See, I knew that somebody would have came up with that lame question. Check this out, when you have defensive minded players it is very easy to be passive and you know that they will get the job done. With the starting squad that we have out there, it is imperative that we have a motivator to push those offensive minded players to comit time at the defensive end of the court. Yes, we scored, but we got scored on when we shouldn't. Yes, Lenny got the job done when he was at those places, but have you seen how has done as of late? Could it be because he was never the reason why the other teams did well defensively???

Posted by martin:

dude, you are a trip.

What happened when Lenny was coaching in Atlanta or his days with Seattle?

[Edited by - diderotn on 12/10/2004 22:19:53]

Imo the Knicks are a weak defensive team solely because they are undersized on the front line. It has very little to do with Lenny and whether or not he's barking at his players to defend. Looking at Lenny on the side lines tonight and in past games he seems to be very vocal. He was especially pissed at the refs who called the worst game i've seen all year (actually saw him cursing one of the officials out). They should have called defensive fouls on each drive Marbury made where he made those spectacular scoop shots in the paint because there was definite contact. Of course the non-call on the goaltending was the defining ref decision of the game. Marbury and even Crawford are not spectacular defenders on our perimeter either. However, when I hear people comparing this team to these great "defensive" teams from the 90's they seem to over analyze the problem. The fact is that the teams from the 90's had one Patrick Ewing maning the middle and when you have that presence that changes everything. Riley would be looked at much differently if Pat were not here. Bruce Bowen and Tony Parker would get toasted every night if they didn't have that inside defensive presence in the middle in TD. Artest would still be a great defender but not as good if he didn't have J.O. maning the middle. I like Nazr a lot and I'm sensing that Isiah will hang on to him and Sweetney (an absolute beast). The point is that we have no center. Nazr is a power forward who can give you good backup minutes at the C spot. His rebounding capabilities are fantastic but he's a below average defender. Haywood and Jefferies often were blocked out but they were just to big for our small frontline although our frontline fought hard and they were "scrappy" (derivative of "crappy") defensively . . That does not say something negative about Lenny and I think Isiah knows that. We just point blank don't have the personel to defend in the middle at the center spot. In the same way Allan had Washington adjusting how they doubled you'll have the same effect on our perimeter defense when we get a defensive presence. My hope is that Isiah will let this ride and allow these players to gell more from a defensive standpoint (yes they're stinking it up right now). You can't get blood froma turnip and imho it's erroneous to blame Lenny for that shortcoming.

in response to Junkmein: our frontline consists of our best defenders. The bigger problem is marbury, jamal and TT constantly allowing players to get by them and because we don't have an intimidator like a mutumbo, ratliff or dalembert to make up for it we're screwed. If we had good perimeter defenders or one of those intimidators I mentioned we'd be a great team!

I agree but the sad part is kurt and nazr are the 2 best defenders on our starting 5

I totally disagree with that statement. I do believe that we have players on our bench that totally change the defensive scheme that our team actually plays.

You disagree that Kurt and Nazr aren't the best defenders IN OUR STARTING 5, because we have some better defenders on the bench?
Sweetney hasn't seemed so great on defense, but it'll progress with him. I do like the D from JYD and Ariza off the bench though.

because he hinders the developement of Sweetney and he doesn't provide up with the 2 things we need most. Low post offense and shot-blocking. And the one thing he does...which is shot jumners we don't need because we already have H20. Nevermind the fact that he always clanks shots to end games like he did against Washington. He's just not a very skilled player. His numbers will not they at 12&10 they will be closer to 11pts & 8rebs by the end of the year so trade him now that we might be able to get a young player with potential in return.