and we're done

all i'm saying is, if NOVAK can show that he can play some D, amare will be okay in a few weeks. woodson gets the best out of these players (JR)
 
It's not the first time Amar'e has said he hasn't been taught defense. He should've coughed up the extra few grand so Hakeem could teach him some of that too.
 
Master Zik said:
It's not the first time Amar'e has said he hasn't been taught defense. He should've coughed up the extra few grand so Hakeem could teach him some of that too.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Hakeem, this is just going to be even more pressure on this guy Amare. People will be looking for those post-moves more now.

I hate to say it, but something gives me a feeling that Amare is a phony now and he's an eight of what he used to be. He used up athleticism too much earlier on and had too many crippling injuries.

Pessimistic, I am. But what gives me hope of believing in otherwise?
 
I was at the game last night. Amare looked rusty, but after the first dunk he was moving better. 3 of the first 5 shots were half way down. Havent seen a the Garden give a standing ovation like that in a long time and the eruption after that first dunk. He'll be fine.

This is a game that having Shumpert wouldve helped a lot.


Seeing Melo drop 45 in person, though. :eek :x :{
 
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I remember last year, being hyped cuz Amare said he "put on 15 lbs of muscle and grew an inch taller."

So he's gonna be taught defense now? Cool.
 
Idk if amare was being serious with that statement but I dont like it.

Thats like a bodybuilder saying I never been taught to work out legs in my life.
 
I find myself rolling my eyes at about 70% of what Amare says.

They nonsense about growing last year was probably my favorite
 
Knicks fam... 2 huge questions

1) is there a show online that I can stream "all access" episodes of the team this year? (I only catch the Lakers one here in Hawaii :x )

2) when will champs get this years jerseys in for sale? (round collar)


THANKS IN ADVANCE! (pm would be great and repped)
 
^ :hat being from Hawaii and liking the Knicks

IDK about your first question, but I'm sure Champs doesn't carry authentic jerseys. You might have some luck with swingmans. Maybe around March you'll see them in Hawaii. Just go to NBA store.com and order the authentic from there. Unless they don't deliver to Hawaii.
 
rayray3thousand said:
Knicks fam... 2 huge questions

1) is there a show online that I can stream "all access" episodes of the team this year? (I only catch the Lakers one here in Hawaii :x )

2) when will champs get this years jerseys in for sale? (round collar)


THANKS IN ADVANCE! (pm would be great and repped)
Click to expand...


where are you at in Hawaii? I brother lives out there. He was stationed out there as a marine and never left. been there twice (Ewa Beach area).
 
ok, so we should have a summit at Hawaii then, rayray host the group 8o
 
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happy to host something here... you guys can catch me back when I come up for a game! me and the wifey want to make it out to NYC soooo bad...

I live on Oahu right above Aloha Stadium/Pearl Harbor...

Die hard Knicks fan since 89, even made a heat/knicks bet at the start of the year and had my entire coaching staff rocking Knicks gear and personalized jerseys with my name on the back... my players could not stop laughing all practice :smokin




anyhow... is there a weekly show that follows the team?
 
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Tom Haberstroh -

With the way the New York Knicks have laid down defensively over the past month, defensive sieve Amar'e Stoudemire should have no problems fitting in right away.

After an almost magical start to the season, the Knicks stumble into Thursday night's matchup against the San Antonio Spurs having lost five of their past eight games. But contrary to popular belief, their recent skid has little to do with their 3-point dependent offense coming up empty.

No, it has much more to do with the fact that they've taken the holidays off on the defensive end of the floor.

Rewind to Dec. 7, the morning after the Knicks spanked the defending champion Miami Heat on national television 112-92, even without Carmelo Anthony. Things were good in Knicks Nation. New York ranked comfortably atop the East with a 14-4 record, boasting the league's most efficient offense and an 11th-ranked defense anchored by a supposedly rejuvenated Anthony and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Tyson Chandler.

That seems like more than a month ago, doesn't it? They've gone just 7-6 since that Melo-less romp in Miami while absorbing various injuries to Anthony, Chandler, Raymond Felton and Rasheed Wallace. They've looked every bit like the injury-rattled, slightly above .500 team that many expected of the ancient, if talented, roster -- not the title contender that many Knicks fans hoped after a hot start.

But save me the "live by the 3, die by the 3" knee-jerk diagnosis. The Knicks haven't been lights-out from downtown lately, but did you really expect them to shoot 42 percent from downtown all season? The inevitable regression to the mean should be a shock to exactly no one and the reports of the Knicks' death by 3-point shot have been greatly exaggerated.

