Well...this was therapeutic...more reading than anyone on a message board should have to do though, if you missed the game I think it'll be useful as hell though.
Short Version: This game was the dating equivalent of the one that got away; even in that last sequence there are multiple what ifs that can eat at you (What if Melo takes it himself? What if Melo uses the screen? What if Fish takes the TO?)...things coulda, woulda or shoulda been different damn it. But they weren't. At the end of the day, the Knicks just went head to head with one of the best teams in the league and came a wide open shot dropping away from dealing that team it's first home loss of the season. What's especially promising is that most of the key players struggled but they still found a way to keep it close enough to fight back and they were led by a 20 year Euro who was supposed to be a project when he was drafted. Defense had holes but held up in key situations; offense struggled at times but was unstoppable against a great team at points as well and the coaching while regressing compared to last few games did show some nice instinctual decisions late (I like not calling a TO in that situation since it leaves the defenders to their own devices rather than getting lined up by Pop). Anyway, let's hit the long breakdowns.
Melo: 5-15 is an ugly number, especially considering probably a third of the misses were on pretty damned good looks. But another third or so of those were on quality drives into physical defenders that are 50/50 calls or worse, he drew 10 FT's and could have gotten even more with nobody batting an eye. He played smart ball most of the night, 15 FGA's in a game where our guys were struggling shows his trust for the teammates. That last play speaks to his trust, going to a guy who'd struggled all night but was in his sweet spot instead of taking a highly contested jumper. Melo's defense on Kawhi was really good when locked in, in fact, Kawhi devolved into a damned flopper for most of the fourth because Melo was frustrating him and he had nothing else to do. But Melo also got caught ball watching on boards at times, which meant giving up offensive boards to Leonard. If he was boxing out Leonard 8-19 drops to 5 or 6 for 17 and things might be different. 20, 12 and 3 with two emphatic blocks to boot. He played well, not perfect, but well.
KP: There's no bigger statement than what the kid did last night. 28 and 11 on 11-21 when almost everyone else shot poorly. He was the key cog to keeping us in the game. One hole we saw but have known was that he didn't have the strength to hold LMA out of the deep post and he was victimized by it. The effort was there, but he got bodied up. Still he was victimized on multiple occasions and that will only change after he's been strength training, but I'm confident it'll come. His offense was a damned revelation. He started by taking an array of jumpers and when the bigs started chasing him outside, he slashed hard. He missed it but there was a scoop lay-up attempt that belongs almost solely to quality slashing guards. He hardly forced a thing and this was a night with no foolish defensive fouls. He was locked in and aggressive, never backed down and really just showed the IT factor.
RoLo: Our third best starter in spite of the pedestrian numbers. 12,3 and 3 but the rebounding total was highly affected by Calderon's inability to keep TP out of the paint. You wanna know why TP shot a poor FG%? Because RoLo was there to meet him a LOT, which is also why he was pulling up for mid range jumpers in the fourth instead of driving. But RoLo meeting him also meant some easy offensive boards for everybody and easy assists for TP...that's not on RoLo, he took away the easiest look. Overall RoLo was alright but he showed that his hook shot really isn't as effective just a couple of feet further from the rack than normal, which brings me to my almost daily proclamation that the guy needs to operate in the deep post all night long.
Jose: I can't believe he managed to be worse than his stat-line suggests. I'm an advocate of him being aggressive to keep defenses honest, but Idk what happened to his shot last night. 4,5 and 3 on 2 of 9 shooting but only 1 attempt was from 3...which is the shot he needs to be taking to improve our spacing. Those midrange takes are only useful if they're going down because he's still fading away from the paint on every one of those. The assists were mainly gimmes. Defensively, the Spurs plotted to attack him directly through screen and roll plays and it worked all night. If the big man didn't flash to TP, Parker would get a lay-up but when the bigs did, Calderon couldn't do much to prevent passes or rebounds from the weakside. He got annihilated everywhere last night.
AA: Was probably worse than Jose last night except for the final 3 or 4 minutes of the game. 3-8 for 8 points, 4 assists which was nice and 4 boards which is cool too. But 2 makes and 6 points came in those final minutes on desperation threes which showed some clutch (or luck) meaning that for 35 minutes or more he was invisible on offense. He couldn't get post position or utilize post ups enough to make anything big occur. Defensively was where he was REALLY bad. When we hid Calderon on Danny Green late, Danny Green was far less of a threat than the rest of the night. It just seemed like AA couldn't keep guys in front of him and when neither guard is keeping cats in front of him, our entire defense is going to struggle on the interior. He needed to be better.
