Knicks · Hornacek Switched Things Up! (page 1)

I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

Same thing happened in the first game against Milwaukee..There were more spacing and better flow because KP wasn't there...KP and Noah occupies the paint until KP is involved a pick and pop...There aren't as many clear lines of vision to pass the ball...So they may have to look at not playing Noah and KP together if you want better ball movement...They also need to run more pick and roll with Melo..He is our best passer in the pick and roll..I don't understand why they don't run it at least 10 times a game...Get into Melo's head that he is more of an orchestrator, if that's a word...

Marv Albert said the same thing last night...

The team spacing has been bad all year. That and the fact that out guys don't cut nearly as often as they should. The team needs to seriously move away from ISO ball, and every play needs to be geared toward creating an easier shot for a cutter. KP and Melo rarely have good spacing when they on both on the court. We need more ball movement and player movement. We are a deep team. It is time to make these guys move around on offense. The other thing is Rose needs to expand his game. The dude shoots well enough to be a decent 3pt shooter, but he drives 99% of the time, which means guys sag off him, which also clogs things up. If he developed more confidence in his 3pt shot, he could create more space just by being a consistent threat out there. Coach really needs to continue to tighten up the offense. The team defense needs to be improve but guys like Melo are only going to be able to do so much, because he is getting older and does not have great lateral quickness. Developing a more consistent offense that relies less on ISO plays is likely going to be the key to turning this thing around.

^^..They can't cut and passers can't get them the ball if two bigs are in the lane..Who by the way aren't good post players...

With KP when he sees a mismatch he often goes into the post. This cogs up the paint. I'd KP sets a screen up high, spacing can be very good with him as well. Everything Lance does, KP can do better. Only difference is Lance does not try to play 1 on 1 or post up. That's the difference. Lance just goes and spots up, cuts when he sees an opening.

Even so we had 21 assists on 44 makes. There was plenty of Rose and Melo ISO. I don't see this as a good blue print to play long term. However good spacing is easy to accomplish if you make sure KP spots up instead of posts up. For KP development though posting up is a good plan. For the way staters play KP should avoid posting up.

funny, but we really haven't had trouble on the offensive end - at least we're ranked middle of the pack.

It's defense that has cost this team wins. We're not Golden State where we can just blow people out of the water- and even they play great defense!

franco12 wrote:funny, but we really haven't had trouble on the offensive end - at least we're ranked middle of the pack.

It's defense that has cost this team wins. We're not Golden State where we can just blow people out of the water- and even they play great defense!

I agree that the defense has been bad, but this team has more offensive players than any other team outside of Golden State and the Cavs. Every starter on this team, other than Noah, has above average talent on offense, and our unproven bench has turned out to be fairly compete on offense. We should not be middle of the pack on offense, we should be one of the top 5-6 offensive teams in the league. We just play too much ISO ball and we don't get enough easy shots (the same shots we allow teams to get on us). We were winning on talent, not good team offense. That needs to change.

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

Great observation... that's why I have no problems with Jeff. I think he's a fine coach. He's adjusted 3 or 4 times already. This 9-1 slump has to do with the players and their issues. Jeff is pouring them in positions to succeed. Defense too... the Knicks have guys that aren't going hard and paying attention. 2 guys dogging it causes ripples. They have all been guilty of it this year

TheGame wrote:The team spacing has been bad all year. That and the fact that out guys don't cut nearly as often as they should. The team needs to seriously move away from ISO ball, and every play needs to be geared toward creating an easier shot for a cutter. KP and Melo rarely have good spacing when they on both on the court. We need more ball movement and player movement. We are a deep team. It is time to make these guys move around on offense. The other thing is Rose needs to expand his game. The dude shoots well enough to be a decent 3pt shooter, but he drives 99% of the time, which means guys sag off him, which also clogs things up. If he developed more confidence in his 3pt shot, he could create more space just by being a consistent threat out there. Coach really needs to continue to tighten up the offense. The team defense needs to be improve but guys like Melo are only going to be able to do so much, because he is getting older and does not have great lateral quickness. Developing a more consistent offense that relies less on ISO plays is likely going to be the key to turning this thing around.

Spacing will be bad when you have rose and noah on the floor at the same time. That's 2 guys who can't shoot from the outside. So melo and KP are basically in there with 2 guys operating in the lanes and have no where to go. KP will get stuck at the 3pt line and melo will try to squeeze on the wing. Defense is bad because you have 3 players, rose, melo, and KP who are poor perimeter defenders. Melo should be guarding 4s and KP 5s. Another forward who can guard the perimeter fixes a lot.

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

I'm always leery when people present a few seconds of video or photos to prove a point. Not saying your point isn't valid, just that you can pretty much "prove" any point that way.

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

We all watched the game and we all saw the spacing cause it's not just you that sees it nix like you seem to think. The Bulls defense was really really bad and i don't acre if you think it was the spacing cause if they use that same spacing against a team that does play defense we won't get all the easy baskets we got last night. Now of course i do like a lot of what we did last night and hope to god it carries over into every game from here on out but that win did nothing for me and i don't trust the Knicks any more today then i did before the game last night. Their best player didn't even play last night and they had some guy names Zipster or whatever the heck his name was playing a bunch of minutes last night.

Love that we finally got a win and love that we didn't let them come back on us and love that it looked like we played a little harder on defense but that win didn't do anything for me. Beat some real teams and look good doing it and then maybe it will do something for me.

