I just listened to some vile rantings from Stephen A, who said that Lin had everything to do with the firing.
Here is his contorted reasoning. Basically said that Lin had license from D'Antoni to ignore Carmelo - and sometimes didn't give it to Melo in isolation situations -- and that was a large reason why D'Antoni was fired. Further, Smith thought the firing was justified for this reason.
But the premise is wrong. In my view, Lin fed the ball to Melo plenty. Melo has been getting plenty of shots. It's not Lin's fault - or D'Antoni's - that Melo was shooting bricks.
Smith is a ****in fool.
The reason Lin wasn't giving to Melo was because Melo was deviating from the team gameplan and offense that MDA had set up for the team, and which the team (Melo) aside had bought into.
Lin committed to coach and team (and winning), and didn't bend over Melo being lazy and not doing what he was supposed to do.
Melo chose himself and what he wanted.
Simple.
The team, and our franchie, is now worse off.
And how can people not see the striking similarity between how we looked and played on our win streak/renaissance with the best of how we looked last year, pre-Melo The difference being we now had a legit C who gave us the defensive boost we needed.