The Knicks and their coach are 'far away from' being on the same page
Jeff Hornacek benched his starting power forward for defensive reasons in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s double-digit defeat at the hands of the Detroit Pistons, and the New York Knicks head coach did the exact same with his starting center in Wednesday’s blowout loss to the Houston Rockets.
Since then, Hornacek has called out his team’s effort, awareness and comprehension, and former Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni, whose Rockets clobbered them on Wednesday, empathized with the man now tasked with teaching old dogs new tricks under the microscope of basketball in New York.
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So, no, things are not going particularly well for the Knicks, owners of a 1-3 record and bottom-five marks in both offensive (96.1 points per 100 possessions) and defensive rating (108.6 points allowed per 100 possessions) through the first week of the season. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
It started in the preseason, when Hornacek delayed installing his system, in part, because of Derrick Rose’s civil rape trial. Although, Rose was present in the exhibition opener, when Hornacek unveiled his new team without a game plan in mind, and the Rockets ran them off the court for the first time.
“We didn’t really have nothing to go off of,” complained Knicks star Carmelo Anthony following that lopsided loss on Oct. 4, according to the New York Daily News. “No kinda game plan, just kind of be out there and play the way we’ve been practicing or try to implement some of the things we’ve been practicing, not knowing kind of what they were going to do, what offense they were going to run.”
So, when the Knicks paid no mind to Hornacek’s game plan for the Rockets in Wednesday’s 118-99 loss, which was far worse than the final score, the coach aired his players out publicly just the same.
“It’s almost like we let James [Harden] do whatever he wanted,” said Hornacek. “We had breakdowns. Coaches work hard to put scouting reports together, and we have to make sure we follow them.”
About that: Harden either scored or assisted on 24 of Houston’s 42 field goals, totaling 30 points and 15 assists. It’s not like any other team has done much to stop Harden, who is now averaging 31.8 points, a league-high 12.4 assists and seven rebounds through five games, but still — this is no good.
“I don’t think we were aggressive enough,’’ Hornacek added afterwards, via the New York Post. “If you’re on your heels against a team like that, they’ll pick you apart. We have to take pride that I am not going to let that guy get by me. It’s not like we haven’t done defense in practice. … Our guys are offensive-minded guys. We have to do be able to do it on both ends. But again the defense has been taught and preached and practiced. Sometimes it comes down to taking it upon yourself to stop somebody and not look for help. You have to have more fight one-on-one defensively.”
Player response to this airing of grievances has ranged from willful ignorance to reluctant acceptance.
“I don’t think my defense is bad,” Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis told reporters following Wednesday’s loss to the Rockets. “I think I can protect the rim and guard a guy like [Ryan] Anderson. At any point of game, I want to be on the floor and help the team defensively and offensively.”
For the record, Anderson scored Houston’s first eight points on a pair of 3-pointers and a layup in the game’s first three minutes. He finished with 16 points on 4-of-9 shooting. Meanwhile, Porzingis responded to Tuesday’s fourth-quarter benching with more fouls (4) than points (3) on Wednesday.
“The guy’s 7-3,” Hornacek responded. “He can do things that 6-7 guys can’t do in terms of blocking shots. And 6-7 guys can do things he can’t do, like closing out on guys. It’s going to be a balance who’s out there. He’s not used to guarding other guys that size. We try not to put him in situations like that.’’
As for the other big man Hornacek has benched, Joakim Noah seemed to accept his role in this mess, even if he briefly exchanged words with his coach on his way out of the game on Wednesday night.
“We just lost really badly,” answered Noah, via New York Newsday. “It easy to come in here and say I want to play more. That’s not what it’s about. We got pounded on the glass by 20. That has nothing to do with the coach. That’s us coming in here with the right intensity and having the will to fight.”
The problems aren’t limited to defense, either. Part of Hornacek’s game plan was clearly to create offensive mismatches for Porzingis, and they got plenty of them, but just failed to even recognize it.
Said the first-year coach, via ESPN.com Ian Begley: “They’ve got to do a better job of getting him the ball when he’s got a mismatch. There were several times where he’s in the area on a smaller guy and we’re not necessarily looking for him. We’re looking for the next thing. We’ve got to find that mismatch, throw it up there, let him gather the ball and make a play on that. They were switching; a lot of times he had a 6-5, 6-6 guy on him. We have to take advantage of that and just didn’t see it.”
But the Knicks aren’t about to let Hornacek off scot-free. Knicks guar Courtney Lee voiced his concern to the Daily News about the team’s lack of preparedness for defending an offense that isn’t their own.
“We run the triangle; we practice against it a lot,” said Lee, who called Phil Jackson’s offense “dope” just the other day. “I think we need to practice against pick and rolls, practice against other looks and whatnot and get accustomed, get comfortable with that. Because that’s what other teams are running. They’re coming in here, they’re spacing the floor and they’re doing that and we’re not getting stops.”
That’s an appropriate place to start for a team that’s allowed an average of 57.3 first-half points, including 64 and 68 in the opening 24 minutes against the Pistons and Rockets the past two nights.
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Hornacek, who admitted his players are playing their way into game shape this month, remains confident it’ll all get turned around. “Without a doubt,” he said, “I don’t think what we showed these past two nights is any indication of who we are, who we will be as a team. It’s just a matter of effort.”
But even his players concede, as Rose did to reporters on Wednesday, “We’re far away from that.”
The Knicks and their coach are not on the same page, and nobody understands how quickly that can unravel in New York more than D’Antoni, who was fired midway through the team’s 2011-12 season.
“It’s just tough,” D’Antoni said of Hornacek’s job prior to Wednesday’s game, via the New York Post. “New York expects to win yesterday. It’s a tough position. … Jeff’s trying to navigate through what he wants and use the best elements of everything. He’ll get there if you give him a chance. …
“You don’t have any other option. If you start chasing your tail you don’t have a chance. You have to stick with what you think works and try to get better. You can try to be open to things and change a little bit. But if you lose your identity, players know it first, and that’s when you’re gone.”
From the sound of things, Hornacek may already wish he were elsewhere, as he spoke glowingly of his interview with Rockets general manager Daryl Morey for Houston’s open coaching job this offseason.
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“When you have James and those guys, it looked like a team that would play an excited game,’’ he told the Houston Chronicle. “The pieces they’ve added, they’re dynamic on the offensive end. They’re hard to stop. When you’re looking around at jobs and they call you and want to talk to you, that was great.”
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“You never know with these things. Someone calls, you go and you talk to them. I was excited to have the opportunity to talk to them. In the end, they chose Mike. That’s the way it is in this league.”
Sometimes, you end up as the coach of the Knicks, and often times when that’s the case, things don’t go according to plan, especially when you either don’t have one or nobody pays any attention to it. As much as one hopes Hornacek doesn’t fall prey to the same fate as the franchise’s nine other head coaches since the turn of the century, the first four games of this season are following that script.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
