Posted by fishmike:

I dont buy it... I think Isiah knows the skinny on his team and he's talked about it with Dolan. Lenny may not be right but now isnt the time to fire him anyhow.

We did have a shot at winning 45 plus games or so. This team has some firepower and we have shown we can beat some good (not elite) teams. I dont think anyone thought TT would be this bad or Houston wouldnt be able to move anymore. Life goes on... but we have 4-5 good players to move forward with.

I disagree. Lenny should be fired now because the Knicks need a coach who will teach defensive fundamentals and establishes a mindset that prioritizes defense, and they need a coach who will allocate more minutes to Sweetney and Ariza.

I just think Lenny is generally a bad coach. His record is .500 and he has had some awful teams, he never won anything after his player-coach title, and his teams are known to be soft post season chokes.

Is that really a coach we like?

Sorry- a coach like Van Gundy/Fratello would be a bad fit with the skills of the players here- Marbury & Crawford are creative offensive forces that need to be maximized- and for everything about Lenny that I don't like, I think he's the one best suited to do the job.

The knicks that banged- the Ewing and Oakleys and Starks- there wasn't much offensive talent there- so winning 72 to 68 made good sense.

We have the makings of a team like a Phoenix/Dallas/Sacramento that can go out and outscore the opposition.

then your not watching.. look at the last 2 games against Chi. They played their butts off, they just didnt come away with the wins.

I'm not making excuses for Lenny, trust me. I'm just saying that these things DO take time as demonstrated by many other situations in the NBA and who's better? you want Phil Jackson for $8mm a year? you can say someone like Aguire but the flip side is he doesnt know offense. So say you get guys to play better on defense and the offense is Marbury and Crawford freelancing.

No... I think Lenny should get this year at the absolute least. This is not a title team... if it totally blows up you fire him in the offseason and you have a lottery pick to boot.

i don't see why isiah hired lenny in the first place and secondly why lenny would accept a job with a team where he had to have an ideal that he would fail

i mean how could he not fail

i hate to blame coaches because i am under the belief that it's a players' game and you need talent to win. period

if lenny had shaq then would he all of a sudden be a better coach. no but he may be considered as a good coach

if a team is weak defensively then i feel like they had better be an offensive juggernaut because history has proven that you win with big men and defense

imo, if and when lenny gets fired it should be considered as "they can't fire the players so they fired the coach"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/sports/basketball/19knicks.html?oref=login

January 19, 2005

Not Everyone Thinks the Knicks Stink; Just Ask the Knicks

By DAVE CALDWELL

GREENBURGH, N.Y., Jan. 18 - Lenny Wilkens sounded on Tuesday as if he planned to be coaching the Knicks for a while. He said that he told his bedraggled players to keep paying attention to him, and that they were improving.

"I'm going to do my job," Wilkens said, "and whatever happens, happens."

The Knicks (17-20) have lost seven of their last eight games to fall three games under .500 for the first time this season.

But there were no hints at the Knicks' practice facility on Tuesday that the team's president, Isiah Thomas, might replace Wilkens before the Knicks plunge out of contention.

Wilkens said he showed the Knicks film of the Philadelphia 76ers' 32-point loss last week to the Chicago Bulls, to whom the Knicks have lost twice since Saturday. There was a point.

"We have made some progress," Wilkens said.

It is hard to tell, of course, because the Knicks are backsliding in the anemic Atlantic Division. Monday's loss to the Bulls left them in a three-way tie for first with the 76ers and the Boston Celtics.

The division is so bad that were the season to end today, only the winner would make the playoffs. But the Knicks see a chance to snap back on Wednesday against Toronto (16-23), an even worse team.

"We always knew that the title didn't mean anything when you look at our record," Allan Houston said, referring to the division lead. "But we also know we're not that far away."

The Knicks have had bad luck this season with injuries.

"If you'd have a full team and things are going bad, then you can put most of the blame on the coach," Stephon Marbury said.

