Mike D'antoni has done his job this year...OH REALLY??

LeFlume

All Star
Marc Jackson or Ewing would have been smart enough to let Walsh do the trading and signing. They would have focused on the team. We would have been in the playoffs now. Brook Lopez probably in the hall of fame already and Starbury would have a statue on 7th avenue and avg a quadruple-double. Zach Randolph would have put numbers that would put Bill Russel to shame and Crawford, Oh i don't even wanna think about him. Jordan who...
 

Knixy

Benchwarmer
It's year one of rebuilding. What did you expect? Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury left this franchise in ruins. Nobody could have fixed this in one year. This is still the least talented team in the East. We don't have a single Star on the team. We don't even have good starters on the team (David Lee, Nate Robinson, Al Harrington, Chris Duhon, Wilson Chandler are backup's.).

This is a 30 win team. Mike D'Antoni did not underachieve.
 

jimkcchief88

All Star
I understand that people are upset right now because not making the playoffs is sinking in. This team has been bad for a long time now and its time to start pointing fingers. In reality there is enough blame to go around. Walsh gets the blame for drafting Gallinari. Point blank. I read an article that said Walsh didn't scout Gallinari, Isiah did. Enough said. That fact that Gallinari and D'antoni have almost a father son relationship doesn't help. Everyone was mad at the father-son relationship Isiah had with Crawford, but at least Jamal played and produced.

D'antoni, while doing a credible job coaching this team, needs to hire a defensive specialist as an assistant. This team plays woeful defense and it is ridiculous. Giving up 135 to the Clippers last week??? Wow. Unacceptable. He also deserves some blame on how the Marbury situation was handled. I don't blame D'antoni for that and we should have known that was coming with the history between the two in Phoenix. D'antoni held out an olive branch and gave Steph a chance, but Steph would rather sit on the bench and get paid, then go sit on the bench for a rival team and back into a championship. Some hero. I will be rooting for Cleveland just so Steph gets no ring. Call me a hater if you want. That's right, I am hating. Steph stole 21 million dollars from our team for doing nothing.

Bottomline, rebuilding is painful. The good is Walsh is doing a good job dumping salaries in anticipation of 2010 so we should have a shot. Hopefully someone will want to come play here. Gallinari is only a 19 year old rookie so maybe he will come back and prove me wrong and play like a lottery pick. At best we might have a Keith Van Horn type player(sorry guys). At worse we passed on a lot of talent to draft another Weiss. The only thing you can do is try to enjoy the games and take the small victories. We have a game coming up against the Bulls and we can play spoiler. N8 and D. Lee are great young players and look to be a foundation for the future. Finally our Knicks play an exciting brand of basketball that is TV friendly and fun to watch. So try to just watch for the pure entertainment value and look to the future.
 

LJ4ptplay

Starter
This is just a bunch of Mebury lovers being bitter and holding a grudge because D'Antoni didn't play Mebury. Evidenced by the fact they are blaming D'Antoni for the moves Walsh made.
 

KBlack25

Starter
This is just a bunch of Mebury lovers being bitter and holding a grudge because D'Antoni didn't play Mebury. Evidenced by the fact they are blaming D'Antoni for the moves Walsh made.

I think it's more than that, you see the Mebury lovers wanted Mebury to play so that we would be better immediately. They wanted instant gratification. If Mebury got his chance, maybe we would be a playoff team, but that'd come at the expense of other guys who actually are a part of our future getting time and us getting a worse draft pick only to let Mebury go next year.

This is the same thing, they want instant gratification, which is fine because it's their opinion. The people bashing D'Antoni want everything now now now and to be better and to do a 180 in under 365 days. They don't realize rebuilding takes time, and now that we are ACTUALLY rebuilding (rather than Isiah's "rebuilding" which consists of trading for overrated players with terrible contracts), they are upset because things have to get worse before they get better. We have to weather the storm to see the rainbow so to speak, which is admittedly a difficult thing to come to grips with. It's a very common NY way to do things, NY fans want to win now, and they are rabid about it. But we have to realize that just because we are in NY doesn't mean we play by different rules. We can build our team the right way, which takes time, or the wrong way which just results in the same thing over and over again, bad contract after bad contract and overrated player after overrated player
 

MSGKnickz33

The Gold Mac
im startin to wonder if some of yall got ADD they way you going off topic, this thread is about Mike D'antoni not being as good of a coach as many say he is...we wont even win 33 games this year, which we did manage to win 2 years ago under head coach and gm Isiah thomas.

In no way am i trying to defend Isiah, but this does make d'antoni and the stantoni's look bad.

Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury left this franchise in ruins.

I agree, Marbury made alotta bad trades
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This is just a bunch of Mebury lovers being bitter and holding a grudge because D'Antoni didn't play Mebury. Evidenced by the fact they are blaming D'Antoni for the moves Walsh made.

 

LeFlume

All Star
Isiah won 33 games with a line up he should have won 50+ games with. D'Antoni shouldn't even win 20 with this line up. He have now won 29. Isiah would probably had won 5 with this team.
 

OGKnickfan

Enlightened
im startin to wonder if some of yall got ADD they way you going off topic, this thread is about Mike D'antoni not being as good of a coach as many say he is...we wont even win 33 games this year, which we did manage to win 2 years ago under head coach and gm Isiah thomas.

In no way am i trying to defend Isiah, but this does make d'antoni and the stantoni's look bad.



I agree, Marbury made alotta bad trades
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Good post, it's ridiculous: the number of manipulators on this site. And don't give them an excuse, by saying that they have ADD. They simply manipulate. You say that the coach isn't all that, and they start saying you want Marbury and Crawford. They aim to win arguments, by any means, instead of making their points and defending them.

On D'Antoni and Walsh, I'm really neutral. I just can't say I agree with their decisions, thus far. Shortly, we'll know if it's a serious problem, with them, or if they've just made a few bad decisions, this year.

The decisions I don't agree with are basically drafting Gallinari and trading Zach and Crawford, especially when it basically cost us extra money, by us having to take Mobely's salary, when he can't even play. My belief, as a coach, is that you keep pieces that are working and add according to your needs. Our needs were at center, a position, in the NBA, that if you have no one decent at, you'll get murdered. I think it was unfair to dump our guys, without having ever given them the right type of guys to play with. A team with Brook at center would have been a playoff team, with a bright future.

And I just don't think that you are looking at the little picture, by wanting to win now. It's very, very rare for a team to come out of nowhere to win the title: you usually have to build to that. Some of you seem to think that 2010 will come and a title will be won, but, as ABCD asked, I'd like to know what it is we'll have in October 2009 to attract those guys to come here in 2010.
 

KBlack25

Starter
Good post, it's ridiculous: the number of manipulators on this site. And don't give them an excuse, by saying that they have ADD. They simply manipulate. You say that the coach isn't all that, and they start saying you want Marbury and Crawford. They aim to win arguments, by any means, instead of making their points and defending them.

On D'Antoni and Walsh, I'm really neutral. I just can't say I agree with their decisions, thus far. Shortly, we'll know if it's a serious problem, with them, or if they've just made a few bad decisions, this year.

The decisions I don't agree with are basically drafting Gallinari and trading Zach and Crawford, especially when it basically cost us extra money, by us having to take Mobely's salary, when he can't even play. My belief, as a coach, is that you keep pieces that are working and add according to your needs. Our needs were at center, a position, in the NBA, that if you have no one decent at, you'll get murdered. I think it was unfair to dump our guys, without having ever given them the right type of guys to play with. A team with Brook at center would have been a playoff team, with a bright future.

And I just don't think that you are looking at the little picture, by wanting to win now. It's very, very rare for a team to come out of nowhere to win the title: you usually have to build to that. Some of you seem to think that 2010 will come and a title will be won, but, as ABCD asked, I'd like to know what it is we'll have in October 2009 to attract those guys to come here in 2010.

Okay OG, as a coach, let me put you in this situation. You take over a team that was the laughing stock of the league a year ago, you are an offensive minded coach. Two months into the season I am going to take your top 2 leading scorers off the team and trade them for 1 guy who has been in a fight with his coach all year, 1 guy who won't play for you and Tim Thomas. Then, with that lineup, you have to win 10 more games than the previous year did with essentially the lineup you started with in order to be considered successful. Does that sound like a coaching situation you'd want to be a part of?

In terms of what we'll have in October 2009 to attract free agents, I'd say it doesn't matter. 1) At that point there'd be an entire other season to go before we start talking about courting free agents and 2) again, it's not so much about which free agents we get, it's about digging ourselves out of the salary cap hell Isiah threw us in. The fact is, even if we get NOBODY in the year 2010, at the very least the team will have some amount of roster flexibility that we wouldn't have had under Isiah. 2008-09 was a year about blowing up the team and essentially setting yourselves up to start over. This team will not contend this year or next year either way, whether we made the playoffs or not. So, the way I see it, we can be a perennial 8 seed that gets embarassed by the #1 seed year in and year out, never have the room or flexibility to sign any key player or make any key trade and stagnate never competing for a title for years, or we can blow the team up, be in the lottery for 3-4 years (assuming we don't get LeBron or any big time free agent), make a few good draft picks, have the room to sign a key free agent or two somewhere down the road or have the cap flexibility to make a key trade and possibly contend somewhere down the road.

