Miles Davis
Prince of Darkness
I was thinking the same thing, all scenic in the background like damnDamn...That’s a nice looking practice facility.
Meanwhile Dolan has our guys practicing at the YMCA...
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I was thinking the same thing, all scenic in the background like damnDamn...That’s a nice looking practice facility.
Meanwhile Dolan has our guys practicing at the YMCA...
![]()

Nailted it...Did any player actually show progress under Fizdale? Is Frank the only one? The guy who turned the corner in France playing for a different coach?
all of our young players played well enough under fizz last season for you guys to say they have a future with the team. we've played 20 games this year, thats not enough time to show progress with anything. especially considering the injuries, and especially considering 8 players were brought in to take playing time away from the players we are developing
i dont understand why you guys dont get that.
even rj has been ballin this season.
this theory that fizz was holdin back young players is hilarious lol.
you guys keep actin like these guys are grown ups, they are 19/20 year old kids. you guys preach patience, but stay in panic mode
).fam playin well and then coming down to earth is what rookies doWho got better though? Can you point to anyone? Not RJ...everyone acknowledges that he started hot and has come back down to Earth[/B]. Knox? Mitch? DSJ? Even the one guy yall loved to point to, Mudiay is on his trash tip (Just 2 points in 6 of his last 7 performances).
Listen, you can complain about the roster. It's bad. The players aren't good and the decent ones are mismatched. But there's literally NOTHING tangible you can point to that says "Fizdale did good at that thing" unless you want to play the "players liked him" card. In terms of the team getting better at anything or even individual players improving...you've got nothing. So what exactly is there to cape for? This ain't the hill to die for and it's not panic mode to fire a dude who doesn't have a single success to point to after 102 games coaching this team. He should at least have SOMETHING that makes him worth fighting for. All you've got is complaining about everyone else and pretending that the young guys were gonna suddenly turn it around if only they got another 30 games getting blown out in 10 of 'em.




Selectively read brehsYou're blaming Fizdale for R.J. being who R.J. has been.
Misread posts brehsso wait, so now portland has a bad coach? the same coach who just went to the western conference finals and won 2 straight series as a underdog![]()
PORTLAND, Ore. — If Knicks rookie RJ Barrett has noticed anything different about interim coach Mike Miller, it’s a new defensive focus with a strategy of less switching on pick-and-rolls.
Miller staged a two-hour practice Monday at the Nike campus in nearby Beaverton, installing a few more new things. The Knicks will play their second game since David Fizdale was fired as coach, beginning their four-game Western trip against the Trail Blazers.
“He’s a different guy — of course it’s going to be a little different,’’ Barrett said. “[We’re] trying to lock in on the defensive end. [We’re] trying to fight through picks and try not to give up anything easy. It’s two different kind of styles, two different ways of coaching.”
Miller’s buzzword is bringing more “consistency’’ to the Knicks, who have a 4-19 record and are riding a nine-game losing streak. Fizdale was canned Friday with an eight-game skid and a 3-point defense that ranked second-worst in the NBA.

Miller, whose much less garrulous than Fizdale, said he’s tried to just be basic.
“We were working on the things that we need to do and really get a good feel, continue to work with our consistency of how we play possession to possession,’’ Miller said. “That’s what our focus is. These guys are pros. These guys have been great. We’ve really started in real simple terms that we want to be better at what we’re doing every possession, really getting to those things and sticking to it. Not worried about a big broad range of things. Let’s lock in these areas where we’ve shown we can be pretty good. Let’s do it for longer stretches.”
Knicks President Steve Mills and general manager Scott Perry, who attended practice along with player developmental guru Craig Robinson, had harped on “consistent effort’’ when they staged their Nov. 10 press conference that turned into Fizdale’s death knell. Fizdale’s Knicks career ended with back-to-back blowout losses to Milwaukee and Denver during which the club was beaten by a combined 81 points.
Miller also said moving the ball — a Fizdale theme — is high on the agenda.
“I think every team is searching for that,’’ Miller said. “It just creates different things within the offense. It doesn’t matter really what you’re doing. It’s more of the concept. It’s not what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. When the ball moves it improves everything.”