Galloway: This was beginning of the season Galloway.5-9 for 11 points, 2 assists and 5 boards but when he was in and moving the ball things looked more smooth. He picked his spots and his boards were the only ones that led to fast break attacks. He made clutch plays late. Defensively he wasn't particularly good but better than Calderon is something I guess. He has a habit of being too strict about following the gameplan which means our "switch to stop 3 pointers" concept gets him caught on an island with big guys in the post too much. He's at his best pushing the pace and he was the only one that managed to do that for us.
Grant: Pedestrian numbers don't tell the whole story. 2-4, 6 points 2 and 2 but he could have had more assists in that second quarter run. He struggled in the second half but that second quarter when he and KP ran pick and pop sets was a thing of beauty. Grant used the screens from a nice distance to force the defense to collapse inside and got it to guys. At one point his man tried to cheat to the other side of the screen and Grant just didn't faked toward the pick then took a wide open lane. He's really smart at utilizing the pick and roll/pop and he has better vision than any of our guards. He's also not bad on defense, at a couple of points he got stuck in the post on bigs (that switching thing again) and he actually made things hard for his oversized opposition.
Lance: Lance balled for one quarter when we really coulda used it. He put up 8 in the first and forced the Spurs to stop cheating off of him which meant improved spacing when he was on the floor later; I'll take that...but he needs to not force crap just because he was doing well early. Defensively he was really good in the first, but had some trouble when matched with Kawhi later on (can't blame him for that). He had some nice hustle plays throughout the night but I have a feeling the forces got his minutes cut (shout out to Fish tightening that leash a bit). 10 and 1 board; not to pile on but the guy has really bad hands and spacial awareness on boards and threw one of the most inexplicable passes that I have ever seen in my life. He's gotta give something more than defense to really be a positive sum player, so for three quarters he was tough to keep out there.
D-Will: The Spurs interior defense had this dude completely out of sorts and unwilling to attack the rack which immediately makes him lose value. Defensively, they put big men to post him up damn near his entire time out there and the Knicks left him on an island to be abused by bigger, stronger players in the post. That's not really fair to him imo, we know he's undersized and expecting him to keep David West from backing into deep position with plenty of space and clock is like expecting Lance Thomas to be our point forward. He needed help. Where I'll give him credit and say there's signs of growth was that he really chased boards in spite of only grabbing three, he got his hands on things and fought for some that he just lost to bigger guys. He also didn't force anything, 3 attempts that were all reasonable attempts. That said, he gave us nothing but a couple of moral victories and boards.
Fish: This was a regression from him. Recently he's seen momentum shifting and attacked that ish with an immediate time out or substitution. In this one, he waited too long on a few occasions and let things get out of hand. The waiting too long meant substitutions of 3 players at once akin to his old line changes that I've hated forever. I didn't think he utilized pick and pop with KP at the C enough in the second half which was exacerbated by never telling guys to double the post player, meaning KP (and D-Will) became a negative on defense. He switched Calderon to guard Green way too late in the game, it was a smart move but again, too late (only the fourth quarter). Where he deserves credit though is that his TO's were effective. We had the alley oop play drawn up that was a beauty but he also called time out with us down 12 and we came out and went on a run (the antithesis of the Chicago game). I LIKE the decision not to call time out on the last play and keep the Spurs from pulling TP off the floor. He coached from the sideline well there too. I also really loved that when Calderon missed the three he showed the awareness to console MELO instead of Calderon who is mentally strong enough to handle that miss whereas Melo was visibly beating himself up. Look, there's a lot to ride him for and complain about, but there's also promise between quality games from his side the previous 5 (I'm giving a mulligan to Chicago because of the impact it had after) and the fact that even though he was late on decisions; they mostly made sense when they did happen.
Random: Until Robert Randolph is fired, I'll never trust our guys on a Friday Night...It's not even logical, I don't think we've been bad on Fridays at all, not even last night...but old hatred dies hard. Let's get the Hawks organ player and have him freestyle some crap. I bet Jose's shot goes in if the organ version of Jumpman is rocking right before he shoots...still can't get over that fire they got over there.
did that, so hopefully we wouldn't have to go thru that