In fact, the Knicks have shot 35.9 percent from beyond the arc during their slide since Dec. 6, a conversion rate that still ranks above the league average. The horror! Sure, it's convenient to point out that Mike D'Antoni's Phoenix Suns never won a title by shooting nothing but 3-pointers, but it glosses over the fact that there's actually a track record of success for teams reliant on the long ball.

Let's take a quick stroll through history. Most recently, the 2010-11 Dallas Mavericks title team, anchored by Chandler by the way, ranked fifth in 3-point attempts. The 2008-09 Magic reached the NBA Finals while having the most 3-point dependent offense in the league. The 2006-07 Spurs shot more 3s than D'Antoni's Suns in their Western Conference semifinal matchup (gasp!) and then eventually won the championship. And then there's the Houston Rockets who won back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995 after shooting 100 more 3-pointers than any other team in each banner-raising campaign.

The problem for the Knicks isn't that their 3-point shot has gotten cold(er), but rather that their defense hasn't been able to absorb a slight thawing. Since the Melo-less win in Miami, the Knicks have allowed a bloated 106.3 points per 100 possessions according to NBA.com's advanced stats tool, a rate that would rank 27th in the league over the entire season. After being a borderline top-10 defense for the opening month of the season, the Knicks' D has essentially been a doormat for opposing teams.

So what's the issue? The Knicks haven't bothered to play defense until the fourth quarter -- and that's often a little too late. This isn't just an knee-jerk overreaction to the past two losses to Sacramento and Portland when the Knicks couldn't overcome double-digit halftime deficits. This trend has lasted all season long. The Knicks currently rank 28th in first-half defense and the only time they've looked like an above-average defensive team is after three quarters.

Knicks by quarter this season
Q ORtg Rank DRtg Rank
1 111.3 2nd 105.7 24th
2 110.5 3rd 107.6 24th
3 106.3 3rd 103.0 19th
4 110.0 2nd 95.1 3rd

Problems had surfaced long before injuries forced the Knicks to start a 40-year-old Kurt Thomas and James White. Coach Mike Woodson has tried to balance their offensively skewed squad by inserting the defense-focused Ronnie Brewer into the starting lineup, but the results have been disastrous.

Numbers from NBA.com's advanced stats tool tell us that the lineup of Felton, Jason Kidd, Brewer, Anthony and Chandler has played 71 minutes together since Dec. 1, giving up a pathetic 116.7 points per 100 possessions. That's the worst defensive rating for any of the 30 units across the NBA that have logged at least 70 minutes over that time. Adding insult to injury, that lineup's offense has scored a measly 85.4 points per 100 possessions over the same period.

Going small hasn't paid dividends for the Knicks lately and it raises an important question: Does sliding Anthony to the 4 make sense if even a Defensive Player of the Year can't compensate for their woes on that end of the floor? The issues go beyond Anthony, who will never be confused with LeBron James as a defender. Kidd and Pablo Prigioni are older than time by NBA standards and their lack of athleticism has been exposed when asked to move more than a foot in either direction.

Compounding the lack of mobility is that the Knicks just don't have reliable options outside of Chandler to plug the middle. Opponents have absolutely slammed the Knicks in the pick-and-roll this season -- they rank ninth-worst in the NBA according to SynergySports when the ball handler makes a scoring play -- but much of the damage is done when ball handlers keep Chandler on an island off the ball and exploit Steve Novak and Thomas' glacier-like footspeed in open space.

Small ball can work only if the perimeter defense is rock-solid and that hasn't been the case with the Knicks lately. So if the Knicks can't go small, then they'll have to go big, right?

Therein lies the problem. Stoudemire carries a reputation of a star fit for coming to the rescue, but he's likely to make the Knicks' defensive issues worse, not better. He looked absolutely lost in Tuesday's loss to the Blazers, which can be excused because of rustiness. But the larger sample of the past three years points to an outlook just as grim.

Despite their lofty contracts and reputations that have approached MVP candidate territory at times, the Knicks have been outscored with the Anthony-Stoudemire partnership on the floor by 2.3 points every 100 possessions since 2010-11. That's a sample size that is as big as you can get (1,659 minutes). The offense with them together would rank 10th in today's NBA, but the defense -- 27th.

