Knicks · Is our line up being exposed? (page 1)

Not hitting the panic button just yet, but some alarming trends are coming to light with our squad.

We have won games with a. defense b. 3's, c. Melo going off. Lets analyze A., first.

The last 2 games, our defense hasn't been as good. The playoffs are about adjustments and Doc has made a big adjustment. Terry and Williams are getting the majority of minutes in the backcourt over Bradley who has lost confidence. Terry has found his shot and Williams is a big, athletic guard who gives them an additional ball handler, an athletic defender and a threat in the open court. The Celts are pushing the ball at us and catching us scrambling back on D. This has opened it up for Terry to not only knock down some three's be has given him his confidence back. Pierce has also hit some 3's off the scramble-back, not to mention Williams has taken it to the rack several times. The Celts have made an adjustment to the way we've been defending them and now the ball is in Woodson's court. Doesn't matter what we do on offense, if the Celts are going to shoot 50% from the field as they did tonite, then we are in trouble.

B. The reason we aren't getting many 3's is that the Celts are playing Melo straight up. when they do double, its when he puts it on the floor which negates our option to swing the ball around the horn for an open 3. Tonite, I was encouraged by the first 5 mins of play when Woodson had Melo moving without the ball and getting looks on the move. Been calling for this all year. Then it stopped. And we reverted back to give the ball to Melo and get out of the way. The Celts are too good of a defensive team for us to beat them with a steady diet of the same play over and over. And this leads into C., Melo is what he is, a scorer. He's not a facilitator, or a playmaker. He's a scorer who can make some plays and facilitate at times, but its up the coach to put him in position to be successful. Thats called knowing your roster. Again, you cant just jump on Melo's back, give him the ball and hope he pulls it out. We need more imagination in the play calling. We also need to push the ball in transition....

An aside....Who is really the old team in this series? Prigs and especially Kidd has aged 3-4 years right before out eyes. Kidd is missing layups and is seemingly scared to death to even look at the rim. Novak has back spasms. Chandler still doesn't look the same since he injured his neck and the Celtics are consistently beating us down the court. Whats the point of rolling with a small lineup if we are not going to run? We are playing grind it out, half court offense. During the season, the Celts are a terrible rebounding team, yet they have outrebouned us the last two games. If we are content to walk the ball up the court and play half court bb, then we mind aswell go with a bigger lineup, (Kmart and Chandler in the same frontcourt some) and pound the glass and defend the paint.

From the start of the series I never liked the idea of Kidd and felton guarding Pierce. Its looking more and more like Pierce was off as opposed to the Knicks defending well. He has found the range on his shot and is shooting right over out pgs. Think about that, we have our pg's guarding Paul Pierce. Shump has done a better job especially with steals and tips, but h'es still giving up about 2 inches and about 20-30 lbs.

Didn't mean to vent just had to get this off of my chest...

i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

AnubisADL wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

Why do you think they are hitting shots all of a sudden? Has our defense changed? Didn't they figure us out or found spots to exploit? Or did former champions just wake up?

Uptown wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

Why do you think they are hitting shots all of a sudden? Has our defense changed? Didn't they figure us out or found spots to exploit? Or did former champions just wake up?

Boston woke up.

AnubisADL wrote:

Uptown wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

Why do you think they are hitting shots all of a sudden? Has our defense changed? Didn't they figure us out or found spots to exploit? Or did former champions just wake up?

Boston woke up.

and why did they wake up? For one Jr is a moron who gave a boston team taht was a dead more life. also our offense is stagnant because our star player is haveing disasterour 2 games and is forcing too many shots. If we move the ball around we will end this next game

AnubisADL wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

Papabear Says

We need to take a page from them contest the 3 point line and this game we just didn't defend and we look like we didn't prepare for this game.

StarksEwing1 wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:

Uptown wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

Look at the box scores from the wins. Boston is hitting shots now.

Why do you think they are hitting shots all of a sudden? Has our defense changed? Didn't they figure us out or found spots to exploit? Or did former champions just wake up?

Boston woke up.

and why did they wake up? For one Jr is a moron who gave a boston team taht was a dead more life. also our offense is stagnant because our star player is haveing disasterour 2 games and is forcing too many shots. If we move the ball around we will end this next game

The ball and bodies moved the 1st 5 mins of the game. After the Celts made a little run, we tightened up...

boston has been up at the half in 4 of the 5 games so far. this game happened to be the first one where they didnt fully fade in the second half. now they will play on relatively short rest, maybe that will be adv knicks.

If JR has another bad game like today he shouldnt even bother coming back to new york. I mean as bad as melo has been these past 2 games alot of what happened is on him. JR knew what he was doing when he elbowed terry. Look i hate terry more than any player in the nba but you cant do that. JR cost us these past 2 games. We could have closed this out in game 4 with him and tonight he was obviously rusty because he got himself suspended

Not really Pierce was only 6-19. The knicks need their bench to get it going and Melo needs to do a better all around job offensively. He was passing better than game 4 but I would like to see more passes to Tyson off the PnR. Melo is the best PnR scorer in the league this year but he has to look for the roller more and not just kick it out to the wings.

