No, New York, D’Antoni Is Not the Guy
Special to TSF…
Poet and Modi there’s no caption needed here huh? Be Peace my brothas…
So since many of you know that I, TheSportsWatcher, am a unabashed New York Knicks fan, I’m sure you are all wondering what I think about the acquisition of Coach Mike D’Antoni as the new head coach at the Garden.
I hate it.
It’s not a good fit at all. But not just for the New York Knicks, but it is not a good fit for any Eastern Conference NBA team, and perhaps not for any NBA basketball team.
Coach D’Antoni is a good coach, but as far as doing anything pertinent in the playoff season, his team did very little except for beating the Dallas Mavericks once, while they still didn’t play any defense.
His Phoenix Suns had great talent, and he had an impeccable offensive system that worked in the regular season because, in reality, teams don’t play defense from October to March. Plus, the majority of the teams they faced in the regular season just weren’t as talented or well coached to keep pace with D’Antoni’s great offense, so that is why the win total in the regular season was high, while the post season win total was never high enough.
You have to play defense to win championships.
Show me the NBA team that didn’t play defense and won a championship!
It doesn’t exist!
The closest you can come to it in recent history is the 2006 Miami Heat, but they had Shaquille O’Neal clogging up the middle, along with James Posey, Udonis Haslem and Alonzo Mourning playing stellar defense.
Therefore, in my opinion, in bringing D’Antoni to the Knicks, Donnie Walsh is saying that he is willing to cede building a championship team in exchange for immediate success.
That is not okay with me, nor should it be okay with any Knicks fan who wants to see a championship in the Garden before they die.
That said, D’Antoni should have the Knicks playing great offense, and they’ll probably win as many as 10 more games, maybe more if they get a high lottery pick with their choice of a point guard that can run the new coach’s system.
But don’t expect any championships in the D’Antoni era, which will probably last longer than it should, because he’ll end up winning a lot of regular season games, and the Knicks will seem like a contender, despite the fact that they never will be that with D’Antoni at coach; just as the Suns were never really a contender with him in Phoenix, as there latest 4-1 thumping by the Spurs denotes.
Uzo Ometu, a former college athlete and up-and-coming journalist, is the founder and editor of TheSportsWatchers.com. Sports comes second nature to him, as does writing about what’s on his mind, in and out of the sports spectrum. He has done work for several media outlets including The Ave Magazine, ESPN, CBS Sports, AskMen.com and Inc. Magazine. A budding entrepreneur, Uzo also heads several New York City based businesses and is a participant in several black foundations. Uzo is a graduate of Columbia University and resides in Brooklyn, NY.
I support this post whole heartedly Uzo. Nice write up.
No doubt D’Antoni is something like a stopgap measure: stop the bleeding and regenerate some interest in the team via a high-octane offense.
It’s all about treading water until 2010 when LeKong comes to Broadway (yes, he is coming – the only competition for his tapdancin shufflin corporate husltin routine will be the Nets, but only if they move to Brooklyn and get that new arena built in time…).
Once Kong James is on board, D’Antoni will depart and make way for The Closer…
I’m not overly upset about these developments, nor should any Knicks fan be. You gotta think long range, Uzo my brudda!
Uzo, nice write-up. Your sentiment was my first one, but I have since back-pedaled to a wait and see approach. The fact is that a lot of this depends on what are the long-range plans with D’Antoni and the Knicks roster. I’m not willing to concede – YET – that “Donnie Walsh is saying that he is willing to cede building a championship team in exchange for immediate success”. Maybe in a year from now after seeing the personell moves, but not now.
As for can a D’Antoni coached team win a championship? I’m also not willing to write that off either even though I agree with you more than i don’t. But just last year The Suns may have been champions if it were not for a Robert Horry hip-check. I mean the series was pretty damn close. Their mistake was to give away Kurt Thomas in the off-season.
Finally, here is the million-dollar question. Will D’Antoni’s rep as a run-and-gun players coach help land a prize? Time will tell. I’ll let you know how I feel about this column a year from now… call it 2009-Quarterbacking…
Maybe D’Antoni’s Suns team didnt play defense because they CAN’T?
I agree with most of you, and most of you seem to agree to me. To those who say D’Antoni came close to winning a championship, I would really disagree. Never did they come as close as a Game 7 to going to the NBA Finals. And last year’s match up against the Spurs was not all that close in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, they were a formdible opponnent, but the Spurs won the close games down the stretch because they played defense. And as for the Amare suspension, more important series than that have been lost due to that very rule.
As for the comment about the Suns not playing defense because they can’t… well, that’s interesting. Especially considering that Amare shows flashes a great defensive ability, Bell is great, Marion was always good, Barbosa is as quick as anybody, and he had Q-Rich and Kurt Thomas for a combined 2 sseason. He never demanded defense from his players and he never put a defensive lineup on the floor because of his offensive philosophy.
Uzo Ometu
Editor
holla@thesportswatchers.com
http://www.TheSportsWatchers.com