Knicks Morning News (Tuesday, Nov 13 2012)
November 13th, 2012 by Mike Kurylo | @KnickerBlogger | Comments | Permalink |
Japanese high school athletes who survived the devastating tsunami last year wrote essays about the disaster â?? and the healing power of sports.
Mike D’Antoni’s former players, including Carmelo Anthony, praised him despite the rocky end to his tenure in New York.
Mike D’Antoni’s challenge is to learn from mistakes he made in trying to manage stars’ egos while coaching the Knicks.
Al Jefferson’s game-tying baskets twice kept the Jazz in the game before Paul Millsap capitalized on the reprieves by powering Utah to a triple-overtime 140-133 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Monday.
Josh Smith had 19 points and 11 rebounds, Kyle Korver added 16 points and the Atlanta Hawks snapped a two-game skid with a 95-87 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday night.
LeBron James put on a second-half show and helped the Miami Heat finally put away Houston.
Al Jefferson had 24 points and 17 rebounds, and the Utah Jazz picked up their first road win of the season, beating the Toronto Raptors, 140-133, in triple overtime on Monday.
Russell Westbrook scored a season-high 33 points and keyed a fourth-quarter comeback as the Oklahoma City Thunder rallied to beat the winless Detroit Pistons 92-90 on Monday night.
Rajon Rondo had 20 points, nine rebounds and 10 assists to lead the Boston Celtics to a 101-95 win over the Chicago Bulls on Monday night.
Goran Dragic scored 21 points, including 4-of-5 shooting on 3-pointers, to lead seven Phoenix players in double figures and the Suns snapped Denver’s four-game winning streak with a 110-100 victory over the Nuggets on Monday night.
Nikola Pekovic scored 20 points before leaving with an injury and the short-handed Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Dallas Mavericks 90-82 Monday night.
Al Jefferson’s game-tying baskets twice kept the Jazz in the game before Paul Millsap capitalized on the reprieves by powering Utah to a triple-overtime 140-133 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Monday.
The league and Adidas have introduced new monochromatic uniforms for the 10 teams playing this Dec. 25.
Brandon Jennings scored 33 points and Monta Ellis had 18 to lead the Milwaukee Bucks to a 105-96 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night.
With most of their fans demanding the return of Phil Jackson, the Los Angeles Lakers sprang a surprise on Monday by naming former Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni to replace Mike Brown.
Philadelphia 76ers center Andrew Bynum is expected to be sidelined until early December because of a bruised knee bone and could play his first game the following month, the team said on Monday.
Pau Gasol got home from the game and read about it on Twitter, while Dwight Howard got a midnight message on his BlackBerry. They shared most Los Angeles Lakers fans’ mix of surprise, trepidation and anticipation.
The rookie Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and the second-year player Kemba Walker have given the Charlotte Bobcats, dismal last season, a new identity.
ORLANDO â?? The Knicks’ schedule has hardly been grueling. Twice, they’ve had three days off between games. But now the elderly club tests its old bones in rapid-fire fashion and on the road as the Knicks play seven games in 11 days â?? six of them away from MSG.
Somewhere along…
ORLANDO â?? It could be two weeks before Mike D’Antoni is safely allowed to coach the Lakers from the bench, according to his brother Dan D’Antoni.
D’Antoni, who still lives in Westchester, underwent major knee-replacement surgery 2 1/2 weeks ago and will need doctor’s clearance to…
ORLANDO â?? Mike D’Antoni is made for the West. He certainly wasn’t made for New York.
His whining about the difficulty of coaching a team in New York City was unbearable during his final days with the Knicks.
He looked like a guy who signed only for the money…
ORLANDO â?? The unbeaten Knicks are amidst a perfect present under Mike Woodson but had to deal with their imperfect past yesterday with news former coach Mike D’Antoni was hired to a 3-year, $12 million deal by the Lakers.
Carmelo Anthony, whose distaste with D’Antoni’s speedball offense led…
Sometimes when it ends bad, the way it did with D’Antoni in New York, the next job is a bad one. Not this time.
Mike Kurylo is the founder and editor of KnickerBlogger.net. His book on the 2012 Knicks, "We’ll Always Have Linsanity," is on sale now. Follow him on twitter (@KnickerBlogger).
