9 replies to this topic

[Red94]

New post: Preview: Houston Rockets @ New York Knicks

[Red94]

New post: Recap: Houston Rockets 109, New York Knicks 96

[Jeby]

Call me over-optimistic, but I don't think the Rockets beat the Knicks because Carmelo was out. They won because the Knicks (except for Melo's replacement) couldn't buy a three. A team that has been winning off of taking and making a ton of threes went 9/31 from downtown.
I didn't get to see the game, but I'm going to assume from past experience that NY didn't miss those shots because Houston did just such a great job of closing out on shots.
Lin got in their heads. He owns the deed to MSG, and they know it.

[Sam]

dude, this is terrible writing. this quality of work truly makes me respect the blog a little less. concepts are alright but the sentences just don't flow. i couldn't finish the article all the way through.

[tombrokeoff]

didnt read it but glad we won

[Sir Thursday]

I thought we played excellently tonight, and there were some great coaching decisions that helped that happen. The one in particular that I noticed was that the players had obviously been told to go under every single Felton pick-and-roll. It seems that irrespective of where he is on the court, if you go under a pick on Felton he will shoot it. It was like clockwork, and most of the shots were inefficient long 2s. Even though Felton made quite a few of them to start with, it completely disrupted the flow of the Knicks' offence. They were no longer getting penetration to free up their outside shooters, and the ball was stopping in Felton's hands. Eventually his shots stopped falling and the Knicks went into a slump.

It also seemed like Lin was penetrating along the baseline a lot more often than I've seen him do in the past. The Rockets used that backdoor play really nicely early in the season but I hadn't seen it for 10-15 games, so it was nice to see it make a reappearance tonight (although IIRC there was at least one instance where the Knicks used it themselves to good effect!)

ST

[Rahat Huq]

Didn't watch this game, so a question to those who did: was Lin's performance more a product of effort from himself or a coaching adjustment to help get him better involved?

[amacbrooks12]

I think I was the only one on this forum that watched this game in HD tv due to the fact that I live in New York myself. It was an amazing game to watch, but it was beautiful seeing Harden and Lin both playing well together. Its games like this that make me believe in Lin, games like this make me believe Lin will figure out how to co-exist with Harden. There's so much to say about how well we played and how fun it was to watch the game but Paul pretty much said what had to be said.

To answer Rahat's question, it was a combination of both. To open the game up the coaching staff ran a back door play for Lin and had him coming off screens quite a few times throughout the game ( something they haven't done all season ) . Lin was being very aggressive by driving, being less passive, and taking more shots so it was also Lin's effort that helped him performed the way he did. By the way, Harden also chipped in to Lin's performance even though he only had 3 assist. I noticed Harden gave up several shots he normally takes to let Lin go isolation or to let him make plays. Either way, whatever combinations or reasons you want to use to explain Lin's performance, it was a great game by our back court and I hope they finally figured it out.

[bob schmidt]

It seemed to me that Harden and Lin had a plan that they would take turns, to a degree, leading the attack from the top of the key. A number of times Harden passed to Lin and then moved to a position on the low key three point line and waited for Lin to handle the ball and penetrate or pick and roll. By the same token, on some plays Lin passed to Harden and then ran the floor to the baseline and cut across the restricted zone creating movement which Harden used to penetrate.

The point is that they seemed to be comfortable "taking turns" being the focal point of the attack. It was a much better flowing offense than trying to force the ball low into the post only to see it stripped as often as not. Incidentally, while Asik's numbers looked way off, he greatly disrupted Chandler's shots and contested the rim successfullyl. The whole team actively pursued for rebounds, and took many of Asik's potential rebounds. I thought that he played well, despite a lousy looking stat line at game's end.

[ale11]

Like Bob said, Asik's stats didn't impress anyone, but he hustled with Chandler and prevented him from taking lots of rebounds, which made the rest take them, since they seemed more active that their Knicks' counterpart. It's all about hustle, and that's why we are bandwagoning for Smith, praising for Morris' development from his rookie season, and starting to accept Douglas as a competent part of the rotation (not sure if he should be the primary backup PG, but he deserves some minutes for sure), because they hustle, they want to play and let's face it, NO ONE expected us to be at .500 right now, correct me if I'm wrong. We have all been surprised by our team's performance so far, let's not get carried away. Right now, our only two problems are the logjam on the PF withour really knowing if White is ever coming back and stablishing chemistry, mostly between Lin and Harden. The Beard is going to be productive, almost great most of the nights, but we need Lin to be consistently confident and capable of running an offense without feeling he must be the primary option.

It also seemed like Lin was penetrating along the baseline a lot more often than I've seen him do in the past. The Rockets used that backdoor play really nicely early in the season but I hadn't seen it for 10-15 games, so it was nice to see it make a reappearance tonight (although IIRC there was at least one instance where the Knicks used it themselves to good effect!)

ST

Those 10-15 games were coached by Sampson, and we all know he was more interested in winning games more than anything. That team had almost no defense and the offense ran through The Beard most of the time, now that McHale is back we should expect to see a more democratic offense, which is the best interest for us as a whole, and not pushing Harden to a scoring title.