Did I want to trade Zach? You can look back at my posts and see I was one of the only people on here DEFENDING Zach, saying I didn't have a problem paying him if he performed well. At the same time, I realize that some salary needed to be moved around for the benefit of the team long term. I would've preferred about 5 other guys on this team to be moved other than Randolph, but that was the key cog, and ultimately it got the goal accomplished for the long term. Problem with not trading Zach was who else was this team going to trade to free up cap space? Eddy Curry? You talk about keeping the key pieces and building off of that, and I to some extent agree with you. But at the same time you can't build without room to build, you can't have your cake and eat it too. So, keeping Zach and all the other bad contracts they struggled to move would have kept us in a stagnant position, unable to sign anybody to any sort of good deal, unable to make any key play for any key player. In the end it's about the long term, and what you state should have happened simply could not have happened.
 

LeFlume

All Star
D'Antoni is a bad coach but one player could have changed all that. We were just one rookie away from making the playoffs. Mr Brook Lopez who ranks #57 in efficiency, would have been efficient enough to win our bad coach 12 or so more games.

I still can't figure out why The Nets don't seem to make it tho. Vince Carter, Devin Harris and Mr Lopez are just one game ahead of us. Lawrence Frank must be the worst coach in The NBA. Miss the playoffs when you have a guy like Brook Lopez! Amazing...
 

LJ4ptplay

Starter
Doesn't anybody remember D'Antoni was essentially 1 win away from winning a championship? Had Amare not gotten suspended for Game 7, they might have beaten the Spurs and then would have easily beaten the Cavs for the championship that year. D'Antoni just needs the right pieces. And that's what management is doing right now.

I can't argue about Brook Lopez. At this point he seems like the better pick than Gallinari. But all of the reports have been that it was Walsh's choice, not D'Antoni's. And, if Gallo ever gets to be 100%, he would be the better fit for D'Antoni's system.

I've asked this question several times to the haters and Mebury lovers but have never received a response. Which is more important...

-Having Crawford and Zach, just making the playoffs (maybe), never winning a championship, and not having any cap space in 2010.

-Having cap space in 2010, possibly getting 2 superstars and possibly winning a championship in 2 years.
 

OGKnickfan

Enlightened
It's like MSG said, you people are starting to worry me, with your inability to understand others' posts. #1. I don't understand your scenario, kblack. If you'd like to repost it, with some clarifications added, I'll provide you with an answer. #2. The team we start out with in 2009 is likely the team we'll have at the end of the season, i.e. 2009-2010, for the 2010 savior to play with, after all the salary cap is being saved, and emptied out, for a big 2010 prospect. Or do you actually want us to actually build the team, comprehensively, at multiple positions?

And, for the millionth time, I'm not a Marbury lover. I didn't even care that he got waived. My issue was with how management, and D'Antoni, went about it, which I'm sure none of you agree with.

And, again, 2010 does not equal a championship, aka the "big picture." You tell me how many times a team gets a title, right after acquiring a good player. I'm interested in winning, getting to the playoffs, then adding players in areas of need, until, a year or two down the line, we're a contender.

And, as I've already said, I'm talking about pieces, not one or two players. It's unfair to blame individual players for the failures of management. If you don't give players a legitimate big man to play with, you're basically setting them up for failure: they can't expect to get all, or most, of their defensive rebounds, to get help, in an instance of being beat off the dribble, and they can't expect to stop their opponents from getting easy layups. It's a recipe for failure.

And, as for blind supporters of D'Antoni and Walsh, on this forum, unless you've coached, you don't know what the f&*k you're talking about. You have to sit next to a guy, watch how he interacts with players, whether they listen to him, how he makes decisions, when and why. You have to understand if he can strategize, in the moment, or just be a hindsight guy: many of the coaches I've known are hindsight guys, which is okay, but in the moment people are the best.

The decisions made by this 100 year old GM and D'Antoni the nepotist are poor. Will they continue making poor decisions? I don't know. Lopez shows what many of you have attributed to Gallinari, with no basis to doing so: potential, he's fundamentally sound. And no team, Whether D'Antoni's or otherwise, can without a real big man. Kobe, considered by many to be the best in the game, missed the playoffs and got swept, on a previous post-season, without Gasol. It's just logic, all you have to do is try it out.
 