What’s everyone think about the Christmas Day jerseys? I likw the all orange and the Lakers one is kinda cold too. Our jersey could have a tad bit more blue and white..but still..I can dig it. Ordering mine asap
I’m trying to remember when orange became a Christmas color. I aways thought that Christmas colors were red and green.
Wait a minute, this can’t be an NBA marketing ploy to get people to buy more jerseys can it?
A lot of discussion of the Heat coasting so far this season in the previous thread which I think is missing a very basic and critically important point. It’s really incredibly simple:
Lebron: 34.5
Wade: 33.9
Bosh: 32.1
Those are minutes per game, and that right there tells you everything you need to know. For Lebron that’s down from an average the last 2 years of 38.2 and way down from his career high of 42.5(!?!?). Bosh’s minutes are similarly down about 4 minutes off his average from the last 2 years and about 7 from his career high. Wade is playing about the same as last year, but that was an injury plagued year. He’s clearly capable of playing way more.
They’re just playing their main guys way less, partially because their team is now deep enough that they can afford to and still be a very strong team, and partially because after Game 4 in Indy, Game 6 in Boston, and Game 2 in OKC I think they have absolute confidence that they can win a critical road playoff game.
Everyone’s looking at their results and saying they’re not focused or whatever. The reality is that I’m sure Norris Cole is pretty much 100% focused. He’s just no Lebron James, no Dwyane Wade. The Heat team is good even when those guys play low minutes, but it’s certainly no world beater. They’re not coasting, they’re just saving their legs.
Sam, this is basically the same thing. The Heat know these games don’t mean anything and therefore are playing their stars way less minutes than they usually would. Either way, the Heat are not going to be the same team in the regular season than they were in the playoffs. Which means the safest bet in the offseason was predicting the Heat to win 60 games or less
lol I’ve always thought we should have an orange alternate jersey.
Lebron though has totally transformed his game. Here are the major differences in statistics:
TOV/36 -
This year: 1.8
Last year: 3.3
FTA/36
This year: 4.8
Last year: 7.8
3PA/36
This year: 3.1
Last year: 2.4
3P%
This year: 52%
Last year: 36%
Rebs/36
This year: 10.4
Last year: 7.6
Stls/36
This year: 0.8
Last year: 1.8
All this says to me that James is playing a more relaxed game. He seems to be adapting the same way Chris Paul adapted several years back — focusing on minimizing turnovers and controlling the game rather than dominating the game with his speed and strength.
The lowered steals numbers are strange, not sure what to make of them other than that maybe they mean he’s just not working as hard on defense.
To me at least it’s a little different. Saying they’re “coasting” implies to me that the players aren’t focused or aren’t trying hard which is not what I see.
But I agree with you that the Heat were almost a lock to fall short of their regular season expectations. I think they probably could take a run at 70 wins if they shortened their rotation and treated every game like a playoff, but instead they’ll take it nice and easy, cruise to somewhere between 58 and 62 and use the 1st round of the playoffs to gear up for what really matters.
For example, last night Brian wrote this:
That game is a great example of how lackadaisical the Heat have been in the regular season so far. It’s like they think that they can just turn it on whenever they feel like it and pull victories out of their ass. Tonight and against Charlotte they did, but you have to figure that’ll eventually come back to haunt them as the season goes on.
Of course, they play with a different intensity come playoff time, but still, it is kind of disappointing to watch.
“lackadaisical”, “intensity”, “turn it on whenever they feel like it”. This is the stuff getting tossed around about the Heat, when the real story is that they’re just not that great when their best guys aren’t on the court, and they actually can turn “it” on and off as easily as subbing Lebron.
But Sam that hasn’t totally been true, even if Lebron is still playing hard he’s not playing anywhere near the level he was at in the playoffs. The Heat are also not flying around the court like they used to, you can’t discount the fact that they went from having a scary defense to a terrible defense almost overnight. The stars did get their minutes cut, but it’s nowhere near enough to account for the defensive drop off. Maybe it’s not being “lackadaisical” as much as it is being smart about saving themselves for the playoffs, but the only difference isn’t just that Lebron is playing less
I dont see anything saying they are christmas colors. just “big” colors.
