It’s cool being on the opposite side of the spectrum. To know that, not so long ago, you were struggling to make the playoffs and felt the constant criticism of the mainstream media basking in their chance of offering their own “expert” opinion. The New York Knicks were at that point last year, but the Los Angeles Lakers are currently holding the title for “most ESPN coverage time for a struggling team”. What is eerie about this is how similar the 2011-2012 Knicks were to the 2012-2013 Lakers. I call it the crossfade of 2012.
Now, the Knicks are being regarded as an NBA powerhouse, ready to dethrone the Miami Heat from atop the top of the totem pole. The Lakers are suffering in the pits of mediocrity. They’ve been told that they don’t know who they are, that they can’t play defense, and that their offense has no fluidity. None of those arguments can be called wrong, but they are a reminder of some of the problems that the Knicks faced last year.
The NBA shortened season left a limited NBA offseason, so you might forget that is when the Knicks acquired the best available center, Tyson Chandler. The move was set to allow the guards some breathing room, if their man beat them off the dribble. The move made sense considering the Knicks needed to improve their defense but it did not fit the overall offensive system of coach Mike D’Antoni. The Knicks now had a congestion of low-post players from small forward to center who would be clogging up the lane. D’Antoni had to become innovative.
He wasn’t. He struggled to coach the team and the Lakers have had similar struggles from their offense. They don’t know how the pieces fit together and D’Antoni has the ever-allusive problem of having two post players to work with. Most thought that he would learn from his mistake of attempting to make Stoudemire a jump shooting stretch forward but he has not learned. He continues to throw the same failed attempt at the wall hoping it sticks. Laker fans should be angered. Not because he the team isn’t necessarily meshing, but because D’Antoni has seen the EXACT same issue before, and still doesn’t know how to solve it. I can confidently say that setting Pau Gasol at the 3-point line to take chuck up deep shots is not the answer.
D’Antoni has a system that stresses the need for a strong point guard that can adequately push the tempo, run the pick and roll, and distribute the ball. Acquiring Nash in the offseason led many to believe that he would be the great conductor to an offensive juggernaut. After Nash missed about seven weeks from a displaced fracture in his leg, Laker fans were begging for the return of the 2-time MVP. Since his return, the Lakers have fared marginally better going 3-3.
The Knicks placed a similar amount of insane expectations upon Baron Davis, and even more expectations on the sensation known as “Linsanity” when Davis failed to return from his injury in an acceptable amount of time. The Knicks struggled mightily without the direction of a good point guard (remember the amount of hate Toney Douglas received?). D’Antoni even seriously played around with the idea of making Anthony a point forward, making him bring the ball up for sets and essentially running the offense.
As nice of a guy as D’Antoni is, he sure does get a lot of grief for his offensive play calling. Players on both teams were never shy of voicing their displeasure of how the offense was being run. Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, and Carmelo Anthony were all guilty of saying things to the media that raised eyebrows. In a league where superstars run the league, it doesn’t help out a coach’s chance of getting players to buy in when players don’t agree with what you are doing. It forces coach’s to be flexible and willing to adjust to the players that he has, not force management’s hand by fitting the personnel that they typically run.
Lastly, we’ll finish the comparison by looking at how the coach doles out his minutes. D’Antoni once said of the newly discovered Jeremy Lin, that he was going to ride Lin like the “friggin Secretariat”. The added minutes for a player who had never had major playing time in the NBA before, who took a lot of shots from driving in the lane, and who had a mark on his back after the media attention, seemed to be a selfish move on the coach. D’Antoni placed similar extenuating minutes on Amare Stoudemire during his roaring start in New York, which wasn’t the smartest decision considering the state of his knees and the minutes he logged at center.
Kobe Bryant has averaged his highest amount of minutes since 2007-2008. D’Anonti hasn’t eased Nash and Howard back from their injuries as they are both logging minutes at their career average. His lack of depth and need to win now are two similar challenges that D’Antoni is forced to face again. The only question is, can he learn to change?
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