Mr. D'Antoni & Mr. Walsh Optimistic About Season And Giving Hints

As the offseason began to grow duller and duller D'Antoni's and Walsh's lips were sealed tighter and tighter but with the season opener only a little over a month away, the two spilled some beans for us to dissect. Kevin Clark of The Wall Street Journal wrote a non-bias article with a few quotes from the two-headed dragon you see above. He doesn't write with biasness to Knicks but he doesn't overly praise them either. I don't know about you folks but I rather read an article of middle ground such as this one more so than one from a Knick hater or Knick lover. If he is a Knicks fan he did a good job hiding it, the article is rational and not overly aggressive on love or hate for the team. Let's check out some of these quotes. 

"You're talking about some of the best athletes in the world," Mr. D'Antoni said of this year's team. "That's the difference. There's going to be some athletic plays in The Garden that we haven't seen for a while."

- Mike D'Antoni

D'Antoni sounds pretty confident with that statement. Not to take away anything from our group of guys but I'd say we have one of the best athletes in the world with Amare Stoudemire, maybe we get lucky and have two or three with Anthony Randolph or that other guy. I'm so looking forward to those athletic plays he mentioned, we cheered louder than 90% of any other NBA team's fans when we had no chance to make the playoffs in a meaningless game so imagine the noise next year. Boner...

Ten players in total were added, all to Mr. D'Antoni's liking. He has new luxuries—he said he may even have to change his philosophy of regularly playing as few as eight players and expand his rotations to as many as 11.

- Kevin Clark

Although this isn't a direct quote from D'Antoni himself, I don't believe a writer for the Wall Street Journal would blatantly lie and put words in D'Antoni's mouth, that being said this definitely raises an eyebrow. Originally I had the rotation being set around 10 men and that was considered being a reach. Amare Stoudemire, Ronny Turiaf, Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Kelenna Azubuike, Timofey Mozgov, Toney Douglas, Roger Mason Jr. and Anthony Randolph. I had Bill Walker, Landry Fields, Andy Rautins, Eddy Curry and Patrick Ewing Jr. missing the cut. If D'Antoni is thinking about going with 11 men in his rotation who gets in? I have an unknown personal vendetta on Bill Walker so I'll leave him out of the question and go with the Summer League bombshell Landry Fields. It would be best to work him in little by little now and not wait a couple of years before we test him, we don't want rust on the young fella. We've argued about D'Antoni's rotation and the amount of players that would make it and this may cause some to reconsider. Boner #2... 

Speaking with the media on Wednesday, Mr. D'Antoni admitted he probably got a pass from fans for the first two seasons (though, he joked, it sure didn't feel like it).

"[I've never entered a season] like this, but I'm thrilled about it," Mr. D'Antoni said of the mostly new team.

"I'm glad it's like this where it's a blank slate and we have a lot of very athletic, talented, young enthusiastic basketball players."

I really hope we can gel and play well together not just for the sake of my own personal gratitude but for the sake of D'Antoni staying with the team and getting a nice, lengthy extension offer from upstairs. I don't want to see D'Antoni go and he realizes that this team has to produce or it's all going to fall on his shoulders, there is no margin for error this year. We've given him the pieces to make a respected team, yes there are some hurdles that he has to get by but there really is no excuses this year. I'm glad he's happy about the team and he' gotten players that he wanted but it's time to produce. 

Some core players will return from last year—among them, forward Danilo Gallinari who Mr. D'Antoni said will shoot more three-pointers and could pair up with Mr. Randolph as a very tall shooting guard-small forward combination.

- Kevin Clark

Again, not a direct quote from D'Antoni himself but still believable due to credibility damage. Am I a genius or what? I've been praising this combo for quite some time now and I know many of you have also so I won't take all of the credit, just 99.4% of it. Its unknown who would play at the 2 position since D'Antoni didn't say but if he is thinking about going to this ultra supreme combo I could see both frequently switching back and forth. Originally I envisioned Gallo playing at the 2 and Randolph at the 3 but I've changed my mind on that thought. I think Randolph would be more capable of taking advantage of 2's on the offensive end using his big man speed and toughness to get to the paint far more easily then Gallo would. I would rather see him there more but either way I'll be looking forward to the duo. "The Skyscrapers", "The Skyline"? The Twin Towers would be nice but that's a touchy subject. Meh, the combo deserves a nickname people! Boner #3...    