The link says the BK will be in metallic black (different from their normal black?) But the pic on the page sure makes it look green.
http://hoopchalk.com/2012/11/13/mike-woodson-and-the-surprisingly-innovative-knicks-offense/
Anyone catch this little breakdown on the O so far?
those orange uniforms are hideous, I am dreading watching that game (and hopefully it’s just one).
That was an awesome read. I love this new Hoopchalk site.
Re: Woodson – I think it’s a big mistake when you assume coaches will just keep doing the same thing over and over again no matter what. Players can improve in just an offseason and add weapons to their game, even if it’s as simple as what Kobe Bryant is doing (see this truehoop article which basically says that Kobe Bryant is distributing his shots like James Harden did last year: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/51438/now-at-the-rim-kobe-bryant). Coaches, on the other hand, are only limited by how much they let their minds wander. Pat Riley turned from Showtime Lakers to the grind-it-out Knicks. Bill Belichick turned from defensive guru/boring offensive guy to having basically the best offense in the NFL for 10 years+.
You get the feeling from Woodson that he really has no ego. He’s not married to anything but winning, and he’ll go Iso-Joe if he thinks that’s the best way to do it (and it might have been given Bibby was his best PG), or he’ll take some of MDA’s offense, and more from elsewhere. In other words, he’s exactly opposite from MDA who stuck with his system no matter what or who was running it.
You have to think that maybe Jason Kidd and Prigioni have something to do with the sudden innovation though. Those two have probably seen 1000 different offenses and sets, and probably have their own books of best plays that they brought to Woodson.
My understanding is that the uniforms are for the Christmas game which would kind of like suggest that they might, like, you know, maybe have some type of connection to the fact that it is Christmas, kind of like isn’t it an amazing coincidence the uniforms that they wear on St. Patrick’s Day just happen to be the same color as a shamrock…Oh, never mind.
Great point Frank. some of those video clips almost brought tears to my eyes, especially the screen the screener play leading to a Chandler Smash.
I don’t want to bring out a whole Amar’e discussion again, but that’s why I’m not that frightened about what happens when Amar’e returns. I’m sure The goatee will find a way to integrate Melo, Chandler, and Stat together.
About Miami: forgetting about our Knicks for a moment, the Heat realize that there is no team in the East that will come close to their record (and even with the Knicks its inherently clear that everything will keep up the whole season).
This is right out of the Popovich playbook, coaching for the entire season and the playoffs, rather than for individual games. Sorry to keep beating on a dead horse, but this was one of D’Antoni’s problems. I think the Suns could have come closer to a ring if Steve Nash and the other top Suns weren’t worn down by the end of the season.
There’s never been a team that has been to more than 3 straight Finals. If I was Miami, I’d look around and realize that I’m going to have no more than 2 challenging playoff series in the East the next 2 years, then I’d realize that I won the last 2 series I played in without homecourt advantage and won an elimination game on the road last season. As soon as I became aware of those things, I’d tell all my players that the regular season is officially practice for the postseason, which means learning to play properly and staying healthy are just as big a priority as actually winning games.
I assume that you have some date cutoff in mind, because the Celtics won 11 championships in 13 years with Russell at center.
My favorite play is the triple screen. We saw it last year against Miami in the playoffs with Melo and now we are seeing it used by others.
I don’t remember them running that play during that series, but actually, my only memory of that series is poor Shump going down. Man that was a gut shot. Glad to see he appears to be making a full recovery, and that we have enough depth to let him take as long as he wants.
Oh right, I was thinking in my head “after the merger” haha. There weren’t too many teams in the league back then and no free agency if I recall correctly.
I actually remember Baron Davis being crippled even more. All I could think was that his career is over….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqei545WCes&feature=related
Maybe you want to forget the whole series but if not the play is run after the 3:20 mark. I remembered it because JVG made a big deal about how he never seen it before.
RE Shump: I am still shocked every time I see him dancing or whatever before the game to get the team hyped. From the video that I have seen it looks like he is looking good and hopefully he can make a come back like Adrian Peterson.
I can’t be the only one who is so happy to actually have a game to discuss tonight, can I?
Especially when the Knicks are extremely likely to win it. :)
5-0, here they come!!
don’t jinx it, but yeah. Shump Shump!
Jameer Nelson still out tonight, Harrington and Turkoglu too.