This loss is completely and solely on Lawrence Frank. Frank was out coached, period. Say what you want about Vince not taking over the game, not being aggressive, shooting only 4 attempts from the foul line. That is irrelevant. The Nets scored enough points to win. Frank gets the blame because he did not adjust to Al Harrington. Al Harrington not only scored 39 points: he was also partially responsible for Tim Thomas' 26. How is that, you ask? I will explain. Harrington was a match up problem for Yi, Simmons, and Carter. He was too fast and too strong for all of them. If they played off, he would shoot mid range jumpers. If they played up, he would power through Simmons and Carter or break Yi's ankles. How did Frank respond? He put Ryan Anderson on Harrington for most of the 3rd quarter. He also kept Anderson on him, after being taken to the hole time after time after time by Harrington. I am not sure what Frank was thinking. Ryan Anderson has never been known as a great man defender, especially against someone stronger and faster. Isn't that what the Nets have Trenton Hassell for? If Hassell could guard Amare Stoudmire, why would he not be put in to guard Harrington? Stopping Harrington with man defense means less rotation help, resulting in less ball movement for the Knicks, which in turn results in less OPEN shots for Tim Thomas. Sure, there are other factors. Why wasn't Lopez in down the stretch? Why weren't other plays run to get Hayes, Vince, and Yi a few mid range jumpers off of 4 players collapsing on Devin? Why did 4 Nets run back on defense every time a jumper was shot and no one went in for the rebound? The single biggest factor out of all of these, was Frank's strategy against Harrington. Lawrence Frank needs to wake up.
More evidence: Harrington 15-16 from the foul line. That tells us that whoever was guarding him couldn't handle him and fouled him, or the help defense fouled him...
For the first, maybe second time, ever, I agree with everything you just said. Frank made the worst decision ever by putting Ryan on Harrington in the third quarter. I would like to know how many points Harrington scored in the third quarter. It wasn't just about him scoring though, as you mentioned, it led to more open shots for people like Tim Thomas. And also once Harrington got hot he was in a zone and once an NBA player is in a zone it's pretty much impossible to stop them.
Like someone else mentioned before, I think YiOF. You have to punish small teams by scoring inside and fouling out them out. Go watch the Rocket vs Warriors game. The minute you stop playing your game and play theirs, you lose. Small teams want you to go small with them and you take yourself out your comfort zone. Problem is Harris was too good in the previous games. The Knicks sagged off him and packed the lanes and Harris' ego took over. He wanted to prove the world he can hit the J on cheating defenses. Also, the Nets never got B Lopez going. They never had experience where they were forced to play power Bball. Neither Frank, Harris or Lopez was ready for this. They thought dribble drive offense... Harris, VC and 3pt shooting would win vs everything. Until they meet teams that just come at you and score without conscience. Also, Let me say this now. Yi need to work on his bad defense, as well as the entire Nets team.
Agreed. Nobody could stop Harrington tonight. My problem with basically the whole team was their horrible TEAM defense. Bad rotations. Late help in the post. Things like that. Horrible. Yi is just expected to be a star and that's why he gets a lot of the blame (from me as well). I just expect more from him hustle, more effort defensively than from Anderson, who has been facing NBA caliber offense for less than two months. But, after a loss like this I always remember that this team wasn't supposed to have anything close the record they have. And then I feel better. Just a bit. I've always been the first to congratulate Coach on a good game this season, but tonight there was a big difference between him and D'Antoni. At one point, the Knicks were super small, so Frank took out Lopez and Yi to match up small vs small. D'Antoni then immediately put Tim Thomas in for a nice height advantage. We all know what happened next with Thomas. Frank couldn't put back Lopez or Yi because he would look like a fool, but he had already done that by taking them out and giving D'Antoni the window. He kept VC and Harris on the bench for too long and should have put VC on Harrington IMO. At least that might have got him pumped up and into the game, if he'd stopped Harrington from scoring on twice straight. Harris was Harris. He took some crazy shots. Some went in; some didn't. Nothing new. The Knicks defended him well. The role players dissapeared in the 2nd half, other than maybe Hayes here and there. Oh, and great game by Bobby Simmons. Gotta give him some props.
I like how when Frank is given the players he needs, hardnosed, gritty, defensive players, the defense actually gets worse from the year before. Confusing stuff.
Are you calling Yi, Anderson, Hayes and Simmons hardnosed, gritty, defensive players? :O Only "defensive" players the Nets got were Dooling, Lopez (who is sometimes sub-par defensively, but we didn't expect more), Najera (has been injured nearly the whole season) and Hassell (who barely sees court time, for good reason). Harris is defending worse than last year and we traded our best post defender from last year (Collins) for Swift. Are you really surprised that the defense is worse?
I was speaking more of the conception around the team that Frank was given the type of players he wanted, and now it was his time to prove that he could coach with his type of personnel
Oh, no doubt, he's proven that he is a very good coach. I think most people expected the defense to get better, though, because he was getting players who supposedly met the criteria he wanted.
I agree with decent Furnace. Hassell is strong enough to be put on Al Harrington, and he really should have done that. Damn it ... we are becoming another worse team .
D'Antoni is an awesome coach - I think he's up there with Popovich and Jackson. No shame in getting outcoached by him. We don't really have a guy on the roster who can match up with big SF types like Harrington or LeBron. RJ used to be the guy, but now we're stuck with Bobby Simmons (too slow), Jarvis Hayes (too small) or Trenton Hassell (terrible offense). It's just a tough matchup.
A couple of weeks ago, I calculated (maybe 10-12 games into the season) opposing SG's averaged 20 points on 50% shooting against VC's defense.
That's not a very good way to calculate defense. VC doesn't guard opposing SGs all the time. There are picks, there are matchup changes, there are zone defenses...most of the time it isn't VC's fault that the opposing SG scores. You need to watch him this season to understand why we're high on his defense.
and maybe the nixs just had a good game, like the suns did when they played the nets in the swamp earlier in the season. Mabye the nixs felt like it was a home game for them since they had more fans than the nets. The nets lost to the wiz the same way, then the wiz beat the pistons the other night. The nets have played well most of the season, and i'm going to consider this game just one bad night. I think they don't do well after 4 days off. The next time we play the nix i will expect the nets to win, and win big. Its only one game of 82. I just looked out the window and i can assure you the sky isn't really falling. Relax people...
well i will be the odd man in this debate... Frank was an idiot tonight... there is no reason for us to start off big, up 17 i believe, and then trail only to lose by 10 or so. Too many turnovers and no one staying to grab rebounds and not making foul shots did hurt us. BUT the intellect in me, i cannot understand why nor can i even explain why o why was our two clear cut advantages over the Knicks, the two true advantages we had sitting on the bench???? Frank was an idiot for playing small ball, he practically given AL a huge game, wtf did the coaching staff expected to grab rebounds? Devin? he couldn't box out air. the biggest knocks we had throughout the whole years was the lack of big men, we have a logjam of bigs and none of them were in the 4th til lets say about 4 mins left??? Frank is a POS coach... the little respect he was getting from me this season just evaporated. **and yea i know its only one game of the season but habits like these are aggravating, and you know what they, old habbits are hard to get rid of... no way we should've lost this one. NO F-ing way.... sorry for the rant**
