The Knicks Fix

Finally somehting about my boy nate....i always knew the lil guy had it in him

I agree with Bargnani about Gallo as a future two guard. He is slim tall and likes to shoot. The one thing he needs is to get that body in shape. If he moves to the two it would be hard to guard him. I think as a two guard he will roam the perimeter for a three pointer. Cant block a jump shot of a 6'8 guard. He is not a four option. In the summer league he looked like he has seen to many Dwayne Wade commercials. But he can't get back up. He probably has a Kobe poster in his room. He needs to go down to the D League to get stronger for the NBA.

if nate can be a real PG, that would be amazing. but i can't see him staying in the system. didn't he have a great pre-season last year?

Can Nate defend his position? It's nice to be Steve Nash, when your team can score 125/game. Can the Knicks shoot like Phoenix did/does? Doubt it.

The proposed starting lineup is terrible. This must be a 10-game experiment.

BTW, after reading Berman's blog, I'm starting to appreciate the censorship over here.

J2B, sure Nate had a great pre-season last year, but that was an Isiah pre-season. This is fundamentally different in that Nate is learning a system with a goal; something to stride for. The Knicks are an entirely different club this season, even without making a single move. I wouldn't be surprised by a 50 win year.

J2B, sure Nate had a great pre-season last year, but that was an Isiah pre-season. This is fundamentally different in that Nate is learning a system with a goal; something to stride for. The Knicks are an entirely different club this season, even without making a single move. I wouldn't be surprised by a 50 win year.

50 wins?!?

Dude! Pass that my way...

I'll take 35 and call it a damn good start.

Finally... YOU TALKIN BOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN DOONESBURY!

Keep it up yo! Stop writing about that fool.

If you want to write about fools, write about K-Fed. That fool has sex tapes of him and Britney.

Ahhh yeah!

My Friends...as I stated b4...Nate will be most improved player of the year and Jamal is an allstar...and we will have 42 wins...thats right 42. Eddie Curry will lose weight very quickly this pre-season and start running up and down the floor as if a burger is waiting for him on each baseline. Steph will not be able to contain himself and begin to pout and cause turmoil..Dantoni is getting ready to have him suspended. Walt Frazier reaches out to Mardy and asks him to change his name to Mardy Frazier but Mardy wants nothing to do with his long lost father.

Keep the faith my brothers.

yo

this might be a stupid question

but what ever happened to fred jones? he dropped off the team sort of quietly

I figure that maybe his contract expired, but have no other teams been interested enough to pick him up?

Be the ball Danny, be the ball.

Nobody has ever made a more ridiculous comparison...I like Nate but he could never ever hold Nash's jock strap, we all know it..today, tomorrow or whenever

Not liking the way this is all shaping out, we still have no 2010 money..Not looking good

Keeping 2010 alive
with some Bulljive

I predict 28 wins. : / Knicks will be a high scoring team but commit a lot of TO's and have one of the worst shooting percentages.

Id agree 28 sounds about right..and no help in sight

50 wins?!? That is hilarious...this team will be lucky to get 50 wins between this season and last season combined.

Nate Robinson has great athletic skills, he just doesn't have the Steve Nash vision and brain...nor does he have the complimentary players to pass to. That said, I am encouraged that he is studying Nash and at least WANTS to get better, and realizes that the only place for him in this league is at the point...not the 2. That's certainly more than I can say for lazy Eddy who has never done a thing his whole career to try and get better or to even get in shape.

Nate has passion and desire...and keeps himself in incredible shape...and is a speed demon...he certainly has the raw talent to be molded into Coach D's style...much more than Mardy Collins or perhaps even Duhon.

