i agree with you here DD. he still obviously babies it and he simply cannot do that if he wants to test how far his knee can go. sure b/c he's so good he can still gets his stats but it's beyond stats. tracy mcgrady is useful to this team b/c he can break down defenses, draws the defense, and make plays. he's not doing that right now. i'm sure eventually he'll get into that. i don't think he'll start wafer. if adelman does, start him for artest, not tracy.
Did you see the Knicks strategy? It was to give the ball to TMac's man and attack him one on one. TMac is too slow and too lazy. He should sit. Period.
lol are you serious? T-mac didn't play good defense when they attacked him but the Knicks were not going at T-mac at all when he was on defense. First he was guarding Jefferies, who didn't even get the ball while T-mac was on him. Then he was guarding Duhon a bit, who didn't even attack while T-mac was guarding him. Whats the Rookie name? He attacked T-mac one time and got by him. T-mac did a bad job of getting back on transition D though. Battier was getting blown by Duhon all night. Artest man was blowing by him. David Lee was killing T-mac. To say our bad D was T-macs fault and that the Knicks strategy was to give the ball to whoever he was guarding is flat out not true.
come on man we don't need t-mac to create for others. the last time i checked that's not his job. his job is to SCORE. give me buckets like VON WAFER. this offense creates for itself. as long as you move without the ball you're going to get an open look. we don't need t-mac to create. rafer already does a fine job of that. just move without the ball, believe in the offense, and the open shots will come.
I think moving t-mac to the small forward position and starting there might make sense, and having wafer play at sg. Tmac clearly doesn't have the speed to play the point position, particularly on defense. He's not there - that's for sure. But there is a significant improvement in his play compared to before. Still, not the T-mac we're use to seeing. I don't think starting him off the bench is the solution - frankly, i don't know what is...I think we just have to give it time. With Yao back, we'll be a very good team and that's good enough to get us the 4 or 5 seed at least. We just have to hope that T-mac gets his groove back. And hopefully Artest stops trying to be a playmaker.
Wow, imagine that. We can create scoring opportunities by moving the ball and cutting without the ball? But if you're TSlack, what if you don't get your touches?
He looks very old and slow to me. He has always been in love with his jumper, now he has to rely on it because he no longer has a burst. I am hoping that he gets some explosion back but it doesn't look good. I hope he proves me very wrong, but I just don't see him ever having the impact he did just a year ago much less 4 years ago.
Umm that is not horse crap. I clearly said David Lee was killing Scola while Scola was on defense. My whole post was about defense, I thought that was pretty obvious. I did not say David Lee was killing him on both ends of the floor. I don't care if Scola got his, the defense on David Lee wasn't good.
Problem is on a lot of those contested jumpers he wasn't even getting elevation on the shot. I don't know what, but Adelman or the players are going to have to find a way to get easy shots.
He was killing our PnR defense where Lee picks and then there is a rotation that stops Lee on the roll. DD
I think moving TSlack to the bench makes the most sense. Watch the 6 games that TSlack sat out. We played with energy and kept the ball moving. We lost to the Lakers but they were helped by a HUGE 3 by Kobe and some very questionable calls. Contrast that with the games before and after when TSlack plays. It is like a completely different team ....
I would disagree with you. We squeeked out games even with Yao and lost in Indiana - that wasn't pretty offense by any means. People think that ball movement is some sort of cure-all for our offensive whoas. But it's not when our guys aren't finishing the shot. Tonight I paid close attention and noticed that we didn't get good shots off when the team was trying to create in the 4th qtr, but we were more effective when the offense initiated with t-mac. It was a mix. You look at the 4th qtrs of the game with Indiana and it was not impressive. T-mac adds so much to this team. And you can't compare with the games with Yao. Taking Yao away and bringing T-mac...we're going to struggle with a whole set of different problems. Tonight I was more disappointed with Artest than any other player.
I said our defense as a whole was our problem. My main point was our defense wasn't just T-mac's fault like Northeastfan suggested.
I agree it wasn't all TMacs fault. But when you don't box out and give up an easy put back, let your man beat you down court, get beaten easily on drives, and not close out, you're lack of defense stands out like a sore thumb.
I agree he needs to box out and get back on defense instead of being lazy. Definitely agree with that. Especially since we had no true Center out there tonight to rebound.
He was terrible. Basically, he broke down the ball movement because everytime the ball went into his hands, he either shot it or tried to become a playmaker. Honestly, he played very selfishly tonight. Very selfishly.
