In today's Knicks at Wizards: Francis 9 pts 4 rebs 2 ast 3 TOs MoT 2 pts 4 rebs 1 ast 5 TOs http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AsiDBg41031E4QOuXlXdSY.8vLYF?gid=2006022527 Glad that they are not with us now.
Either SF, Marbury or both allowed Arenas go for 46 points on 81% shooting FG and 70% on 3s. Nice backcourt there Isiah.
Everybody 'complains' about the Francis/Marbuty back court and says they need more than one ball. But Mo Taylor is a black hole and Jalen Rose is even worse. There are not enough basketballs in the world for the Knicks as they currently line up.
i dont undesrtand why francis became public enemy no.1. everyone and their mother is completely trashing the guy lately, and i don't think it's warranted. he's not a selfish player, yet he gets mentioned as one of the most selfish in the game. the guy took 9 shots today. in his last game in orlando, it was single digits too. he does not take half as many shots as most second or even third options on his team. people who call him a ballhog don't watch him play nor do they know what theyre talking about. this really bothers me.
Francis isnt, knicks were terrible before he got there. I would put more blame on players like Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford, Q, Mo-tay, etc. Starbury,Franchise, and Frye Look pretty solid and just need someone to put them in the right direction. Hopefully Larry Brown will. Watch out for next years knicks.
There is not a GM in the league that can even get that team on track next season...they are truly in salary cap hell, and the group they have isn't going to do much. I think the maximum games this group, as is, could ever win is about 40. Plenty of talent on offense, but too much at the same time. And Channing Frye is the closest thing they have to a good defender...the rest of the guys are pretty poor individually on defense, and even worse as a group. I think they need to keep either Marbury or Francis (not both), Curry, and Frye and build around that with role players. Do whatever they can to get rid of Rose, Q-Rich, Crawford, and Mo Taylor and bring in some players that fit around the core players.
I have always said that once Francis starts to lose his athleticism, he will be out of the league. He relies too much on that factor to succeed, he has never developed an understanding of the game. Guys like Stockton and Nash will be around for a LONG time because they can do things to make the game easy for their teamates. Steve is the typical...burn out early guy. Sad, really. DD
Larry Brown is part of the problem as well, the Knicks don't look comfortable playing together. You see passes going to spots where a player just vacated, poor defensive rotations and missed assignments, just like you see in an All-Star game where players have never played with each other. Brown needs to have a shorter rotation, right now everybody is getting minutes. The keys for the Knicks to turn around this mess is for Curry to become a dominant big man?? and for them to convert Q, Crawford, James, Rose and MoT into some useful players and picks.
pure hatred . . . . . for no reason than they just hate him LEt McGrady falter. . they will hate him too Some folx are just hatefilled Rocket River
I feel sorry for Francis. He's in an impossible situation in New York. People are already calling him a bust two games into his career with the Knicks. He's getting heckled for no reason other then being on a team that is a not a team but a collection of talent. His career in Orlando was marked as well by ineptitude by management (Mobley for Christie??? , etc.) and his days with the Rockets he was basically a one man show, tagged with the franchise moniker since his rookie days. Other players like Odom and KMart get paid as much, underachieve as much, but get nearly the heat he does.
I think some of you guys are getting down on SF3 a bit too much. First of all, he doesn't attempt that many shots anymore, not in his latter days in Orlando and not that many shots either now that he's in NYC. The real issue here is that SF3 is not a good passer, he's not a good point guard, he never was and never will be, he's one of those classic examples of a "SG in a PG body" type of players, much like Marbury is. Those guys are a dime a dozen in the league today, the in-thing is a pass-first PG in the league if you haven't noticed lately, you can thank Steve Nash for that, he made pass-first PGs cool again. Even celebrated youngsters like Chris Paul are good passers and play more of a traditional PG role, all the while scoring when their teams need it. So I don't think Stevie is selfish, I really don't think he is at all, he's just not a good PG or a SG for that matter since he's undersized and doesn't play much defense. I hope NYC does well, and I hope the best for Stevie, he's still one of fav players, but sadly his 'natural' game is just not one that's conducive to winning, especially on a team with other scorers that requires Francis to end up being more of a passer than a scorer, which is a role he's not best fit to play. JVG forced him to change his game and while it hurt his personal stats, the team overall was better for it. However, that's just not Stevie's game. He needs to be on a team where there is no one else to share with and he can freestyle at will; he needs a free-running system. Most importantly, Stevie needs to be happy enough to care to play or you will get nothing out of him. I don't think he's been happy since he left Houston and especially since Mobely left him, I think it took away his comfort zone and he's been kind of depressed ever since, his game certainly hasn't been the same this entire season.
Wrong number. I think he meant pgabriel and his ThomaSPINerator 2500 Post Generator machine. (The FranciSPINerator 2000 machine is down for repairs.) Okay, I bust on pgab, but I'm gonna agree with him on Francis this time. (See, he doesn't even have to post for me to know what he's going to say.) Everyone is expecting Francis to be the savior of the Knicks, yet everyone KNOWS that's not gonna happen. So the media and fans rag on him, anyway, because they're bitter. Bitter at Zeke for being an assclown and bitter at Dolan for not firing the assclown. In everyone's eyes, Francis has become the manifestation of everything that is wrong with the Knicks, and that's not fair at all. (That distinction should belong to Curry.) Francis has, so far, said all the right things and played his game. But, that's enough for the NY Daily News, NY Post, and rabid fans. They want a knight in shining armor on a white horse. They want wins. They want Zeke gone. But Francis can only do his thing and nothing more. So, before Stevie even took the court, he had already lost. Sad situation, really. But, hey, that's NY.
He gets busted on a lot because of how much he was praised before. It's that whole "the bigger they are the harder they fall thing". A few years back, when Francis was averaging 20 5 and 5, people where talking about him with the likes of Kevin Garnett and Grant Hill. Others among us recognized the limitations in his game, but the majority were slobbering all over him. Now he is only in the top ten in turnovers and was traded for the expiring contract of Penny Hardaway. It is a bit of an "I told you so" situation. Oh yeah, there is also the fact that Kelvin Cato netted the Magic more in a trade than Fancy did.
