D'antoni pushed for Hill; Scouts pushed for Jennings

"In fact, Heard and another Thomas disciple, Walker D. Russell, are the two Knick scouts who were pushing Walsh to draft point guard Brandon Jennings in June 2009. But Walsh drafted power forward Jordan Hill, a player Mike D’Antoni favored and that decision proved to be a costly one for the club."

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/knicks/2010/10/walsh-whacks-role-of-scout-who.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nydnrss%2Fblogs%2Fknicks+%28Blogs%2FKnicks+Knation%29

So, there we go. Coach Mike D. should just stick to coaching, b/c his talent evaluation is really lacking.

Ultimately, blame Walsh for giving in to his coach.

Jennings-Lopez, or Jennings-Gordon would certainly give this Knicks team a better balance (and more assets to get STAT).

Not sure how we could let Coach Mike D talk us out of a player the scouts recommended. I mean, what did Mike D know about Jennings? All the scouts do is actually evaluate talent... Mike D. never saw (nor heard of) B-Jennings (despite the fact he played in Italy).

Oh-freaking-well.

Jennings isn't that good and i can understand a coach with a short team drafting height.

Walsh has bought into d'antoni's system and wants to give him the players he needs. So i can understand him bending to d'ant's whim. Still the Hill pick turned out to be a bust, so they gambled and lost. Still they were able to turn hill into the mcgrady trade, which is what got us cap space for Amar'e.

p0nder said:

Jennings isn't that good and i can understand a coach with a short team drafting height.

Walsh has bought into d'antoni's system and wants to give him the players he needs. So i can understand him bending to d'ant's whim. Still the Hill pick turned out to be a bust, so they gambled and lost. Still they were able to turn hill into the mcgrady trade, which is what got us cap space for Amar'e.

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The biggest error in drafting Hill over Jennings probably is that we packaged Hill with our 2012 1st round pick. Because you cannot deal consecutive 1st round picks (for some odd reason) this means the Knicks cannot deal their 2011 or 2013 pick.

Had we drafted Jennings, he might have been "too good" to dump in a flat out salary purge (getting ride of Jeffries). As MIA and NJ proved, we could have easily held on to Hill and Jeffries b/c somebody would have taken Jeffries off our hands.

We would have Jennings and the ability to trade our 1st round pick this year.

That trade with HOU last year might be the death blow to Walsh's rebuilding plan.... It was that bad. To go all-in was foolish. NOt worth paying that price just to dump Jared Jeffries. A killer.

All i have to say is that walsh has done a great great job with the knicks.

mafra said:

The biggest error in drafting Hill over Jennings probably is that we packaged Hill with our 2012 1st round pick. Because you cannot deal consecutive 1st round picks (for some odd reason) this means the Knicks cannot deal their 2011 or 2013 pick.

Had we drafted Jennings, he might have been "too good" to dump in a flat out salary purge (getting ride of Jeffries). As MIA and NJ proved, we could have easily held on to Hill and Jeffries b/c somebody would have taken Jeffries off our hands.

We would have Jennings and the ability to trade our 1st round pick this year.

That trade with HOU last year might be the death blow to Walsh's rebuilding plan.... It was that bad. To go all-in was foolish. NOt worth paying that price just to dump Jared Jeffries. A killer.

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I agree with you 100% although I am not one to get wrapped up in past moves no matter how bad they are. We always should be looking forward instead of bacwards, we ****ed up on the Gallo draft and Hill draft.

Kill me if you want to but with back to back top ten picks you can not do things like pick project players and cross your fingers. These are things that get you fired as well as lose alot of games.

I am high on Walsh but any player that Isiah drafted has performed 10x better than any of Mr. Walsh's to this point. No point of me naming people anyone who wants to be honest should agree.

:gony::gony::gony:

Knicks4Life_1985 said:

I agree with you 100% although I am not one to get wrapped up in past moves no matter how bad they are. We always should be looking forward instead of bacwards, we ****ed up on the Gallo draft and Hill draft.

Kill me if you want to but with back to back top ten picks you can not do things like pick project players and cross your fingers. These are things that get you fired as well as lose alot of games.

I am high on Walsh but any player that Isiah drafted has performed 10x better than any of Mr. Walsh's to this point. No point of me naming people anyone who wants to be honest should agree.

:gony::gony::gony:

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I agree. I mean, I would grant Walsh the luxury of one prject pick... But not two. Hey, it stinks that Westbrook and Curry were both stolen from us the selection before we were to pick. but that's life.

Eric Gordon was such a safe pick.... How could you pas on him? Last year, not so much.... but in a draft of PGs, how do you go with a PF?