Marbury said it was not fair to pin the blame for the Knicks' slide on Wilkens. The Knicks, he said, are actually playing better now than they were a month ago. He cited a Dec. 21 game in which they fell behind Dallas by 16 points after the first quarter.

"When we did have our horses, we were winning," Marbury said.

Wilkens said the injuries had made it difficult for the team to find its rhythm. With a weak chuckle, he said Monday's game was unusual because "we had guys back for a change."

Houston has played 19 games since returning from a sore left knee, and he is so tired of talking about his medical condition that he now refuses to answer questions about it. "I'm not talking about my knees anymore," he said Tuesday.

Houston played at least 30 minutes in the last seven games that Jamal Crawford missed. Crawford played Monday against the Bulls after missing 10 games with a sprained right big toe. He scored 8 points in 27 minutes and missed all seven of his 3-point shots.

"That tells me my legs aren't there," Crawford said.

Neither, apparently, are Houston's. Monday's game was only the second in his last nine games in which he made at least half of his field-goal attempts, and he was only 5 for 10.

"What everybody forgets is that he was off for a long time," Wilkens said with an edge in his voice.

Penny Hardaway is out indefinitely with a strained right hamstring, and Tim Thomas, who started the Knicks' first 33 games, missed three games with knee and calf injuries before playing four minutes on Monday. He plans to play against the Raptors.

The Knicks are mildly encouraged with their defense; they have held their last three opponents to 88, 86 and 88 points.

"The defense has been fine," forward Kurt Thomas said. "We just have to get the stops we need."

If anyone can put a positive spin on back-to-back last-minute losses to the Bulls, who are still a sub-.500 team, the Knicks can. At least they were in a position to win, Marbury said. At least they are slowly getting healthier.

"We haven't made it halfway through the season," Crawford said. "We're not going to quit yet."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

The hell with all of you fans and current players who are actually supporting Lenny. What you all have failed to realize is that this team will never have a tough mentality until Lenny stop treating them like his own kids. These players are all professionals, therefore they need to be treated as so. Show me one coach in this league who succeeded with that approach. Lenny was not always the soft Lenny that he is today. In his early days he was more of a in your face coach. Age has soften him a great deal, and that soft side will not work with the combo of players that we have right now......Get rid of him. Find a hard nose type of guy to come in and truly push Marb, Houston, TT, and Nazr to perform every night...Enough with babysitting..

Posted by fishmike:

patience... its a long season and teams have had major turnarounds (and collapses) after mid season. Look at the Heat last year.. perfect example. Look at Lenny's Raptor's a few years ago... In 2002 the Lenny coached Raptors fell to 30-38. A funny thing happened. Wince Carter (can you hear me playa?) hurt something and didnt play the rest of the season. The Raptors then went 12-2 over their 14 and made the playoffs with NO VINCE.

My point is you just dont know. Lenny got a team that was Mo Peterson, JYD, Antonio Davis, Keon Clark, Alvin Williams and Jumaine Jones to go 12-2 to finish a season and make the playoffs. The lost in the first round to Det, but pushed the series 5 games.

Again, sometimes it takes a whole year for things to work. Ask Nate McMillian in Sea or Hubie Brown when he was with Memphis.

I'm not saying Lenny is the answer, only that he deserves at least a year. He's not some rookie coach that his team has quit on. The Knicks are playing hard, and they played hard in both games against Chi. Now just isnt the time.

Couldn't agree more. It isn't like that Bulls team has been rolling over against everyone else, they're one of the hottest teams in the league: 12-3 in their last 15 games. The Knicks played them to a stand still and lost by a combination of bad luck and absolutely GREAT winning shots by the Bulls (Chandler diving out of bounds to save a blocked shot, gets passed up court for a break away dunk; (Michael) Gordon with a BEAUTIFUL tear drop shot from behind the basket). Those were excellent ball games, the Knicks came up short, but they didn't have Jamal or Tim for one game and Jamal was rusty in game 2. It isn't the end of the world, or even the season. This team is still the same team. People need to calm way down.