KBlack25

Starter
It's like MSG said, you people are starting to worry me, with your inability to understand others' posts. #1. I don't understand your scenario, kblack. If you'd like to repost it, with some clarifications added, I'll provide you with an answer. #2. The team we start out with in 2009 is likely the team we'll have at the end of the season, i.e. 2009-2010, for the 2010 savior to play with, after all the salary cap is being saved, and emptied out, for a big 2010 prospect. Or do you actually want us to actually build the team, comprehensively, at multiple positions?

The scenario is essentially the scenario D'Antoni is in:
1) You start with a team that won 23 games last year
2) 2 months into the season your top two scorers are traded for one player who has been in a feud with his coach all year, one player who won't play a minute for you and one player who is Tim Thomas
3) Now, you have to win 33 games (10 more than the previous year) to be considered successful

Run through that and tell me how fair that is.

And, for the millionth time, I'm not a Marbury lover. I didn't even care that he got waived. My issue was with how management, and D'Antoni, went about it, which I'm sure none of you agree with.

Never said you were, I'm not either.


And, again, 2010 does not equal a championship, aka the "big picture." You tell me how many times a team gets a title, right after acquiring a good player. I'm interested in winning, getting to the playoffs, then adding players in areas of need, until, a year or two down the line, we're a contender.

And, as I've already said, I'm talking about pieces, not one or two players. It's unfair to blame individual players for the failures of management. If you don't give players a legitimate big man to play with, you're basically setting them up for failure: they can't expect to get all, or most, of their defensive rebounds, to get help, in an instance of being beat off the dribble, and they can't expect to stop their opponents from getting easy layups. It's a recipe for failure.

And my point was we can't GET those players (or "pieces") without freeing up cap space. I understand you need a center to win, but there are many centers drafted year after year after year who go bust faster than you can say "Draft Failure" (see: Curtis Borchardt, Michael Olowokandi, Rafael Araujo, Patrick O'Bryant, Mohammed Sene, Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, Desagna Diop).

I never said 2010 equals a championship, I never said one player equals a championship. But to consistently be the #8 or #7 seed in the playoffs seems to be what you're after. Yes, making the playoffs now WOULD be nice. But if you are making the playoffs now realistically we are keeping on the horrible contracts we already have. I personally would rather take that 1% chance at the #1 overall pick than take a 0% chance and get bounced from the playoffs and embarrassed by Boston or Cleveland. Would Brook Lopez be nice now? Sure, but then you can go back and look at every single player the Knicks passed up in any draft (2002: Amare Stoudemire, Caron Butler, Carlos Boozer; 2003: David West, Leandro Barbosa, Boris Diaw, Josh Howard, Mo Williams; 2004: We traded away Trevor Ariza, our only pick that year; 2005: Andrew Bynum, Francisco Garcia, Danny Granger; 2006: Rajon Rondo; 2007: Rudy Fernandez, Marc Gasol). Hindsight is 20/20, you think 12 teams would have passed up on Kobe Bryant in 1996? You think Bowie would be drafted over Jordan in 1984? The best we can do is deal with what we have right now, in the moment to give ourselves the best chance at the future. Harping on old mistakes, harping on not taking this guy or that guy gets you no where, and wishing we took one guy over another and $2 gets you one ride on the NY Subway system. You think if D'Antoni had a chance to do it over again he wouldn't, that he wouldn't take a Brook Lopez or someone a bit less injury prone than Gallo? Hell, you think if the Blazers had the chance to do it again they would've taken Durant over Oden? Hindsight is hindsight for a reason, harping on the past harping on what could have been does NOTHING. The best they can do is prepare us for the future.

The best chance at the future that we had was to free up cap room, was to give ourselves more flexibility in dealing with salaries. Our best option for the future was not to keep ourselves in the Isiah-built coffin that was our payroll, even if we could make the playoffs consistently at a 7 or 8 seed. Making the playoffs at that seed does not give us a shot at a good draft pick, keeping those contracts does not enable us to sign a good free agent, or make a trade where we take on more salary than we give out. If this team had Brook Lopez, they probably would have won a lot more games, surprised a lot more people, and perhaps things would have been different. But they're not. Things are what they are what they are right now, and we can only look to the future to try and right the ship.

This is the way rebuilding is done, this is the way rebuilding works. We tried Isiah's way by making ridiculous trades for overrated players and bloated contracts. IT DIDN'T WORK! Now, we are doing things the right way, the way teams like Cleveland did it, the way teams like Orlando did it, building via the draft and free agency. Not the way Isiah wanted to do it.
 