Chandler makes it all better, right? Wrong. In fact, the star trio of Anthony-Stoudemire-Chandler also has been a losing combination, being outscored by 1.8 points per 100 possessions in their time together on the floor. Why? The offense absolutely tanks with Anthony and those two bigs in the paint, scoring 98.5 points per 100 possessions over 794 minutes. You know who has a better offensive efficiency than that? The 2012-13 Bobcats, currently sporting a 98.7 points per 100 possessions, which is good for fourth-to-last this season.

The news isn't all bad, Knicks fans. Look at the schedule. The Knicks have 12 games left in January and Thursday night's test against the Spurs represents the only one against a top-10 offense. And who knows, coach Gregg Popovich may or may not place a call to Southwest Airlines seeing as it's a back-to-back and their fourth game in five nights. All in all, nine of the Knicks' next 12 opponents are below-average offenses and the three that aren't will be played in Madison Square Garden.

Under normal circumstances, the soft schedule would mean the Knicks are poised for a defensive correction, but these aren't normal circumstances. Integrating a healthy Stoudemire on the defensive end would be tough as it is, but he's nowhere near 100 percent as was evident by his grounded game Tuesday.

The Knicks' title-contention status has always rested on their defense and considering Woodson's reputation as a defense-minded coach, that status is ironically on increasingly shaky ground. Are the Knicks legitimate contenders? With the defense reeling and Stoudemire's integration looming, the Knicks have more questions than answers.
Click to expand...
 
What he says looks entirely fixable. We can all see they are coasting on defense until midway through the 3rd
 
Schmeelk: Knicks’ Stoudemire Should Be Embarrassed By Own Statement

By John Schmeelk

This is what Amar’e Stoudemire said on Wednesday:

“I think having a defensive coach for the first time in my career is going to help. I’ve never been taught defense in my whole career. So to now have a coach who actually teaches defense and teaches strategies and knows positioning and posture and how to guard different plays, it’s going to be helpful.”

Huh? Are you serious?

Am I really going to believe that at every level, from AAU to high school to the NBA, not one person has taught Stoudemire basic individual- and team-defensive fundamentals? It’s a joke if anyone takes that statement at face value without raising an eyebrow.

There’s absolutely no way it could possibly be true. It’s pure fantasy.

First of all, Mike Woodson was Stoudemire’s assistant coach assigned to defense last year. Did he not try to teach Stoudemire defense? Moving beyond Woodson, to even fathom Mike D’Antoni never dedicated one drill or practice to defense just doesn’t pass the sanity test.

Allow me to disprove a commonly held thought that Mike D’Antoni’s teams don’t play any defense. The Suns’ defensive rankings while he was there:

2004-2005: 20th

2005-2006: 19th

2006-2007: 16th

2007-20008: 18th

Are those 90s Knicks numbers? No, but they are respectable. Once the Knicks got some decent players in 2010, they ranked 21st. In 2011 under D’Antoni, the Knicks were ranked No. 10. This year under the new regime of the defensive-oriented Mike Woodson, the Knicks are 18th. The point here is that every NBA team, even ones coached by D’Antoni, have defensive principles that are taught every day during film sessions on the floor. If anyone really thinks D’Antoni never coached or taught defense, they are living in a fantasy world of their own creation.

No one could coach on the NBA level without teaching defense.

Whether it was intentional or not, Stoudemire threw his former coach under the bus. What he really needs to do is look in the mirror. If he really had never been taught to play defense, why didn’t he seek out help on that end of the floor on his own? If all he ever really wanted to do was win, why not pull an excellent defender like Shawn Marion aside and ask him to teach him some defense? Tyson Chandler didn’t try to teach him defense last year either? How about all the years Jared Jeffries was here? Any assistant coach would be willing to do more work after practice to help Stoudemire play better defense. The entire premise is absolute nonsense.

In truth, Stoudemire should be embarrassed and ashamed of himself for having the gall to say something like that with a straight face. He has had the athletic and physical ability to play defense his entire career and has not done it well. It’s certainly possible that he simply lacks the basketball IQ and instincts to be a great defender — and that’s fine. But a little more focus and effort could make him adequate, which is all anyone is asking. There’s no reason he should be the equivalent of a matador.

It’s great that he’s finally receptive to defensive coaching, but his excuse for being a poor defender his entire career is just that: an excuse. It doesn’t pass the smell test. Hopefully Woodson will reach him, and get him to a point where he is not such a liability. Of course, the way the rest of the team is playing defense these days, it might not happen.

At least both Woodson and Stoudemire both understand that STAT needs to make an impact not just on offense, but on defense as well.





OUCH
 
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