Carmelo Anthony got his wish.
Make no mistake, this was a case of the player prevailing over the coach as Mike D’Antoni “resigned” today in a mutual decision made with owner Jim Dolan, according to the breaking news story by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, who scooped everyone.
But there clearly had been a developing conflict between Anthony and D’Antoni over offensive philosophy, and Dolan had to choose sides with the team on a six-game losing streak heading into tonight’s game against Portland (whose coach, Nate McMillan, just happens to be on the hot seat himself, and is one of Anthony’s favorite people).
Despite the team’s success playing without Anthony (they have lost 8 of 10 games since his return from a wrist injury after going 7-1 without him), the Knicks — especially Dolan — have too much invested in him to allow his growing rift with D’Antoni to knock them out of a playoff seeding.
Expect to see Anthony as more of a primary ballhandler under interim coach Mike Woodson, who presumably will hold the job until Phil Jackson is asked to take it (Our Hall of Fame columnist, Mark Heisler, spoke with Jackson about the Knicks job in this recent column.)
The Knicks (18-24) are tied with Milwaukee for the eighth seed, just one game ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers. They are 2-11 when Anthony, who is shooting a career-low 40 percent from the field, takes 20 or more shots.
Columnist Moke Hamilton has weighed in. An except:
“Ultimately, the apparent struggle between Anthony and D’Antoni was all about philosophy and system. The bigger issue for the Knicks, however, is that a fair amount of players in the locker room are loyal to D’Antoni and believed in his offensive system. Whether or not that will prevent the Knicks from coming together and ending their losing streak remains to be seen. Privately, I’ve been told that Anthony didn’t like playing for D’Antoni and was hoping that the head coach wouldn’t be brought back.”
Click here to read the rest of Hamilton’s column.
Never liked D’Antoni’s playing style either, you have to remember he came from a Western conf. where all he did as a coach was run up the score without playing any defense. And we all know defense wins. Second he has to have a gel mentality, meaning you have to adjust to your players if you want your players to adjust to you. Nice guys don’t win games, DEFENSE does. Let us hope we can gain some of that momentum back to POSSIBLE bring up back to the 7th seed and give Woodson a chance, he some damage with the Hawks.
Here’s the thing: D’Antoni was hired to coach LBJ and Chris Bosh, but what nobody knew was those two and D-Wade had other ideas. So, the next logical thing to do for a *business* is to go out and get the next best available thing so that you can compete in the market.
So, that’s the *business* decision the organization made. One small problem: “the next best thing” didn’t work with the coach they had in place. In retrospect, the whole “hire the coach to attract the player” strategy backfired. Donnie Walsh got that one wrong. He could have cleared the cap space just as he did with Herb Williams coaching for the last four years – and the Knicks still would have ended up with the same squad they have right now. Let’s be clear – there’s 100 million reasons Amar’e and Carmelo came to NYC, and Mike D’Antoni wasn’t one of them.
This discussion is interesting for me because I was SO pro-D’Antoni, as recently as the Xmas Day opener. But then I started noticing some things, the most obvious of which was this: how come the league’s best post-up player, and one of the 5 most efficient finishers around the rim, is playing 22 feet from the basket every night?
This, of course, was after the Melo/Point-Forward experiment – which was really out of necessity more than it was out of choice for D’Antoni or Melo. I think the fact that Toney Douglas has been buried on the bench since….. well, basically, the day after Xmas – and now they’re actively trying to trade him – speaks volumes to that point. Ironically, that exact same experiment would have worked flawlessly with LeBron, which brings me back to my original point – which was the Knicks never got the guy who they thought was gonna be the perfect fit for the coach they got.
So, in short, there’s only one thing that this squad really needs to do: get a head start on learning the triangle offense. Because the truth is, the triangle is perfect for this collection of atlhletes. Do they have the basketball IQ to execute it? I don’t know the answer to that question. But if they did, they would really be deadly, like Knicks fans thought they would this year.
I love how people point to Carmelo being there as the reason the NYk are slumping but the fact is that during Linsanity the Knicks beat 2 teams with winning records. Now they are facing teams every night with a winning record and they cant win. The flaws of the coaching staff are being exposed just as the flaws of the construction of the roster has been apparent for months.
Hated D’Antoni from the minute he was hired. You cant win in NY playing that style. Also have to take issue with the fact he shows zero adaptability to play any style but his fun and gun. Im sure hes a nice but cant say I’m upset to see him gone.
The fix is there. D12 + expirings for Amare and Chandler. This isnt rocket science.
Didnt like D’Antoni, thought he failed at making players jel. A one dimensional coach trying to impose his system regardless of the players’ style he had in hands .
At the same time, the idea of relying on Caramelo as The ONE to support our future excellence is disfunctional. Real Stars are not one dimensional.
Anyway, Woodson has enough talent at his disposal to get something going till the end of the season, and maybe one or two rounds down the playoffs.
Flawed team, Great Soap Opera.
This is from “that other site:”
“D’Antoni’s resignation was first reported by Yahoo! Sports on
Wednesday. The coach’s agent, Warren LeGarie, told ESPN The Magazine’s
Ric Bucher that the parting was ‘a mutual decision’ because D’Antoni
and the franchise have ‘conflicting views of the Knicks’ future.'”
I hate to be the one to state the obvious, but I remember the same headline coming out of Phoenix in the summer of ’08.