D'Antoni's "Resignation"

            D’Antoni’s firing (which is what I am going to call it for the rest of the column because that’s what it was) can’t come as a surprise to anyone in New York.  He was 121-167 in four years as coach of the Knicks and only made the playoffs once.  The one time the Knicks did make the playoffs under D’Antoni, their Atlantic Division rival Celtics (led by a “Big Three” who looked more akin to the Golden Girls) sent them packing in embarrassing fashion.  The Celtics swept the Knicks out of the postseason, making New York fans believe it would have been less heartbreaking/humiliating to have just missed the playoffs altogether.  This picture says it all.

            Take away the Golden Age of the Lin Shu-How Dynasty, and this season the Knicks are 11-23.  11-23!  A .323 win percentage!?!  That’s (dare I say it?) New Jersey Nets status (current WIN% = .326).  How can a team with three Team USA finalists manage to suck so bad that a rookie point guard out of Harvard who was bounced around from three different teams have to come to their rescue?*

**Sidenote: I would go so far as to say that people in New York admire Jeremy Lin as much as Kim Jong-Un scares people into admiring him in North Korea**

            Contributing to the Knicks’ poor performance was abysmal defense.  In his four years as the team’s head coach, the Knicks gave up almost 104 PPG (only Minnesota gave up more over that span).  But on the other side of the ball the Knicks scored about 102.3 PPG.  As I said before, D’Antoni is not incompetent as a coach; he is an offensive savant who will make a great assistant coach somewhere.

Despite ripping on D’Antoni in my previous three and a half paragraphs, I’m not going to go so far as to say that D’Antoni’s “resignation” is solely his fault.  Before the Carmelo trade last season, D’Antoni was proving that his system can work going into the All-Star break with a 28-26 record (not great, but getting there), and we saw glimpses of it again this season with Jeremy Lin. 

His firing is a combination of his not being able to make Melo and Amar’e play well on the same line, not getting on his players to play defense, and not getting his star players to believe in his run-and-gun system. 

Some people say D’Antoni’s firing is Carmelo’s fault, and this is half true.  The Knicks were finally developing some chemistry before the trade for Melo last season and a mid-season roster overhaul destroyed all of the chemistry that D’Antoni worked so hard to create, so indirectly it is Melo’s fault

In a more direct sense, D’Antoni was fired because Melo wasn’t on board with what he was doing, which turned the Knicks’ locker room against him.  If a coach can’t get his star player to buy into what he is doing, he has, in effect, lost his right to coach.  We learned last season with Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan in Utah that if your star player isn’t on board, you may as well jump ship.

**Another Sidenote: Wouldn’t everything just be easier if we went back to the days of Bill Russell player-coaching the Celtics to the ’68 and ’69 championships?  Imagine Coach Melo, during a timeout saying, “Listen guys, how many times do I have to say it? Just give me the ball in isolation on the right wing and let me do what I do.  The other four of you just stand near the paint and get the ball if I miss.  Now, Jeremy and Baron, Rock-Paper-Scissors for who gets to play point.”**

If you talked to every New York basketball fan who follows the Knicks, I’d say that about 33% of them would have said that the biggest problem with the team was Carmelo, 50% of them would have said it was D’Antoni, 10% would have said it was Amar’e’s knees, 5% would have said it was the Baron Davis/Jeremy Lin turnover frenzies, and 2% would have said it was Tyson Chandler’s hobo beard (which he recently shaved so stay tuned on what effect that has).  

The Knicks addressed a problem now (D’Antoni) that they should have handled this off-season. People forget that the Knicks CAN STILL MAKE THE PLAYOFFS AND POSSIBLY WIN.  They fired D’Antoni too early and may have sacrificed their season because of it.  Unless Mike Woodson is the second coming of Phil Jackson, Melo and Amar’e go back to college and take Chemistry 101, or the Knicks give the ball to Steve Novak every possession and let him take threes (because he is that good), I can’t imagine the Knicks making it out of the first round. 

Linsanity actually hurt the Knicks in terms of coaching.  If Lin had never shaken up MSG and given New York hope in D'Antoni and his system, D'Antoni probably would have been out before the All-Star break, giving the Knicks more time to adjust to new coaching.

Now they're in that awkward stage with only 24 games left in the season: not enough time to hire a new coach altogether, but not enough time for the team to gel under an interim coach, especially in a lockout-shortened season.  It's like at the end of a first date: too soon to kiss, but you want to do more than just hug, so you end up going for a kiss and then halfway think, "no, it's too soon" and end up in a type of awkward lean-hug with asses out and hope for the best.  

However, I could be eating my words very soon because as I am writing this the Knicks are beating the Trail Blazers by 22, so if the Knicks do make a run in the playoffs forget I said any of this, OK?

Here is your Mike Woodson throwback mustache of the day:

I usually take this time to shoutout someone/something that I like or enjoy, but instead I am using it to call out Clyde Frazier.  If you say "swiss cheese defense" one more time I am going to watch Knicks games on mute until you are fired... and stop saying "serendipitous"

#DJLR