BRIGGS wrote:#1 start Kyle oquinn at center and play him 35-38 minutes
#2 start Jennings and Rose together as backcourt
#3 play Willy G Kuz Courtney Lee and Baker off the bench as top 9
#4 demand Kp take better % shots I don't like his shot selection he should be shooting 50%
#5 hold each player accountable for moving the ball. To the open man more often
#6 hold each player accountable for staying. With their man on defense
There is no way for the Knicks to improve except incrementally given the current design of the team.
Phil Jackson sacrificed the next four years of this team for essentially the hope that a short term burst of this season would inch the team into the playoffs.
The Derrick Rose trade was a net negative move. What would happen if he was a wild success this year? The Knicks would be under the gun to give a max contract to a player with an injury history, carrying low positional value ( you need rim protecting pivots and wings who can play 3 and D ball to win in the current NBA) who can't hit the 3 ball consistently, much less at the elite level needed to space the floor. What would happen if he was a total bust? The Knicks would have rented a player costing them a valuable trade asset ( Lopez on a team friendly contract, a team player who actually helped on defense and had a decent all around game) and a young player in Grant ( while Grant is likely not to work out long term, jettisoning young cost controlled talent for aging talent is not the way to win in the NBA) If Rose did well or poorly, either scenario hurt the Knicks.
Noah was a great player. But the last two years of his deal are likely to be pretty ugly. Aging, hurt and overpaid. Now do teams make a calculated risk considering the negative back end of a deal? Sure, but in context. Take MLB, the Tigers signed Miguel Cabrera and the LA Angels signed Albert Pujols. The back half of those super deals will likely get ugly. But the teams weighed out the front half of the contract, where the players are projected to play at an All Star level and hopefully help the team win a championship. Those are specific situations where the team weighs it out and takes the good first half for the likely risk of the bad back half. Where was the upside with Noah? They signed an aging player in his clear decline phase, not a player who would hit that decline phase a couple of years into his contract.
You want to win in the modern NBA? I've said this many times in the past
A) You need to be able to defend the rim
B) You need to be able to defend the wing
C) You need to be able to space the floor and hit the 3 ball at an elite rate
Noah is likely to be hurt a ton during his Knicks contract. Clearly in decline. He can't play Stretch 5, his defense will erode, he was never an offensive force in his career. Even with all the money spent, the Knicks created more questions, not answers, with rim protection and defense.
Rose is not an elite 3 point shooter. He's not even a decent long range shooter period. He doesn't care about defense. And he has a big injury history. And he's clearly a mental midget ( criminal problems, abandoning his team, poor composure with the press, etc) He creates more questions, not answers.
None of these guys have trade value. It would cost assets to get them and their contracts off the roster at this point.
The Knicks best hope to get better is to get cost controlled young talent, on the rise, onto the roster. Meaning they need to hit on their picks, getting a Marc Gasol or a Monta Ellis or a Gilbert Arenas type impact player later in the draft process.
That's it. Jackson sold the next four years to make this one a little better ( likely for his reputation and pride, because the last few years haven't been good to his ego or reputation)
The Knicks churned Lopez and Grant for basically nothing. The Lee and Noah contracts aren't likely to look very good in the back half. Their best young player, Zinger, plays PF, same as their "star player" in Melo. Zinger can't defend the rim, Melo can't defend the wing and just seems to not care about defense at all this season.
No one wants to hear it, but in about three years, the Knicks will have to start over, likely from scratch, and that is about the gist of it. The combination of Melo's NTC and his utter failure to be anything other than a lethal 1v1 sixth man and Noah and Lee's likely to implode deals are going to cripple this team's cap and roster flexibility.
At minimum, Hornacek had the most success using a Stretch 5 and having depth with combo guards to run his offense. The Knicks don't have the personnel he needs and don't have the resources or flexibility anymore to get what he needs.
In the next three and a half years, the Knicks need to break the general statistical odds in terms of NBA draft success to moderate get better.
This is a flawed roster that was constructed with a poor fit. The skills sets are not complimentary where they need to be, and often conflict in some very tough ways.
This team will eventually blame Hornacek for all of this. But who are we kidding here? The combination of Dolan, Jackson and Melo drove this team into the ground.
