ronoranina
Fundamentally Sound
This is probably going to be too long of a read for many of our posters whose attention span goes as far as watching 1 quarter of basketball before proposing that we trade Melo Stat and Tyson for D12 CP3 and Lebron. However maybe it will make a few people think twice.
Our team right now is a complete joke. Our roster at first glance looks good but as a TEAM we lack any kind of cohesiveness or chemistry. We lack fundamental cogs that would turn this team into a solid one pretty much overnight. Lets talk about the players we have.
Carmelo Anthony - Currently the best player on our roster not only by reputation but performances. However, I remember at the start of the season posting an article about MDA comparing Melo to Larry Bird and playing him as a point forward. I laughed at it then and people were like "no srsly smokes melo can be a playmaker!!!11eleven"... Uh, no, he can't. He's shown nothing more than glimpses of being a good assist man and when he does its purely because the other team is doubling the shit out of him. Melo is not Lebron. He's not Larry Bird. He's Melo, a 25ppg scorer and the best improvement we can hope to see from him is that he'll step up defensively, consistently.
Amare Stoudemire - Regardless of his struggles, still the second best player on our team by the same criteria as above. Amare has played his entire career with a premier PG. We specifically brought in Felton on a 2 year "overpaid" deal for the purpose of having someone who could get STAT the ball. Even after trading Felton we had Billups, a savvy championship calibre PG with smarts. We don't have ANYONE on the team who can do this anymore so it should be no surprise that Amare is not functioning properly right now.
Tyson Chandler - Is a 10ppg 10rpg 2bpg player we got for defensive purposes only. Offensively he's as useful as Jared Jefferies unless, yes you guessed it, he's playing with a solid PG. Once gelled and cohesive with Amare we should see some nice interior D on this team. It's not surprising that a team who is so crap offensively also struggles defensively because we have a desperation negative mindset right now and Tyson/STAT/Jorts will need a while before they are comfortable with each others floor positioning and know when their teammate needs help.
Toney Douglas (29th pick) - Again, expectations coming in for this guy were silly especially after his performance in the playoffs. Our offensive genius coach saw Toney as a potential starting PG in the NBA. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This guy has and always will be a legit scoring 6th man type of combo guard threat and should be used as such. Obviously he's suffered a huge blow to his confidence thanks to the position he's been placed in but as the season progresses and our team improves you can REALISTICALLY expect him to return to being a 15ppg scorer off the bench who can hit the 3 ball.
Landry Fields (39th pick) - I genuinely wonder whether during his time with Andy Rautins posting youtube videos they DP'ed some peoples girlfriends on this site the kinda hate this guy has been receiving. The guy is a hard working 15-20mpg SG who should be anchoring the 2nd unit with solid fundamentals, fast break buckets, hustle, catch and shoot open opportunities, catch and drive the baseline etc. The guy can consistently contribute 8-10ppg 5 rebs and a steal which is more than anyone can ask for from a guy no one had even heard of 18 months ago. He is not and never will be a volume scorer/shooter and he should not be starting on this team, he should be coming in with TD to provide energy, size (at his spot) and hustle.
Iman Shumpert (17th pick) - The way people harp on about this guy here you'd think he's the second coming of Chris Paul. Yet again this guy is not a distributor and up until this summer he could not hit an open jumpshot. He has improved leaps and bounds since then but he should not be a starting PG nor should he be jacking up shots like he's Michael Jordan. When Baron Davis returns I whole heartedly expect Shump to take the role of starting 2 guard and fingers crossed he will be able to defend, hit a three now and then and create a few scoring opportunities from his athleticism and the fact we will then have 3 legit scorers on the team.
Mike Bibby - I only mention Bibby because he's the only actual PG on our roster right now yet he's not even that anymore. He played an entire season in Miami where he was never a distributor or playmaker he was purely there to keep the ball safe as it advanced across halfcourt and then give it up to Lebron/Wade. It's no shock his PG skills have gone when he's spent 2 years without using them and he's the wrong side of washed up.
The rest of our team is barely worth mentioning, in regards to this discussion.
So where do we go from here? Well firstly we get BD back and hope he contributes his usual 15/7 and can control the offense somewhat. At that point we can reasonably expect to score 100 on any given night and judging by our current defense that's plenty.
Secondly, and I'd probably ejaculate a river of spunk that would drown my entire street if this happened, we need to replace MDA with someone who actually knows how to utilize players other than the PG/C in a pick n rollololololol. I have plenty more to say about MDA but it's not too relevant to the topic of expectations of our players.
Currently on this team we really only have a couple of players who are underachieving and you can attribute a lot of that to confidence. Once the wins start rolling in, you'll see a whole new New York :gony:
Re bolded - Yes we do. It's B Davis.. best pointguard MDA's had since Steve Nash.
The rest of the post I agree with wholeheartedly. Nice one Smokey :thumbsup: