Knicks · Game Thread: Talking all that Jazz... lets get the W!!! (11/6 12 Noon start) (page 9)

4Q - 0:04
NYK 109 UTA 114

Blame Enyspree, his game threads marks the return of Iso-Melo(sans 4th)

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:

dk7th wrote:gobert coming up real big. jazz have a really good team.

And we have a mess.

What else is new?

Knicks are not a mess. They're just a NEW group trying to develop as a team. They have a long way to go in getting their chemistry right.

This team is a defensive mess and a developing offense. In general. Shall we go in depth with the whole triangle fiasco?

I think it's more a matter of trying to develop the proper rotation and hopefully get more from the bench.

I'd like to see Baker get in the mix. It was good to get Kuz some minutes. This is a process!

We need more effort and a better defensive plan than the one shown so far this season. The offense is decent even if still flawed. But the defense? Its so ugly its the main culprit of this 2-4 start.

This is going to take some time but you can see the areas that need work. It's not a total team mess but certain things that need tightening up.

The Knicks defend well at times but not consistently and they're fouling way too much.

FINAL
NYK 109 UTA 114

This team needs full focus just to get enough defense to win a game. Our two wins were emotionally-driven wins. This spells of an unfocussed, sometimes disinterested team. Is it because they don't like the triangle? Is the coach not preparing them effectively? Don't know, but there is no reason not to give at least a mediocre effort on D. Instead, this D is a joke.

yellowboy90 wrote:As bad as the team D was today JH line ups were just as bad. He should know he needs one starter with the second unit. Also as bad as Melo played most of the game, defensively and offensive style, his 4th qtr was entirely team 1st. He passed, defended, and moved without the ball. I was amazed.

Agree about Hornacek's rotations. they were much better against the bulls. He needs a starter on the court with that second unit.

nixluva wrote:This is going to take some time but you can see the areas that need work. It's not a total team mess but certain things that need tightening up.

The Knicks defend well at times but not consistently and they're fouling way too much.

Fouling and whinning. Its getting tiring.

nixluva wrote:This is going to take some time but you can see the areas that need work. It's not a total team mess but certain things that need tightening up.

The Knicks defend well at times but not consistently and they're fouling way too much.

Not good when we hear the coaching staff talk about it at halftime and then we make a silly foul on the first possession (Melo).

Tough loss.

Knicksfan wrote:This team needs full focus just to get enough defense to win a game. Our two wins were emotionally-driven wins. This spells of an unfocussed, sometimes disinterested team. Is it because they don't like the triangle? Is the coach not preparing them effectively? Don't know, but there is no reason not to give at least a mediocre effort on D. Instead, this D is a joke.

I actually think they should put Plumlee in the mix. He's a flawed player but his defensive energy is off the hook. Sometimes you need that off the bench. None of our bench bigs bring that BANGER type energy. I'd like to see if he can have an impact in limited minutes.

Defense obviously was the issue. We couldn't get any stops in the 4th quarter, and the fouling definitely didn't help (Hayward 14-14 from the line was huge).

I see improvement with the team defense at moments, but they don't sustain it for the entire shot clock.

Utah is a really good team. They run their offense to perfection and spend most of the shot clock to get good shots. Gobert is a beast inside. Hood is a developing player. Hayward is an all-star and Hill is playing like an all-star this year. They're an up and coming team in the west. We still have a lot of work to do.

Dang the Knicks could really use Noel if Noah is only going to play 20 minutes

Defensively, the team is a mess, and that fall squarely on the coach. First mistake was admitting he didn't have a defensive plan for opponents in the preseason, and clearly still doesn't have one. Utah is a good team, but looked like GS this afternoon and that should never happen.

yellowboy90 wrote:Dang the Knicks could really use Noel if Noah is only going to play 20 minutes

Some kind of move may end up happening. You can kind of see the need for something. They will wait to see what they can eventually get from Willy, Kuz or Ndour. This is still very early in the process. REMEMBER PEOPLE ITS ONLY GAME SIX! Ten new players and new coach.

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:This team needs full focus just to get enough defense to win a game. Our two wins were emotionally-driven wins. This spells of an unfocussed, sometimes disinterested team. Is it because they don't like the triangle? Is the coach not preparing them effectively? Don't know, but there is no reason not to give at least a mediocre effort on D. Instead, this D is a joke.

I actually think they should put Plumlee in the mix. He's a flawed player but his defensive energy is off the hook. Sometimes you need that off the bench. None of our bench bigs bring that BANGER type energy. I'd like to see if he can have an impact in limited minutes.

I agree on Plumlee, but this is more of a collective issue on effort with a little of bad planning on coaching.

This team should still be looking to establish their offense. This team has no excuse for such an embarrassing show on defense. Keep talking about it in the postgame interviews, yet you can't sustain a decent effort for 48 mins.

nixluva wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Dang the Knicks could really use Noel if Noah is only going to play 20 minutes

Some kind of move may end up happening. You can kind of see the need for something. They will wait to see what they can eventually get from Willy, Kuz or Ndour. This is still very early in the process. REMEMBER PEOPLE ITS ONLY GAME SIX! Ten new players and new coach.

They don't have much time. A 2-4 record becomes a 3-7 one, then a 6-14 record and then they fire the coach again and its another lost season for us.

We need to keep at minimum a .500 record. How? They need a better defensive plan and more effort there. Its on them. But it all can quickly go south in Knickland. We all know it.

Knicksfan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:This team needs full focus just to get enough defense to win a game. Our two wins were emotionally-driven wins. This spells of an unfocussed, sometimes disinterested team. Is it because they don't like the triangle? Is the coach not preparing them effectively? Don't know, but there is no reason not to give at least a mediocre effort on D. Instead, this D is a joke.

I actually think they should put Plumlee in the mix. He's a flawed player but his defensive energy is off the hook. Sometimes you need that off the bench. None of our bench bigs bring that BANGER type energy. I'd like to see if he can have an impact in limited minutes.

I agree on Plumlee, but this is more of a collective issue on effort with a little of bad planning on coaching.

This team should still be looking to establish their offense. This team has no excuse for such an embarrassing show on defense. Keep talking about it in the postgame interviews, yet you can't sustain a decent effort for 48 mins.

To me it's not effort. It's mental breakdowns! They're playing hard most of the time but they aren't always making the right decisions. Lee on that late game play where he left his man wide open for the dunk. That was a mental mistake. There have been WAY too many of those kinds of breakdowns this season.

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:This team needs full focus just to get enough defense to win a game. Our two wins were emotionally-driven wins. This spells of an unfocussed, sometimes disinterested team. Is it because they don't like the triangle? Is the coach not preparing them effectively? Don't know, but there is no reason not to give at least a mediocre effort on D. Instead, this D is a joke.

I actually think they should put Plumlee in the mix. He's a flawed player but his defensive energy is off the hook. Sometimes you need that off the bench. None of our bench bigs bring that BANGER type energy. I'd like to see if he can have an impact in limited minutes.

I agree on Plumlee, but this is more of a collective issue on effort with a little of bad planning on coaching.

This team should still be looking to establish their offense. This team has no excuse for such an embarrassing show on defense. Keep talking about it in the postgame interviews, yet you can't sustain a decent effort for 48 mins.

To me it's not effort. It's mental breakdowns! They're playing hard most of the time but they aren't always making the right decisions. Lee on that late game play where he left his man wide open for the dunk. That was a mental mistake. There have been WAY too many of those kinds of breakdowns this season.

When they happen on a roll, like to us, it speaks of bad gameplanning. Though I agree that they lose focus too easily.

Utah and Hayward seems to have our number

hornacek: "there's difference between 'making shots' and 'executing the offense.' the other night was different because of ball movement. we didn't make them work hard enough. the offense wasn't flowing."

that's code for melo and rose handling the ball too much. we'll check the usage to assist ratio for those two tomorrow on basetballreference.com

So many things bother me about today's loss. This was an even more winnable game than the Detroit game. Here we were at home with a 13-pt lead practically halfway through the 2nd quarter, led at the half, more than enough offensive output from Melo AND Porzingis... Number 1 thing that stands out to me was the brand of ball we played -- COMPLETELY UNINSPIRED. Like a tire with a slow leak in it. Never plugged the hole and did anything to pump ourselves back up out there. Wow.. You just knew after they took a 5-pt lead on us, then 7, it was over. And that's crazy because there was so much time left but nonetheless, you just knew it, man. Just so Goddamn flat after that. Where's the fight in these guys to get back into it???? Jesus, get mad out there!!!! Where the F was the will to win today??

#2 - The game Rose played. What a HUGE matchup in our favor on paper going in yet we didn't win it. All due respect to George Hill but Rose should've eaten him alive today. Shelvin Mack too, more so even...Gotta give the Jazz credit for shutting off his driving opportunities but not too much credit -- we still need to find a way to exploit matchups we need to win in our favor, even if we need to work a little harder than normal to do so. Rose overall was lackluster today--sloppy with the ball at times early, uninvolved and taken right out of it at other times...Just disappointing. We really needed that one more guy to step up today and assume a bigger role... I can't believe it wasn't Rose.

Courtney Lee was very quiet again. That bother's me too. Can't understand why they don't look to get this guy more involved. He's a quality offensive player--takes good shots, high %, looks like he can even handle the ball a little...We just need to utilize him more. Much more.

These are the games that will bother me about Noah. I hate to pin blame on him because he generally plays hard and had a good one in Chicago, but today he had nothing. He generally doesn't score but today even his intangibles--rebounding, defense, toughness--weren't really there either... Passing the ball out while you're right under the basket (and he threw it away)?!!? Come on, really Jo?? Gotta go up strong there! Didn't Gobert wind up fouling out today? Well maybe if we had a little more post offense we could've gotten him out of the game sooner or at least had him in foul trouble throughout. Maybe this is where Willy could help. We really need some reliable post offense in the worst way. And I'd like to activate Plumlee just to see what he could give us down there. As usually, KOQ and LT were OK, nothing great, and I suspect we're gonna see more of the same out of them the rest of the way. Meanwhile, I've been calling for Plumlee for over a week now -- I know he's not necessarily a post up threat, but just give me a few games with Plumlee and let me see his intangibles at work and see what type of affect he can have on the game. It could wind up being pretty substantial, esp. when we're really counting on similar intangibles from Noah but then he doesn't deliver... Up to me, even though he's been decent, I'd sit O'Quinn and go with a steady diet of Willy/Plumlee at backup 4/5, depending on what's needed--offense or defense/rebounding. I'm thinking Willy/Plumlee together might add up to more than what KOQ brings to the table. I feel the same way about LT -- thinking a steady diet of N'Dour/Kuz might outweigh what LT brings to the party.

Melo was pounding the ball a lot early but it's hard to get on him when he's effective with it as he was today. Expect to keep seeing Melo ISO--he's even added a new little wrinkle to it with some new fancy stutter hesitation dribbling he broke out in the Chicago game (maybe before that) and we saw it again today. He must be practicing that. LOL. Again though, he was doing his thing out there. Can't really pin this on him. I think he even had 10 rebs. today. Melo did his job.

Just so hard to put your finger on what's wrong:

• Uninspired ball overall. Nothing like our effort in Chicago. That cost us as much as anything today. If this was a constant, we win today despite the other issues. Beyond disappointed in the effort and energy we showed today.
• No third guy stepped up in a big way.
• Nothing going inside (we might have to try Willy and see if we can get some interior scoring and some help on the glass. Maybe some Willy over KOQ just to see).
• Need more out of Courtney Lee. Not sure if it's him not engaging like he should or Jeff/the system/his teammates not involving him enough. This has got to change. The 2 games he stood out, we won.
• I've always HATED all the incessant switching on D--we switch ourselves right into mismatches in the opposition's favor over and over and over. Been going on for years no matter who the coach has been..
• We're not getting consistent rim protection once guys get beaten. I say try some combination of Willy/Plumlee to see what they can bring--could be a combined upgrade over KOQ. After that, if there's still an issue, they should be on the lookout for a decent bench big that can add some combination of post scoring/shot-blocking/rebounding (via trade, a smart DL signing, etc.).
• Bench has been quiet but unlike some, I actually think there's some good potential there. Still, we could really use a STANDOUT bench player. A real 6th man. I think some guys have the potential to assume that role but haven't stepped up yet.

A couple of good signs:

• Jennings played well and showed some real PG play out there today. I saw we went with Rose/Jennings late but then he pulled Jennings. Maybe we need to try that more. Esp. in a game like today where we couldn't get ANYTHING going in transition. Either we weren't looking for it enough or we just let the Jazz completely control the pace out there--prob. a combination. I don't think we got one transition bucket today.

• And I thought Kuz looked real good for that quick stretch toward the end of the 1st half. Take a look at his Youtube Lithuanian clip against team USA. He's not some stiff--he can play. He's got some real offensive talent and I liked the effort he showed on defense. He might have to start playing more. If I'm Jeff I'd be looking for better options than KOQ and LT. I don't think those two are good enough myself. I understand you can't play all 6 of these guys, but who out of Willy/Plumlee and N'Dour/Kuz can step up and start bringing it on both ends? I feel like we're settling going with KOQ and LT. They may not be our best options.