The coach was hired to bring his then highly valued system here.
Fire the people who hired the coach and/or the people who traded for a max. player who doesn't fit into the system of a coach who was specifically hired to bring his system to New York.
I hate to dwell on it guys, I really do but as long as Dolan and several short term GMs are planning our present AND future we're forever stuck in a dead end.
Melo, Amare etc. they're all good players, but they only work well in specific constellations:
- Amar'e needs a great pick and roll PG with experience, he needs to play center to outmaneuver people and he needs SSOL to be a beast on offense.
- Melo needs the ball about 90% of the time, a lot of iso plays and a lot of dirty work guys who play defense for him, make all the hustle plays and sacrifice themselves for him, so he can be that deadly scorer that he once was and probably still is in the right system for him.
Melo's system
Amare's system.
That's why they both look worse together than they look apart. Both good players on their own, just not made to play together.
Might be different if we had drafted them both and developed to play side by side....who knows, we never really had our draft picks around 2002-2004.
And D'Antoni: Good coach, but he needs a franchise PG like Nash, Williams, Paul, maybe Kidd AND a lot of great shooters. He never had that in New York, add the fact that Melo doesn't fit into his system and he looks pretty bad coaching wise.
Our front office has to be the worst in the NBA over the last 12 years or so, I mean all those stupid trades under Scott Layden like Camby and Nene for an injury prone Dice (who played 5 games or so in 2 years for us).
Spree for Keith Van Horn :countdown: etc.
Then Isiah took over and pissed away our next 5-6 years, all well documented.
Finally we hired a good GM in Donnie Walsh, but they didn't give him any time (2 years are a damn joke to rebuild a franchise). He did a pretty good job, but wasn't allowed to finish his project and the work he did in 2 years was thrown out of the window in one night.
And this is where we are now. Grunwald has done a decent job this season, kudos to him, but all he can do is try to make minor tweaks and fix some things here and there. He can't correct our 'trinity of death' Melo-Amar'e-D'Antoni. Those 3 aren't made for each other.
One has to go, that much is obvious, if it's D'ANtoni we as fans should ask the question why he was hired in the first place. I mean I never was a fan of his philosophy in Phoenix and I still don't think it'S right for the Eastern Conference and New York in particular now, but why on earth did we hire him in the first place?
Everybody knew what D'ANtoni was all about!? Why did we hire him and then didn't give him the right players for his system?
Imo we can't blame D'Antoni, you can't buy a Playstation and then expect to play XBox games on it, but that's pretty much what we the fanbase and our beloved owner do and did over the last couple of seasons.
If we wanted players like Melo etc. why did we sign D'Antoni?
And why did we sign him anyway to a team that plays in a city where defense and hustle are valued most and more than 120 points a night.
I actually have to give him (D'Antoni) some credit, he tried to adjust his system and abandoned SSOL after the Melo trade, unfortunately he'S a one trick pony and the only trick he knows well is SSOL and how to win with it, BUT that was known in 2008 for christ's sake?!
So again: Why did we sign him? And why didn't we trade for Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Chris Paul etc. and sign Joe Johnson, Shawn Marion or keep Gallo like he wanted?
It's stupid to sign a coach and then not provide him with his kind of players.
On the other hand: If he was only signed as a fill-in to play some entertaining ball in 2008 and 2009 until Lebron etc. arrive, why on earth did we keep him beyond 2010?
Atrocious job by the Knicks, the whole rebuilding plan is just a bad joke, we don't have a philosophy at all.
Donnie had one, I'm sure but he was sent away before he could finish the job.
It's unfair to blame one guy, it's not D'Antoni's fault or Melo's fault or Amare's fault.
They're all good assets in the right constellations, but throwing them all together to hope it's gonna work is amateurish behavior, as if some of us on here did it and not renowned managers and businessmen.
You'd expect better from a professional sports franchise.
James Dolan is the type of guy who buys a good car let's say a Jaguar, but he's not satisfied with it, because he wants a Maybach or RR Phantom, so he trades his Jaguar, but all he ends up with in the end is a Honda Civic with custom paint and $20k rims.
Looking good on the outside, but just a Civic on the inside, with rims who don't help the cars acceleration and speed....