Early returns from players are encouraging. Mr. Felton's control and pacing of the offense has been praised by several teammates.

Mr. Randolph said earlier this month that his work with Mr. Felton and Mr. Stoudemire on the pick-and-roll will add a new dimension to the offense. Mr. Randolph also said Mr. Felton looks comfortable running the offense.

-Kevin Clark

Ok, this whole "Mr" thing is starting to really creep me out. On a different note I'm really excited about Felton. There's absolutely no way he's worst than Chris Duhon, it's literally impossible. Felton will drive to the rim, he isn't scared to take it to the hoop and lay it up like Duhon was. The guy would have a wide open lane, back up and dish it to Gallo, just take it to the rim DuDu maybe you'll draw a foul!? Anyway, Felton is the opposite of that, he's a gritty soldier and Randolph and Stoudemire should help him and his numbers tremendously. Run that offense Felton and make me proud. Boner #4...

Mr. D'Antoni has stressed defense this season with the additions as well. Where did the team get better on defense, according to him?

"Go ahead and pick a position," Mr. D'Antoni deadpanned.

Mr. D'Antoni said the team was assembled with defensive size in mind, especially arm length. The defensive flexibility of the team is seen at shooting guard where any number of oversize players—Mr. Randolph, Mr. Gallinari or Wilson Chandler, can play.

"We're going to have the high-powered offense that gets up and down and scores points, but it's also going to be high-powered on the defensive end," said Mr. Randolph. "We're going to stop people with myself, Amar'e and Ronny Turiaf controlling the paint and blocking shots."

Defense... One of the main negatives on our team last year. Take a look at this...

The team went 29-53 last season and the offense averaged 102.1 points per game, ninth in the league, while struggling defensively, giving up 105.9 points per game, the fourth-highest total in the league.

We had a team full of outlaws that should have never played in the same jersey together and still managed to be ninth in the league in offensive scoring. D'Antoni's system put up points which is no secret at all; on the other hand we were horrible at defense and gave up more points than we averaged. We now have a team sculptured as perfectly as humanly possible with the cards that were dealt to us. The past two years have been garbage time and yet we still had impressive wins and put up an impressive amount of points, this team is 10x's better than last year's team so one could imagine that we will be even more of a threat. The only scary thought comes from our defensive end. Is this team better defensively then last year's squad? I'd say so. As I've stated before, defense is in the DNA of some of our players and we can feed off of each other. If we had Rex Ryan somewhere on our coaching staff we'd win make it to the damn finals. Hehehe. Boner #5

All of the good vibes are not, however, an indication that the team has ruled out making moves. Just two months after being snubbed by Mr. James, the new potential star on the move is Denver forward Carmelo Anthony.

Team president Donnie Walsh said on Wednesday he will not discuss trades, and especially not talk about Mr. Anthony since he said that would single out a particular player.

He did say that part of his job is to see if he can acquire an elite player—but warned that he wouldn't make a trade that would decimate the team and "leave you back where you started."

I know some of you guys hate the idea of trading for Carmelo Anthony for different reason but maybe Walsh can ease your pain a little. He's against trading for any player (Most likely HWSNBN2) that would lead to us destroying our team. I'm guessing he won't 1) Give up too much youth, 2) Take on a horrible contract or 3) Trade away any of our future 1st round picks. There may be some other factors that he refuses to do but those are guaranteed to be some. Donnie is a very smart man, he knows how to do business and if we do trade for Carmelo I don't think it'll be before the season. I think Donnie is going to hold his ground, drag this thing out as far as he can and steal Carmelo a couple of weeks before the deadline by parting ways with Walker, Curry and maybe a second round pick. I trust in Donnie and so should you.

All in all, I've gotten 5 boners from here and I think I need to sleep them off ASAP. For now it's nap time, Read The Full Article Here