Barrett, whose shooting percentage had dipped to 40 percent after a strong start, said the club has done well in moving on from Fizdale. The Knicks lost 104-103 to Indiana on Saturday in Miller’s debut when the defense was stalwart.
“It’s tough,’’ Barrett said. “We responded great the other night in the game. Played a real good game except at the end. This is a business. We’re pros. Stuff will happen. We have a whole season to go and move on.”
fam playin well and then coming down to earth is what rookies do
were you expecting him to maintain that level for the entire season, hes 20 games in and hes 19![]()
he will start playin well again eventually (im sure you will credit miller for that) and he will go another rough streak again like all rookies do like wtf
sayin you dont see improvement after 20 games in 82 game season doesnt make sense. barrett mitch knox have all played for well during stretches and they will play well again. we are talkin about rookies and second year players here.
and you continue to ignore how all da roster moves negatively impacted them before da season even started lol.
the agenda is clear as day
whole league laughin at us for a reason
1. This pivot to "you gotta give young players time" is completely disingenuous from the "Frank is the worst player in the NBA" brigade.
2. Yes, young players are inconsistent. However, we can make judgements based on how young players are utilized with regards to whether or not their failure is just inconsistency or being affected by other factors. Here's a blatantly obvious example: Kevin Knox starting at Shooting Guard.
But he's starting right? Well no. At the 2 guard, he's defended by someone who will have an easier time sticking close to him on the perimeter while both closing out and recovering on him thanks to the speed difference. Knox doesn't have the strength, ball handling or finishing ability to take advantage of his size advantage either.
Here's another example: Playing Mitch in front of a backcourt of DSJ/Dotson/Knox.
Why? Because DSJ and Knox give up frequent blow by's. Dot's better in this regard but he falls into ball watching lapses and gives up backdoor cuts. In all three cases, you're creating free runners into the paint that require a weakside rotation. This exacerbates Mitchell's biggest flaw, foul trouble. That's the one thing that has held him back even on good nights.
So now we've established that a coaching decision can negatively impact a player's ability to have success and consistency.
RJ will start playing well again for sure, probably very soon. That's because Mike Miller had the Knicks running more pick and rolls, a play that runs to RJ's biggest strengths and also takes advantage of Randle's and Mitch's strengths as roll men. That's a Mike Miller move though. Fizdale's Knicks ran low volume Pick and Rolls, that got an uptick when his job was on the line but Miller still blew him out of the water in terms of how many pick and rolls were run and ended with the ball handler or roll man taking the shot. This is also a reflection of the better spacing that Miller worked with for most of the night. Note that both of these tweaks, while small, are accomplishing the reverse of the examples above.
In the examples above, David Fizdale put players in positions to fail. Knox can't keep up with 2's or get separation from them. Mitch can't avoid fouls while constantly having to make weakside help plays (and I could go even deeper on how the switching scheme makes this even more problematic). The paragraph above is coach Mike Miller putting RJ into a position to play to his strengths. His jumper is inconsistent but he's got crazy strength and good vision. So spacing the floor better and letting RJ run more PnR creates the opportunities to get inside more easily and utilize his strength for finishes or his vision to find rollers or kickouts.
Nobody is doing this. I've repeatedly said that the front office made a bad situation, but my take is that Fizdale made it worse. I've said that everyone has to go. So when you do this sort of BS commentary even though I've said everyone should be fired repeatedly (including in quotes to you), it starts to feel like you're more interested in caping for Fizdale than you are in having an honest discussion. It's possible to acknowledge that this is a bad team while pointing out that the coach is making mistakes too.
Fizdale wasn't THE problem, but he was OBVIOUSLY one of a number of problems. Could Perry and Mills have made things easier for him? Absolutely. Did Perry and Mills force Fizdale to run a switch-everything defense or an offense more predicated on dribble hand-offs than pick and rolls? Hell no. So here's my big take: Perry, Mills and Fizdale have all done a shytty job. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow. It'd be nice to just blame one person for everything. But this is a collective dumpster fire.
Yes, your agenda is obvious. You've gone from "defense doesn't matter and we didn't need an offensive system last season because we were just too bad" to "It's the front office's fault that the defense is bad and the offensive system sucks." You want the league to stop laughing at us? Expect better from EVERYONE and don't make excuses for Fizdale. Or at the very least, figure out one positive accomplishment from Fizdale's tenure and instead of making excuses for the things he did a miserable job with, counter with what he was doing well...problem is he wasn't doing anything well...

all of our young players played well enough under fizz last season for you guys to say they have a future with the team. we've played 20 games this year, thats not enough time to show progress with anything. especially considering the injuries, and especially considering 8 players were brought in to take playing time away from the players we are developing
i dont understand why you guys dont get that.
even rj has been ballin this season.
this theory that fizz was holdin back young players is hilarious lol.
you guys keep actin like these guys are grown ups, they are 19/20 year old kids. you guys preach patience, but stay in panic mode
Funny enough, RJ’s play has been down hill since his experiment at PG...frank is three years in and still playin scared (althought i acknowledged his improvement) apples and oranges
knox started at sg for 1 or 2 games. its called experimenting. u guys flipped out when rj started at pg twice earlier in da season as well and he didnt start there again. nothing wrong wit tryin things out
- i dont care that fizz is just fired, im just smart enough to know hes not the issue. i shall await the next scapegoat
you said rj will start playin well again soon because of mike miller. cool. so when he was playin well before ( 26 and 9 vs celtics, 21 and 5 vs spurs, 19 and 15 vs bulls, 22 and 5 against charlotte etc) was that also because of the coach or nah?
also when i said "defense doesnt matter" or whatever i was more referencing us needing a point guard or more offensive players. in todays league, defense is secondary whether you like it or not. all da good teams got great offensive players. something we lack.
our defensen has improved this year btw, hasnt led to wins tho. i knew what it was when posters in here said its fiz's fault we are the worst free throwing team in the league![]()
i just ask that he shows flashes. hes played well in close to half our games.RJ hasn’t been good man.
I’m gonna need Dolan to meddle and tell these clowns to sit the fukk down.