All in all the Knicks still have not played a great game yet. They need one of those friday.

If Pablo Prigioni doesn't play meaningful minutes on the road we won't win. He sets the table for the tempo and style of play we as fans want to see.

Kidd was a -14 in 21 minutes

Pablo was + 9 in 12 minutes

This is why we lost the game

StarksEwing1 wrote:i dont think its being exposed. celtics are a very good defensive team but our top scorers havent shown up for 2 games now. JR was out one game and was pretty much out for this game too. melo had his 2 worst games of the entire season. Felton and shumpert have given us very good production but we need our big guns to get out of their funk

before the playoffs started, if someone had said Felton and Shump would be the only solid ones, I would have laughed.

You talk trash to a team filled with future HOFers and former champions and this is what you're going to get in most cases. Boston wanted it more, it was pretty clear. J.R buckled under the pressure of having to back up his tough talk. It wasn't just Boston's D. Most of his shots were just plain off with or without someone in his face.

They were double and triple teaming Melo and daring the rest of the team to make buckets. No one was keeping us in the game except Felton and Shump, to some degree. For all this talk of ISO Melo, whenever he passed out of double and triple teams, no one was hitting open looks for the most part. its not like they didn't have time to get off one good shot.

Melo was also off, even when he had a good look after a hot start. If JR had picked up the slack like he usually does I don't believe we would be going back to Boston. Usually one of them has a good night.

Camby played, got a tip in, and an offensive rebound in less than a minute and never played again. Copeland got no time even though the guy has provided some much needed instant offense. I get Woodson sitting him after how nervous he was initially, but putting him in the doghouse over that was overkill.

They kept Kidd from taking even one 3pt shot. Our lack of 3pt production really hurt us.

Not that he would have been a game changer but I wouldn't have minded if White got some minutes for defense and energy alone. The team as a whole played some horrid defense after the fast start, as if the first few minutes was all they needed to put Boston away.

I don't believe our lineup is being exposed because there were some mitigating factors like the JR fiasco not to mention KMart telling everyone to dress in black like a funeral. Something I would expect a rookie to come up with, not someone with Kmart's experience, although Boston might not have got wind of that until after the game. Partly explains why he was without a job for most of the season.

This isn't like the old Knicks shaving their heads in solidarity, its acting like the series was already over. Hard to put a team like Boston away when you believe its a done deal and don't take a veteran squad like Boston seriously.

Woodson also has to be more creative, expand the rotation when the lineups he's putting out there aren't getting it done. J.R should have been benched at some point instead of getting carte blanche again. It wasn't just his having an off night. If anyone deserved to be in the doghouse that game it was him.

playa2 wrote:If Pablo Prigioni doesn't play meaningful minutes on the road we won't win. He sets the table for the tempo and style of play we as fans want to see.

Kidd was a -14 in 21 minutes

Pablo was + 9 in 12 minutes

This is why we lost the game

Tyson was +8 and Kenyon -13 also.

playoffs are a crucible where weaknesses and character flaws are exposed. where is the leadership on this team? i love what kmart has brought to the knicks but how anybody could go along with this low class dress for a funeral thing is beyond me. jr sped up his elbow as it met terry's chin. i don't care that terry flopped to exaggerate the contact-- smith reacted at the wrong time and in the wrong way. draw a foul, score a bucket. i am not a fan of terry's game but he clearly has shown he is a big game player.

reversion to bad habits is also going to happen when the pressure is ratcheted up. melo and smith both had TS% of around 41-42. that is unacceptable. the team had 10 assists last game and 13 assists last night. better ball movement and passing creates higher percentage shots and that is the problem with jackers-- they create low-percentage shots. and the jackers' fans always look elswhere, ie "the other guys need to step up and make shots." wrong wrong wrong

i really thought the knicks were going to end this in four or five.

dk7th wrote:playoffs are a crucible where weaknesses and character flaws are exposed. where is the leadership on this team? i love what kmart has brought to the knicks but how anybody could go along with this low class dress for a funeral thing is beyond me. jr sped up his elbow as it met terry's chin. i don't care that terry flopped to exaggerate the contact-- smith reacted at the wrong time and in the wrong way. draw a foul, score a bucket. i am not a fan of terry's game but he clearly has shown he is a big game player.

reversion to bad habits is also going to happen when the pressure is ratcheted up. melo and smith both had TS% of around 41-42. that is unacceptable. the team had 10 assists last game and 13 assists last night. better ball movement and passing creates higher percentage shots and that is the problem with jackers-- they create low-percentage shots. and the jackers' fans always look elswhere, ie "the other guys need to step up and make shots." wrong wrong wrong

i really thought the knicks were going to end this in four or five.

It's odd because we're playing a marginal playoff team - they had the 16th best record in the league and they actually had a negative point differential on the season.