Gall and Jennings or Gordon and Hill would have been acceptable.

Anyway.... if we get Melo I'll build Walsh a statue. Let's see if you can finish the deal.

isnt this old news?

p0nder said:

Jennings isn't that good and i can understand a coach with a short team drafting height.

Walsh has bought into d'antoni's system and wants to give him the players he needs. So i can understand him bending to d'ant's whim. Still the Hill pick turned out to be a bust, so they gambled and lost. Still they were able to turn hill into the mcgrady trade, which is what got us cap space for Amar'e.

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Brandon Jennings name was top litter out of High School.
Jennings went to as many predraft camps as he was allowed to
attend, Jennings performance in every predraft camp he outwitted,
outplayed, every guard in the predraft camp.
The Knicks been searching for a PG to replace Marbury since trading for
Frances in 2006.
The Knicks were suppose to draft Jennings and buy the Lakers pick Toney
Douglas to sow up our search for a future PG. No more to be mention we
F.... up! its bad enough Jerome James was a no-show for 4 straight seasons,
and Brook Lopez was available to be Eddy Curry backup which we let get away.

All i have to say is that walsh has done a great great job with the knicks.

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The above quotation has been mention by so many young unknowledgeable
NBA fans and media types that know nothing about the mess Donnie Walsh
put the Indiana Pacers in the 2 years before he left.
Donnie Walsh big mouth announcing his 2010 Plan for Lebron James in
2008, is the number #1 reason why the Knicks did not get Lebron James. And
had big problems trading for better players with lesser years on their contract.
u never let your left hand know what your right hand is going to do in this business.
All of the 12 players Isiah left on the roster had 3 or less year contracts
(automatic cap space).
Only 5 players contracts went into the 2010-11 season (Chandler, Jefferies,
Crawful, Curry, Zach). All 5 players were easy to trade by having one .500
record season without Isiah Thomas in the organization (The talent was
there it only needed two more coaches added to the staff).
Donnie Walsh/Dantoni gave us two TANKING seasons for no reason at all, we
did not take advantage of two lottery picks, or build a playoff team with a
few keepers to add to our 2010-11 season roster.
We had to accept rejects and sign tier 3 players to fill the 11 empty spots
on our roster. My bad! we did get a star in Amare and an average NBA PG-Felton.
Walsh did a great job in his 2 years :barf:

IMO Brandon Jennings is a bit overrated. The biggest issue with the Jordan Hill pick is that we ended up giving up on him within a year to clear cap room for Lebron and Co.

^You know you are basically defending Isiah right? They guy that got us into the mess that walsh has been cleaning up for the last 3 years... we have more flexibility, cap space and talent on this team then we have had in the last 10 years. Not since we overpaid Allan Houston have we had this kind of an outlook.

2 tanking seasons was terrible, I suffered through them with you and the rest of the faithful. But i can see that we are in a better position then we ever have been and it is because of the moves made by donnie walsh.

Jennings will slump and in fact, wasn't even that effective for his team last year. He blew up for one 50 point game and everyone was going crazy for this kid. He's not a better PG then Felton, he's just got a lot of hype behind him.

p0nder said:

^You know you are basically defending Isiah right? They guy that got us into the mess that walsh has been cleaning up for the last 3 years... we have more flexibility, cap space and talent on this team then we have had in the last 10 years. Not since we overpaid Allan Houston have we had this kind of an outlook.

2 tanking seasons was terrible, I suffered through them with you and the rest of the faithful. But i can see that we are in a better position then we ever have been and it is because of the moves made by donnie walsh.

Jennings will slump and in fact, wasn't even that effective for his team last year. He blew up for one 50 point game and everyone was going crazy for this kid. He's not a better PG then Felton, he's just got a lot of hype behind him.

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Good post. Couldn't agree more.

Guess what?

Gallo became a Knick because of Mike D and we passed up on Brook Lopez who is now one of the best Centers in the NBA....then we get Hill over Jennings, maybe we should never listen to Mike D again!

p0nder said:

Jennings will slump and in fact, wasn't even that effective for his team last year. He blew up for one 50 point game and everyone was going crazy for this kid. He's not a better PG then Felton, he's just got a lot of hype behind him.

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But last year, Jennings would have been an instant improvement over Duhon instead of the team sitting on Hill. I'm not disagreeing that Felton is the better PG of the three already mentioned, but Jennings would have given the team better energy, even been a better bargaining chip for 2009-2010. (Although to be honest, I had no idea what mafra pointed out about trading your 1st round draft picks in consecutive years.)