LivingLegend wrote:fishmike wrote:EwingsGlass wrote:Nalod wrote:Philc1 wrote:Ever wonder why Thibs and neither of the Van Gundy bros have never won a championship as a head coach? They are all very limited at calling offense. Thibs did a great job here but our offense had zero creativity literally Thibs idea of ball movement when he wasn’t calling ISO was players dribbling behind the 3 point line then someone running to the dribbling player to do an exchange not even a pass.
Overly simplistic take that does not factor so many variables.
JVG did not win finals because SAS were simply much better team.
Because they had an offense.
how did OKC's offense look vs. the Pacers? Like during the whole 4th qtr vs the Pacers? How did it look? 
I said this after game 1 and saying it again....
Pacers absolutely look like they belong on the floor with OKC and while OKC ran roughshod over most teams this year the Pacers have stood toe-toe with them on both sides of the court. Really impressed with Pacers thus far and how much their younger guys like Nembhart, Nesmith, Mathurin and yes Hali have played.
Pacers ability to get up floor quickly, continue to move the ball and their own bodies has negated a great OKC strength where they can overload the floor against great iso players -- the movement, the quickness of the offense and Hali's ability to create passing angles have really made OKC look normal thus far.
Another huge edge for Indy has been that Turner (and Pascal to a degree) have seemed to totally negate I-Hart --- similar to how I-Hart shrunk as playoffs progressed with Knicks last year.
wait... so you are saying Thibs did NOT get outcoached? That the Pacers are just that good? I am so confused. I thought we lost because of Thib's poor coaching, rotations and inability to create an offense. Hopefully Mike Brown or whoever gets us a few titles. Maybe we trade Josh... then we wont have to suffer through all these national televised announcers talking about what a winning player he is. All up from here
I think you can safely say for about half to 60% of the playoffs the Knicks looked championship quality on D and not so much the other games. Regular season was a slog defensively for most of the year. It seemed like we were getting closer.
I think given so much of the issues were communication and that KAT didn't truly have an offseason with the team, you could have made a pretty strong argument to give Thibs another full offseason with this roster to try and get it in order. Enough positive signs were there.
Offense was another story- offense looked ugly all year, yet finished in the top 10 ALL time in offensive rating. So it was ugly, but possibly effective enough? I think the defensive issues were much worse. That said, turnovers killed us vs. Indy - which is largely b/c Thibs ugly ball control offense relies on low turnovers. We never handled the press effectively. He didn't fix that.
My point is I don't think this is a major makeover. There must have been chemsistry issues in the locker room or between the coaching staff and front office that may have been a large cause. Think in the absence of that, there was enough evidence in the results over the year and most recently to stay patient.
EwingsGlass wrote:Nalod wrote:Philc1 wrote:Ever wonder why Thibs and neither of the Van Gundy bros have never won a championship as a head coach? They are all very limited at calling offense. Thibs did a great job here but our offense had zero creativity literally Thibs idea of ball movement when he wasn’t calling ISO was players dribbling behind the 3 point line then someone running to the dribbling player to do an exchange not even a pass.
Overly simplistic take that does not factor so many variables.
JVG did not win finals because SAS were simply much better team.
Because they had an offense.
Van Gundy had the potential for a run and gun roster that played a slogging style. It wasn't a great match of roster to coach, but when he let Camby free in the playoffs it started to make more sense. The Finals we were outmanned - Ewing down vs. peak Twin Towers was not a matchup we could handle given the size that we had. LJ undersized PF against Duncan/Admiral wasn't gonna work.