LJ4ptplay

Starter
Also, to assume adding Brook Lopez and keeping the lineup the same as it is now, would equal 10 more wins and playoffs is not realistic. Lopez isn't that good. He's good, but not good enough to lead the current roster to the playoffs. If he was, then why aren't the Nets in the playoffs?
 

metrocard

Legend
I feel that D'Antoni does not have the talent to be assessed as a coach yet.

Knicks have one of the worst rosters in the NBA.
 

Arod2k9

Benchwarmer
Again, to the idiots who don't understand Mike's system:

Brook Lopez is too slow and mechanical in the post to fit in our system. I jumped out of my seat when he we drafted Gallo and passed up on Gordon and Lopez. Before the workouts for the draft Lopez was slated to go at #3 to the Timberwolves, so he actually slipped 7 picks further. Yea, we are the only ones that passed up on him!:cool:

Brook has played well but under a half court set NJ plays. I got YES Network and seen plenty of Nets games and he's so freaking boring to watch.

We needed a Boris Diaw type of player and Gallo is that and much more. His IQ and court sense are tremendous. Compare Chandler's court sense vs Gallo and is not even close. Most of the time Chandler has to think, think, think and then make something up. Gallo's play is pure and even directs people on the court. This Kid is gonna be special down the line. Again, we didn't draft a savior but someone that makes others better.

BTW, some people are still defending Marbury and Crawford? Randolph?
Well there are people who think that with those 3 we were one great player away from a championship. What a bunch of idiots...
 

metrocard

Legend
Again, to the idiots who don't understand Mike's system:

Brook Lopez is too slow and mechanical in the post to fit in our system. I jumped out of my seat when he we drafted Gallo and passed up on Gordon and Lopez. Before the workouts for the draft Lopez was slated to go at #3 to the Timberwolves, so he actually slipped 7 picks further. Yea, we are the only ones that passed up on him!:cool:

Brook has played well but under a half court set NJ plays. I got YES Network and seen plenty of Nets games and he's so freaking boring to watch.

We needed a Boris Diaw type of player and Gallo is that and much more. His IQ and court sense are tremendous. Compare Chandler's court sense vs Gallo and is not even close. Most of the time Chandler has to think, think, think and then make something up. Gallo's play is pure and even directs people on the court. This Kid is gonna be special down the line. Again, we didn't draft a savior but someone that makes others better.

BTW, some people are still defending Marbury and Crawford? Randolph?
Well there are people who think that with those 3 we were one great player away from a championship. What a bunch of idiots...

Lopez actually moves very well for a 7 footer and would of gave us the post presence we needed.

You make a good point on Gallo.
 

GetRealistic

Starter
I feel that D'Antoni does not have the talent to be assessed as a coach yet.

Knicks have one of the worst rosters in the NBA.

100% correct. There is no coach in the NBA and that includes guys who have never been head coaches in this league (Ewing and Jackson) who could turn this team into anything special. They simply aren't good enough.
 

MSGKnickz33

The Gold Mac
I feel that D'Antoni does not have the talent to be assessed as a coach yet.

Knicks have one of the worst rosters in the NBA.

100% correct. There is no coach in the NBA and that includes guys who have never been head coaches in this league (Ewing and Jackson) who could turn this team into anything special. They simply aren't good enough.

2 of the few posts that are actually on topic in this thread...and i definitely respect that opinion. In my mind, i keep comparing the team from 2 years ago to this year...which team is more talented?

We got young players who are better now, like Lee and Nate...and Wilson Chandler, who was drafted after that year. We swapped Crawford for al harrington, both players really arent that good in my opinion but i would take Harrington over crawford.

The biggest difference is that we dont have Stephon Marbury anymore, instead we have Chris Duhon. And also, Eddy Curry rarely played this year...which i look at as a good thing. He plays ZERO defense, he clogs the paint, and hes turnover prone.

So which team is better?

Does the loss of Marbury = the improvement of Nate R, D Lee, the addition of Wilson chandler, trading crawford for Al Harrington, and Eddy curry not playing?

Now that i think about it, this indirectly proves the value that Marbury had to our team that year...with such crappy teammates, he carried that team to 33 wins and possibly a playoff birth had he not been injured in early April of that year. This is also more proof of how much better Marbury is then Duhon.

And yes, i know...were building for the future, but its not like duhorn is part of the future and Marbury expires after this season...
 

Arod2k9

Benchwarmer
MetroCard,

Lopez fits perfect for what the Nets want to do. Thorne knows what he is doing! As well as Walsh, this guy has put us in a position to at least have an opportunity to get a Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, DWade, and others.
 
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