An Economy of Sprinkles
Links to elsewhere today:
-Sporting News column, all about a new D'Antoni theory. Not sure what the Marbury for Diaw and Barbosa rumor does to this. You thoughts?
-Quotemonger, for all the marbles.
-My latest anti-Celtics tirade. FD, but might have been missed.
-More Celtics bitching, about how their city poisoned the Hawks on the eve of Game Seven.
Labels: mike d'antoni
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 5/13/2008 12:27:00 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
as a knicks fan, i'm all in favor of getting anything for marbury. i can't see anyway you can have him back on the team post-truck party and after threatening to blackmail isiah.
i don't understand why anyone would want him though. ditto for zach randolph.
Because he's $23 million coming off the books next summer.
true. though i feel he'd do irreversible psychological damage to your franchise. maybe if, instead of a physical, you could make him agree to never represent your franchise in any way.
I think your take on D'Antoni is right: he wants the challenge of taking this team and making it a winner. If he does, he gets a statue. If he doesn't, well, who could have?
That said, exactly how he goes about it, whether employing Phoenix Again or some new hybrid system, will very much depend on what the roster ends up looking like.
My guess (hope?) is that they'll look to move Randolph, and give Marbury the Darius Miles treatment.
The CW about New York being a pressure cooker is totally off. Coaching the Suns or the Bulls means pressure, because those teams are actually talented and SHOULD be competing for championships and making the playoffs, respectively. The Knicks, on the other hand, are flat out terr-ible and every basketball fan in New York knows it. Every New York basketball fan also knows that the team needs a total overhaul to undo the Isiah Thomas years. That will certainly buy Walsh and D'Antoni enough time to assemble the team they want.
My best guess is that D'
Antoni will turn the Knicks a little towards the direction Philly has taken, but without the heady PG and semi-franchise player in Iguodala.
With the current roster, the easiest identity to form is the all-scrappy team. That would mean less Curry and Randolph and a lot of Lee, Balkman, Wilson Chandler, Robinson, Richardson and Crawford. No real go-to scorer in the bunch (Beasley?), but a group of players that could make a name for themselves running the break and being rough and dirty on defense.
If you can dump Marbury's contract and Curry on somebody for a shotblocker, that would be a good start. And then you just have to bank on the appeal that the city still has as a major market to attract LeBron or a lesser superstar and you're set again.
i hope marbz for brazilian blur/air france redux doesn't happen.
d'antoni and the rest of us need to move on. we need closure. 22 million dollars worth of expiring closure. sit his ass on the bench and drool about some FA's.
D'Ant coaching the Knicks raises too many possibilities:
-Knicks get #2, Derrick Rose is new Steve Nash.
-Knicks don't get #1 or #2, and end up #5-7, Danilo becomes real draft option for Knicks. That's scary & potential.
-Does anyone like Steve Nash? If so, why does everyone flee from him - Joe Johnson, Shawn Marion, now maybe D'Antoni, who was once quoted as saying he would retired the second after Nash did. Now it sounds like he wants what Shawn Marion wanted - to prove that he made Nash a two-time MVP, and not vice versa.
-Why did anyone think the Bulls were really in play? Why would D'Antoni want to leave one cheap team for another cheap team? You really think it's just CREAM? It's more than that - the Knicks have less expectations; turning it around here = greatness. Money will be spent to turn the team around, even if it is reckless. Besides, why would Coach D want to go from beefing with one Jordaniare 3PT specialist to another?
-The last time the Knicks hired a coach that I can remember getting criticized for being too "soft" and "not being able to coach defense, only offense", he came in here and turned the franchise around by turning them into the hardest working defense in the league. Why is the assumption that D'Antoni, who has coached really only one team, is incapable of reinventing himself like Pat Riley did?
-How great is the timing of this announcing? In the same week that Dolan pulls the "nuclear option" in the war against the New/Post (buying Newsday), he hires D'Antoni, and let's Jack McCallum get the scoop. And the local media goes ballistic. This might be the most exciting subplot of the upcoming season - how petty can the local scribes get?
-Oh, and we haven't even touched on the potential moves the Knicks might make (Carmelo Anthony, TJ Ford, Michael Redd - all in play now?)
Me, personally? I hope he throws out one of the crazy Isiah lineups, like the "four guards and David Lee" lineup, but now with a coherent, organized offensive system. If so, they might be the missing link between the chaotic mindless Hawks, and Don Nelson's Warriors.
It seems like New York will have to draft a point guard. If they get Rose, then Mike gets his elite (and extremely young) point right away. If it's Mayo or Bayless, then it becomes a matter of D'Antoni turning great potential into reality.
I don't really see how the Marbury for Barbosa and Diaw could work money-wise. The Suns would need to throw in 5 or 6 million more to make it work, and they don't have anyone else in that range they would want to get rid of. A 3 team deal might work, but I don't want to be one of those guys who sits in front of the trade machine trying to figure out the details of a 3-team trade.
re: stopmikelupica
in regards to the question of whether anyone likes Nash, this reminded me of a story I that I thought the FD community would enjoy. A friend's father was at a Dallas bar shortly after the first playoffs under Avery Johnson's tenure, when he saw, sitting alone, a soused Don Nelson. Said father approaches Nellie, makes his acquaintance, and is, to his surprise, treated to a drunken heart to heart, wherein Nellie explains that his abrupt defection from the team a few months prior had been precipitated by Cuban's decision to allow Nash to sign with the Suns the previous offseason. You get to coach a player like Nash once in a career, Nellie said, and without him on the team Nelson was simply too depressed to hold the reins. It makes that strange time in Maverick history--the team stocked with Jamison and Antoine Walker--make a little more sense.
And what Nelson's feelings say about the dialectic of coaching style versus the player role within it might be applicable to D'Antoni's exodus.
You might be right about D'Antoni improving the current roster, but I question your assessments along the way.
1st, as a knick fan for 40 years, I'm sick to death of this dopey mentality that knick fans lack the patience for long- term solutions. This is a myth that is perpetuated mostly by people outside of New York. Reggie Miller tried spouting that nonsense on WFAN yesterday and it was blown back before he could finish the sentence. In reality, this rationale has been used disingenuously by GM's over the years to cover their rash and reckless decisions -- it's the fans who want us to make these terrible choices, they just won't wait. Of course it's our fault. I don't mean to sound harsh, but I'm surprised you’re mouthing this tired rhetoric.
2nd, your view that D'Antoni is hired for long-term results is not shared in NY. The thinking is, why hire a coach for six million a year for this roster? It's Jackson, a first-time coach, who is thought as someone to make modest improvements over a period of time. There are no immediate expectations for a novice coach. Yet, can a big name coach, such as D'Antoni, suffer through two or three terrible years without forfeiting long-term goals for immediate results. D"Antoni did mention that resources were part of the attraction of the Knicks, and this does have people saying, oh shit, here we go again.
It's this bottomless pit of money, this never- ending piggy bank that is a large part of the problem-- it's too tempting. It turns intelligent, disciplined individuals into crazy kids left alone in a candy store. It's not their dime and there's no restraint.
Post a Comment
<< Home