They raped us at the PG and C positions because of D'Antoni's roster selections. If we had played Toney Douglas at the beginning of the year we would've been able to contain Derrick Rose and Brandon Jennings far better than we did. But no, D'Antoni played CHRIS DUHON instead.
If we had played Darko at Center we would've been able to contain players like Bogut and Brad Miller (LOL at the day when a team with BRAD MILLER rapes us at the Center position), but no D'Antoni chose to play David Lee against those guys with the deceptive notion that playing David Lee would somehow allow us to guard Andrew Bogut way better than playing Darko.
If D'Antoni had played Douglas instead of Duhon and Darko instead of Lee and played Lee at the 4 and sent this rotation onto the floor:
PG - Douglas
SG - Chandler
SF - Gallo
PF - Lee
C - Darko
That lineup would've had a MUCH better chance against the 5-8 playoff seeds. If you guys remember, we weren't all that far outside of the 8th seed a few weeks before the All-Star Break. But no, D'Antoni's short rotation eventually reared its butt ugly head and our players wore down and while David Lee is a good player, he can't be expected to guard players 4 inches taller than he is.
Douglas doesn't have great PG skills. He was a late 1st pick that necessarily took a --little-- time before getting starter minutes at a position that he isn't naturally all that well suited for.
Douglas needs a good and vwellsuited sg to be an effective starting pg.
Chandler is not a SG. And he is soft with more holes in his makeup than swiss cheese.
Already that lineup equates to THE worst backcourt in the NBA.
Gallo is Gallo.
Lee at PF equates to superior D for him and overall play.
It also equates to us starting and relying on arguably the worst draft pick in the history of the NBA as our C when he's been passed around the league for the better part of a decade as a weak-backup like a 2bit whore at an ivy league frat party.
That said, I agree, i would have liked to see him have been given a chance. And he played pretty solid in albeit limited time when starting after being traded to a team whose bigs was decimated by injuries.
Bu that said, the fundamental picture is we'd --still-- be manning the:
Worst backcourt in the NBA. By far.
A C whose day(S) in court has yielded a backup and a lame one at that.
No matter how you slice it we invariably had the single most deranged roster in the 2010 NBA and D'ant didn't have shit to do with it, really.
A normal team can get ravaged by injuries and it'd still be superior to us -- e.g. bucks, rockets...and lets plz stop even alluding to the bulls and heat as being approaching equal -- let alone worse-- than our 2010 team.
Smh. D'ant is becoming way too big of a straw man/scapegoat. He coached like shit in a lotta ways, and did speculative stuff. Ok. Perhaps you cant sculpt a masterpiece, or even something that doesn't reek of shit, when using damp shit as material? And its inconsequential regardless of what you do. This has been the state of the 2010 Knicks.
As further evidenced by these "perfected" anti-d'ant lineups that are still utterly rank.
And in the more consequential ways our season ended with auspicious signs and key-player growth.
Douglas, Lee, Gallo, Walker are primed for big 2011's now. I.e pretty much every Knick who matters to our ongoing future.