Let's not worry about winning games. Let's worry about playing the right way. As bulljive reminds us, 2010 and beyond is the goal. Happy that Nate can finally have some purpose on the court. I've always said that If he ever truly realizes the power of the pass to set up his offense, he will be indefensible. He can get by any defender in the league in the blink of an eye, but in the past he has been so intent on padding his highlight reel, he delivers himself to a big at the rim by trying to dunk. Every player in the league knows it, it makes him the easiest guy in the league to stop. If he passes first, then help defenders will never be able to anticipate where he will be, and his speed will take care of the rest. That moment of uncertainty on the part of the defender is the thing that can make him an all star. That's what makes Nash the player he is. That moment of "uh oh" when he passes his man with the ball and nobody knows whether to sag back to defend the passing lane or to try and stop his penetration or shot. From their Nash reads it so well, that they basically end up doing neither.

Get these guys to play as best you can, fix Gallinari's back, build a real minor league team in Harlem for Dometrius Nichols, Jared Jordan and other not-ready-for-primetime prospects and build this team right from the ground up.

http://realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/54765/20081008/oden_has_strong_blazer_debut/

Like Portland did with Oden, if you have to, let Gallo sit a year so he can play for 15 years. Get in the lottery again. All we want is a real team with real coaching and real effort. Everybody always talks about how smart NY fans are, but they all say you can never rebuild because we always want to win now. This blog shows it, the fans at MSG over the past years have shown it - WE RESPECT REAL EFFORT, WE UNDERSTAND THE GAME, WE WILL SUPPORT A REBUILDING CLUB. If we are the smartest fans in the league, then why would anybody think we could be distracted by a couple extra wins won by a team with no future? Even in the last days of Zeke's tenure, whenever the team was able to pull out of its misery and play hard and together for even a quarter, the Garden was behind them, staying in their seats, cheering to the end. We deserve the real thing, the franchise needs the real thing, and the players desperately need to be part of the real thing.

Comparing Nate to Nash is a pipedream, but you've got to give the man credit for doing his homework on the best in the business.

At least he's trying to better himself by studying tape, which I'm pretty confident Marbury, Curry and Randolph have never even entertained.

I think a more accurate comparison is Nate and Barbosa...only Nate is faster, which doesn't seem possible.

David: I appreciate your optimism...but don't get your hopes up.

I feel like a broken record at this point, but not only will we suck this year, it is imperative that we suck this year.

Championship teams are built during bad years with shrewd drafting. That's how you get multiple studs on the cheap, in effect rigging the salary cap. Everyone looks at what Boston did last year, but that was a once in a lifetime anomaly involving collusion, luck, and god knows what else.

We drafted Gallinari, and that's a start, but the nucleus we have now, excluding people we eventually want to get rid of like Randolph and all those other cap killers, just isn't going to cut it if the ultimate goal is a championship.

We need to play the players who buy into the system and who work hard. Now everyone knows that those players aren't necessarily the most naturally gifted on the team. So what that does is establish a culture around team chemistry and getting rewarded for playing the right way, while allowing our team to honorably suck for the next year and scoop up another premium young player on the cheap.

Also, I hope that Nate starts playing with his head screwed on right, because I know we've all heard the one about how "this year is finally going to be his year," before. He is a knucklehead, but it seems like he genuinely wants to learn and to get better, so I wouldn't rule it out. But I wouldn't bet on it either.

Two of the things that made being a Knicks fan so frustrating over the last few years (other than the crappy team and the toxic overall culture) was the lack of player development and the absence of any sort of coaching or management system/philosophy. Young players would come in but never improve - bad habits were never corrected, skills never refined and rounded out. Meanwhile the team kept switching what it was supposedly doing (athletic up-tempo, feed the post, twin(kie) towers, etc), but never really did the things necessary to do any of them well. For example, if you are going to be a low post team, you acquire guards who are skilled at the entry pass, accurate spot up shooters to spread the floor, a weakside rebounder to crash the boards for misses, etc. A system is more than saying "we're doing x now..." This is what D'Antoni brings - you can argue whether or not it is the most effective approach, but it is an approach, an it sets expectations and defines roles that the players need to meet if the team is to be successful.