EnySpree wrote:

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

Great observation... that's why I have no problems with Jeff. I think he's a fine coach. He's adjusted 3 or 4 times already. This 9-1 slump has to do with the players and their issues. Jeff is pouring them in positions to succeed. Defense too... the Knicks have guys that aren't going hard and paying attention. 2 guys dogging it causes ripples. They have all been guilty of it this year

I agree with this. I don't put these losing ways on JH at all and think the players just aren't doing what's asked of them all the time. The head coach can only do so much but some of these guys are just so used to doing it their way that as soon as something doesn't go right a couple of times on offense they automatically go back to doing things their way. Rose and Melo are obviously the two most guilty of this.

newyorker4ever wrote:

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

We all watched the game and we all saw the spacing cause it's not just you that sees it nix like you seem to think. The Bulls defense was really really bad and i don't acre if you think it was the spacing cause if they use that same spacing against a team that does play defense we won't get all the easy baskets we got last night. Now of course i do like a lot of what we did last night and hope to god it carries over into every game from here on out but that win did nothing for me and i don't trust the Knicks any more today then i did before the game last night. Their best player didn't even play last night and they had some guy names Zipster or whatever the heck his name was playing a bunch of minutes last night.

Love that we finally got a win and love that we didn't let them come back on us and love that it looked like we played a little harder on defense but that win didn't do anything for me. Beat some real teams and look good doing it and then maybe it will do something for me.

I agree about not getting to excited with this one win. But let's not forget we rested one of our best players as well so we did this to them short handed as well.

Welpee wrote:

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

I'm always leery when people present a few seconds of video or photos to prove a point. Not saying your point isn't valid, just that you can pretty much "prove" any point that way.

Man I can get MUCH more detailed than this!!! Trust me there is a reason I was talking so much about what Jeff had them doing. It wasn't a Ton of Triangle all game! He had them playing more Spread Offense with a high PnR and a WIDE OPEN PAINT! That's MDA BALL! Noah setting Picks for Rose, Melo etc. Jeff had them playing more 4 Out Ball and less Post Up or Triangle Spacing.

You saw a lot of KOQ 2 Man with Lee, Holiday or Kuz too. All of them got involved in Give n Go actions that lead to Dunks and Layups or open 3's. Notice in the stills below how the Knicks started in a Spread look and got penetration and dish to a cutter!

wow! look at those pictures! !!! ! ! !!! !!!!! look at those exclamations!!! ! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

newyorker4ever wrote:

nixluva wrote:I wanted to highlight the points I was making about the way Jeff had the team playing tonight so I took a few stills of the spacing to make it clearer just what he had them doing! If they continue to do this it could change things up for the better!

We all watched the game and we all saw the spacing cause it's not just you that sees it nix like you seem to think. The Bulls defense was really really bad and i don't acre if you think it was the spacing cause if they use that same spacing against a team that does play defense we won't get all the easy baskets we got last night. Now of course i do like a lot of what we did last night and hope to god it carries over into every game from here on out but that win did nothing for me and i don't trust the Knicks any more today then i did before the game last night. Their best player didn't even play last night and they had some guy names Zipster or whatever the heck his name was playing a bunch of minutes last night.

Love that we finally got a win and love that we didn't let them come back on us and love that it looked like we played a little harder on defense but that win didn't do anything for me. Beat some real teams and look good doing it and then maybe it will do something for me.

What you seem to think is that we don't have offensive firepower when this team plays the right way!!! Perhaps you're just too jaded to recognize that we do have scorers and they need to be put in the right positions and the right style for their talents.

By playing more Spread PnR style offense that fits what these players do BEST! The Knicks were in attack mode rather than trying to read and react in the Triangle all night. They Stretched the Defense with that spacing which made it hard to give help!!!

Also the paint was wide open for a reason! That's not an accident and it wasn't just poor D! This is the same style MDA has used and if you have lethal scoring threats like Rose and Melo who can both work as PnR Ball Handlers, it's going to give a LOT of teams Problems. We won't be losing to bad teams if Jeff keeps them playing this style.

SupremeCommander wrote:wow! look at those pictures! !!! ! ! !!! !!!!! look at those exclamations!!! ! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have NOTHING to add STFU!!!

Let me make myself more clear. I'm not focused on the strength of competition cuz we lose to good and bad teams. What matters most to me is HOW this team plays! What I saw last night was a change for whatever reason Jeff had them playing less Pure Triangle and IMO this is something I've been screaming to see him do.

Was it just cuz KP didn't play? I don't think so! I pray that it wasn't that. IMO Jeff saw how they struggled in the Triangle and wanted to try something else. IMO this was the logical style for these players and I pray he sticks with this the rest of the season.

When forcing too much Triangle it made things easier for teams to defend. There was no room for Rose to attack or anyone else for that matter. The Other teams had an easy time tipping our predictable passes and we weren't aggressively attacking as we should. You saw less holding the ball ISO Melo and the offense didn't come to a complete stop every possession. Jeff has to keep them in this mode.

Oh and you'll see the team be more spirited on D with more success on offense. Less bad offense will lead to fewer fast breaks for the other team too!!!

nixluva wrote:

SupremeCommander wrote:wow! look at those pictures! !!! ! ! !!! !!!!! look at those exclamations!!! ! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have NOTHING to add STFU!!!

go!!! eff!!! yourself!!!

If you think you've enlightened anyone -- YOU'RE A MORON!!!

SupremeCommander wrote:

nixluva wrote:

SupremeCommander wrote:wow! look at those pictures! !!! ! ! !!! !!!!! look at those exclamations!!! ! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have NOTHING to add STFU!!!

go!!! eff!!! yourself!!!

If you think you've enlightened anyone -- YOU'RE A MORON!!!

This coming from someone that didn't add a single thing to the thread! If you've got a point then go ahead and make it. Give us your detailed breakdown of why I'm wrong and what you've seen that contradicts what I've posted.

We did look more spread out didn't we? I'm still hating the fact thst melo and rose deviate so much from the system to run ISO ball.