Why not play Bender at the 5?

[taowave]

Is Milicic getting 12 boards last night in limited time a fair comaprison??

Cragg,Hill never had to lead in NY.Thats absurd....

He is the ONLY lottery pick who couldnt get off the bench.

As for good defenders,wasnt Balkman a halfway decent defender??Wasnt Q Rich a decent defender???Isnt Douglas a decent defender??
Whos decision was it to play "No D" Lee at the 5,and "PURE" DuDu at the point??

Dantoni and Dantoni alone chose to "Mbury " Milicic..Dantoni chose to bench Hill...Sorry Cragg,it is obvious that Danton would rather play No D Lee at the 5 where he can put up points,but doesnt have a snowballs chance of defending anyone.That is Mike D's offensive genius...

The guy flat out sucks as a coach without Nash at point,or the Olympic team covering for him..
And I can already hear you guys boasting what a great coach he is when we get Lebron,Wade and Bosh


Not a fair comparison; in Houston, he has the luxury of playing amongst other good defenders like Battier, Ariza, Hayes and Scola. He doesn't ahve to lead, just has to fit in.

With us, he was expected to make up for the lack of defense for most of the squad, anchor the pivot.[/quote]

[H20Knick]

excellent post tao!

[knicksfan4life]

Yeah, except if we were playing Toney Douglas, Q-Rich, Balkman, Jordan Hill, and Darko we'd still suck...if not worse. The roster is a lose/lose, nobody is a complete player we have a couple guys who are good offensive players, and had a couple guys who were decent defensive players but no guys that played both sides of the ball, no point guard, no big man (unless you consider Darko the answer.) Most importantly, no go to guy. We never have the best player on the court, we never have a guy who can create plays or take over for stretches ... without that guy no team is gonna compete.

It's still an incomplete roster, I don't see any other coach doing a better job than D'Antoni. Despite his imperfections.

[taowave]

Cmon,no one ever said to start TD,QR,Bman,Hill and darko.All I am saying the defensive pieces were there...

And you are right..Dantonis record is no better or worse than Zeke

Yeah, except if we were playing Toney Douglas, Q-Rich, Balkman, Jordan Hill, and Darko we'd still suck...if not worse. The roster is a lose/lose, nobody is a complete player we have a couple guys who are good offensive players, and had a couple guys who were decent defensive players but no guys that played both sides of the ball, no point guard, no big man (unless you consider Darko the answer.) Most importantly, no go to guy. We never have the best player on the court, we never have a guy who can create plays or take over for stretches ... without that guy no team is gonna compete.

It's still an incomplete roster, I don't see any other coach doing a better job than D'Antoni. Despite his imperfections.

[knicksfan4life]

Aside from Douglas who perhaps should be playing, those guys hurt you for the most part though. If your going to have your only niche be defense you have to bring something offensively, you can't play 4 on 5 on offense(unless you have Iverson/Bryant etc. who can go 1 and 1 and hit efficiently) and expect buckets anymore than you can play 4 on 5 on D and expect stops...When/(if) we get the right players D'Antoni will be fine, if we don't get the right players he'll be gone because ultimately you are held accountable for performance but how bout we just wait until we have some talent to cast the final verdict on him. To say D'Antoni didn't at all help Steve Nash doesn't add up to me, they helped one another, D'Antoni's system helped Nash and Nash helped D'Antoni's system....if we can get guys that will fit than they will fit.

[bobhait]

knicksfan, thanks to D'Antoni we ended up playing 3 on 5 for a year and a half. Duhon and Jeffries were our supposed answers to "true point guard" and "defender", but the closest we came is having Jeffries be the defender for opposing PGs, while Duhon was a two-way fail. neither one had an ounce of offensive game in them. if you sub in Toney and Balkman for those two at the very least you get far superior defenders, don't leave David as the lone man in the paint and Toney actually has a halfway decent offensive game, while Renaldo was a strong finisher capable of going on fast-breaks, sometimes by himself (for proof of that watch the clip of his rejection on one end followed by annihilation of Devin Harris in Dallas with a monster "and one" dunk). if D'Antoni gets his hands on Bosh he'll only end up playing him at the 5, where if we should be so lucky to make it to the postseason Chris will get destroyed by Dwight Howard on the regular.