With this in mind, it is irrelevant that Nate is not as good a point guard as Nash. What is fantastic to see as a Knicks fan is a player who's development has stagnated actually attempting to refine his game, and benefiting from the fact that there is a system in place in which he can development. It is clear what is expected, so he can go about trying to fill that role. Time will tell whether he does so, but it is refreshing that even the possibility for growth within a team concept is there.

Across the Hudson - I agree with your points - part of having a system is that you have a strategy for the kinds of players you want, and what your current needs are. You are right on point with the importance of the draft too (its why I was dead against giving up picks to dump deadwood players), and I'd add that even the Boston miracle happened because of good drafting - without a young stud PF in Jefferson, the Garnett trade doesn't happen.

Ferget about comparing this team to Phoenix. Ferget about Nash. No one is like him. The Knix will be running team unlike any previous Knix team. Phx is not the only running team to ever play in the NBA. The Knix will be an up-tempo ABA-like team with no rebounding or D. If they win 30 or 35 games they will still be a crappy team in search of top-notch starters who can bound and play D. This season will show us little except whether D'Antoni can manage to keep a crappy team from imploding like Isiah's did. This year's team is going no where. We can only enjoy seeing a few young guys develop and hope the fat cats get dumped or dealed away.

DTR

First of all...why is Nate a knucklehead? What has he done to warrant someone to say that? Is it because he likes to have fun? He's never done anything that disrupts the team chemistry and he also represented us well in the all star weekend. Everybody likes Nate (not just the Knicks) around the league. He's a good hearted guy and when he's walking around White Plains he's very easy to walk up to and speak with.
All this talk about Nash is making me sick. Yes he is a great point guard but he wasn't until he got with Dantoni. Remember him in Dallas? He was nowhere near as good as he is now. Once he got to PHX and Dantoni knew what to do with him (unlike Nelson), that's when Nash started winning those MVP awards. Dantoni takes guys and knows how to use them. I was very happy to see him come out and bash the team the way he did yesterday. It was very refreshing to me since Isiah never did it last year or any of his years for that matter.
Tonight is the big night...the season is finally here fellas and I'm pumped up. Sounds to me like Nate will be in the starting line up soon enough. We'll see what Duhon can do...I'm hoping he can be the leader we need. You can't judge a man by what he did on another team with another coach. Every player reacts different with certain coaches. Dantoni instills the confidence in his players and that's what we need. If anyone becomes a distraction....they will not play and they'll probably be shipped out of here on the first thing smoking.
I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about tonight so I'm just waiting. I get off work at 8 but I work 5 minutes from my house and I'm tivo'ing the game so I'll catch it just in time. It's actually fun to watch the game and not have to watch the commercials that come along with it.
The Celtics are also on tonight playing the Philadelphia Sisters.
Not really interested in that game but it's basketball so I ain't complaining.
Go Knicks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I called Nate a knucklehead because of the way he plays.

I have nothing against him as a person. By all accounts he seems like a good guy. But when you watch him play, I mean, come on. How many times have you seen him get so amped up that he starts throwing passes away, or flying into planted defenders and getting a charge, or trying to dunk over someone and getting stuffed.

I'm not calling him a thug, or some other thinly veiled racist term, I'm just saying that he makes a lot of boneheaded plays on the court.

And you're right, I'm not saying he disrupts team chemistry, because that would make him a jerk, or an a$$hole, or a malcontent. Sometimes he's just a little too easy going, and it leads to him doing goofy stuff in serious situations. Again, knucklehead.

Come on, I know you've heard a lot worse insults than that.

Lots of good comments I couldnt agree with Willis more. Lets learn the right way to play, even if they lose atleast we wont hate them like we do now . I wouldnt care one bit to watch a team like the Bobcats, they are young and aggressive and are improving, but watching guys like Zach and Marybury argue over touches just isnt something I can stomach much longer..Clear Curry and Zach out however possible..

Keeping 2010 alive
with some Bulljive