after Mills signed him for $70mill and also, didn't Chuckaway ask Fiz to take him to the next level?

Head Coach is quite a juggling act between FO and Players and Fiz is keeping both happy for the most part for now and keeping players accountable....except for Hardaway. But what is he supposed to do with a flawed roster, our best shot blocker in this year's lineup Mitch is still MIA, so post defense would obviously take a hit.

Anyone who thinks that this team's play automatically doesn't improve on D with both KP and Mitch in the lineup...and instead thinking this poor play is all on the coach...exit to stage right please. There is reason for optimism. We can see that Burke and Hezonja will probably be gone, Vonleh will probably stick around in a backup role. No D Kanter will be gone. Now if we could only add picks by trading THJr and Lee, we might be able to find more talent like Knox, Mitch and Trier.

FO is clear about not mortgaging the future to satisfy fans screaming "win now". KP is our marquee player who probably won't play this season. We have 2 options...either we develop another one or we sign another one in FA in July. Every winning team has at least 2.