Frank:
In case anyone missed this:

@JADubin5: RT @charliewiddoes: A little late, but relevant to #Knicks fans: Iman Shumpert looked fantastic warming up before Sunday’s game. Explosive.

January is when things (knock on wood) get really fun (or boring depending on your perspective).

JK47:
Woodson was hired to be the defensive coordinator, and what do you know, they were a damn good defensive team.

When the Lakers continue to crash and burn, will people blame D’Antoni’s failures on Kobe, like they did to Melo, or will people finally realize this guy is a hack once and for all?

I wouldn’t root against him if he weren’t a backstabber who took no responsibility for his team’s performance, who is about arrogant as you come across in the league (excluding Phil.)

@JADubin5: RT @charliewiddoes: A little late, but relevant to #Knicks fans: Iman Shumpert looked fantastic warming up before Sunday’s game. Explosive.

Juany8: Funniest part of watching the game last night was when the Rockets were barely hanging on in the second half and the Lakers decided to go away from a volcanic Kobe and turned to Chris Duhon pick and rolls with Kobe standing in the corner. MDA doesn’t have a clue about basketball…

Dwight Howard is averaging 8.7 post-up attempts per game so far accordng to Synergy.

In 2009, he averaged 12.8 post-ups per game.

In 2010, he averaged 15.7 post-ups per game

In 2011, he averaged 12.2

Also, his pnr rolls are way down. And Andrew Bynum was a more effective pnr player last year (though Howard was once the best on limited attempts)

When the Lakers continue to crash and burn, will people blame D’Antoni’s failures on Kobe, like they did to Melo, or will people finally realize this guy is a hack once and for all?

JK47: Agreed.The Knicks turned it around under Woodson because they started playing common sense basketball and not being forced to play a SSOL offense that anyone with a brain should have seen they were completely incapable of playing.D’Antoni should be sued for basketball malpractice for his shitty coaching last year.

The funny thing is that they have actually run about as much high pnr as they did last year, they just took out all of the stupid system stuff that did nothing to put players in position to score based on their strengths and added common sense. yeah, and this team is much better suited as medium-slow paced half-court team.

It’s hilarious actually to read Woodson’s comments/ about the difference between he and MDA and this team and MDA’s team last year,you don’t have to infer much to get that Woodson thinks about MDA much the same many posters on this board do.

Did we all forget that Woodson was hired as a “defensive coordinator.” Who was the last coach so inept defensively the organization hired a defensive coach for the head coach????

I’ve never seen that before.

There are a lot of defensive-oriented assistants who implement their defensive systems — but they are the head coaches’ guys. I’ve never heard of a defensive coordinator.

When Woodson takes responsibility for not putting his players in position to score (or even takes responsibility for his team losing or not being prepared), when he designs plays that utilize the strengths of his top usage guys (JR,Felton and Melo), when he talks about defense being the team’s identity (and actually coaches it), the contrast between he and D’Antoni is truly remarkeable.

MDA is terrible NBA coach who brought a system to the NBA he didn’t invent, and was lucky enough to ride the coattails of the greatest pnr/ up-tempo playmaker in the history of basketball.

As we’ve had these shooting efficiency/Melo debates over the years, I’ve noted that these Melo streaks of high efficiency have always been interrupted by either a dramatic change in team dynamic that changed Melo’s shot types (Andre Miller to Allen Iverson, Iverson to Billups, Billups to Melo playing point guard); or they’ve been interrupted by an injury that changed Melo’s release.

I’ve actually posted on this board the news clips documenting Melo injuries coinciding with his the marked efficiency drops.

Now, maybe this issue is that Melo is injury prone. Maybe the big flaw is that Melo can’t be very efficient when he is injured.

But the vast majority of these injuries have occured when Melo was grappling with a defender in the post….

I’ve always said that the best way to keep Melo healthy and efficient is to lower his isolations and post-ups some and into shots he doesn’t have to fight for.

That’s what’s happened so far this year (knock on wood), and his usage has actually increased !!

So, anyway, Melo’s 3pt shooting.

It’s hrd to say when Melo got healthy last year. It’s easy to say April. But remember it was the Orlando game where Melo played through a hamstring strain that really got him going.

So, to try to be fair here, let’s look at Melo’s 3pt shooting the last 3 years excluding the stretch of games where he rushed back from injury after Memphis (the Orlando game) and when he returned from missing two weeks after Linsanity (where his hand and wrist injuries had time to heal).

If we exclude that stretch (9-44 from 3, Melo shot close to 20% from the field during that stretch), Melo shot 37% from 3 last year, after shooting .375 the year before.

And how about this: If you take out that 11 game stretch, Melo has shot 173/425 over his last 102 games (.407%).

JK47: Agreed.The Knicks turned it around under Woodson because they started playing common sense basketball and not being forced to play a SSOL offense that anyone with a brain should have seen they were completely incapable of playing.D’Antoni should be sued for basketball malpractice for his shitty coaching last year.

I mean, what are you trying to do– win games or prove that your stupid gimmick system is the only true way to play basketball?What a freaking idiot that guy is.

Funniest part of watching the game last night was when the Rockets were barely hanging on in the second half and the Lakers decided to go away from a volcanic Kobe and turned to Chris Duhon pick and rolls with Kobe standing in the corner. MDA doesn’t have a clue about basketball…

Juany8: Actually, Amar’e played pretty well after Baron and Woodson came in. Don’t know that it was strictly because of Davis, but the Knicks did go on that big run to end the season with Davis at PG, so I would say he actually did make a big difference, at least over Toney Douglas.

Oh and since everyone keeps mentioning Melo’s hot 3 point shooting and talking about how it will drop, I thought I should bring up another area where Melo’s shooting numbers are way off from his career numbers… Shooting at the rim! Melo is shooting 52.7% at the rim this season, which is his career low by a fucking mile. The only other time he shot under 57 was the season he was demanding a trade to the Knicks, and after he came to the Knicks he started shooting 66% at the rim and over 40% from 3?s. Turns out immediately after the trade the Knicks had the best offense in the league and Melo’s scoring numbers were IDENTICAL to this season. Seems having a real point guard and proper spacing seems to help Melo’s numbers but what do I know.

Anyways, even if Melo’s 3 point shooting drops off somewhat, he is putting up a career fucking low at the rim by far! What happens when that goes back to his career normal of around 60%? Right now he has the best shot distribution of his career in terms of shots at the rim, free throws, and 3 point shots. By the way, he’s also shooting a career high from 16-23, and just came off an Olympics where he was used as a shooter and off a summer where he vowed to work on his spot up shooting. It really could just be that Melo got better at shooting, like Jason Kidd did once upon a time. Stat geeks are still waiting for him to regress to the mean lol

DRed: Baron Davis was fucking awful, just like all our point guards were last season (Linsanity excluded).He was a turnover machine.The biggest single reason for the Knicks improvement this year is getting good point guard play.Ray-Ray is still too much of a chucker, but my god is he better than Baron Davis.And J-Kidd is of course amazing.

Agreed. The Knicks turned it around under Woodson because they started playing common sense basketball and not being forced to play a SSOL offense that anyone with a brain should have seen they were completely incapable of playing. D’Antoni should be sued for basketball malpractice for his shitty coaching last year.

I mean, what are you trying to do– win games or prove that your stupid gimmick system is the only true way to play basketball? What a freaking idiot that guy is.