As Knicks' Play Improves, Coaching Must Reciprocate

One evening five years ago, I was having dinner with a fellow basketball fan who likes to get on my nerves. His tone of voice changed in a manner that led me to brace myself for his latest insanity, and I wasn't disappointed. He said: "You know, I just don't think coaches are necessary in the NBA."

I looked at him with my usual "who are you and what did you do with my friend?" expression, which he took as license to elaborate. "Jordan didn't need Jackson, Magic didn't need Riley, and it's obvious Jason Kidd is just being held back by Byron Scott," he said.

Yes, my friend is bit of a Kidd fanatic. But this was an easy argument to put down, since Jordan and Johnson are adamant about crediting their legendary coaches for improving their games. Within minutes, we were back to talking about the Lakers' chance of a fourth straight title.

I'd forgotten about that silly little discourse until last week when watching the Knicks fritter away four of the five games on their West Coast road trip. I began to wonder if the Knicks wouldn't be better off coaching themselves than being coached by Isiah Thomas. The losses to the Warriors, the Lakers, the Trail Blazers, and the Supersonics were all due to egregious tactical errors. Let's review them.

In the first game of the trip, a 106–104 loss to the Warriors on January 27, the Knicks managed to turn a slim 82–78 fourth-quarter lead into a 101–93 deficit in a matter of minutes by going into a zone defense. Zones have their roles in defensive arsenals: They are excellent devices to force opponents to take outside shots, but against Golden State, it is a useless tool. The Warriors like to shoot long jumpers. They average 27.6 shots a game from behind the arc, by far the most of any team in the league. The Knicks zone, which packed the middle, simply asked the Warriors to play their preferred offensive style, and the Warriors responded by running away with the game (the Knicks scored five points in the final 10 seconds to make the score look cosmetically close).

Last Tuesday night, in a 120–109 loss to the Lakers, the Knicks' brilliant strategist was at it again. Lakers guard Kobe Bryant had had a relatively quiet game by his standards, but in the fourth quarter, with the game hanging in the balance, he began to take over. Rather than put one of the team's defensive aces, such as Renaldo Balkman, on Bryant, Thomas elected to cover Bryant with Quentin Richardson. Q isn't a bad defender, but when Bryant is hot, a change of tactics is in order. Yet rather than double team Bryant or put a different set of defenders on him, the Knicks allowed Bryant to torch Q. Kobe had nine points and three assists in a four-minute span, leading the Lakers on a 35–22 frame to finish with the win.

Wednesday night, the Knicks were in Utah, where it's rare for visitors to win, and they didn't. But Friday night in Portland, Thomas made two major blunders. The Knicks were short personnel due to Richardson and center Eddy Curry both missing the game with illness. But rather than going deeper into the bench, where capable players such as Mardy Collins, Randolph Morris, and Wilson Chandler await minutes, he elected to play four players — guards Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson and forwards David Lee and Zach Randolph — for more than 43 minutes each.

Fatigue was evident late in the game, as the Knicks blew a seven-point lead in the final two minutes, and the Blazers tied the game. Then came a moment that must have curled the stomachs of all Knicks fans — the last-second shot. Crawford possesses an excellent crossover move and should be able to penetrate whenever he wants. Since he was en route to shooting 6 for 27 in the game, common sense would have dictated that he drive to the basket and try to draw a foul. Instead, he dribbled three times and heaved a 24-foot brick (he shot 1 of 11 from behind the arc). The tired team lost 94–88 in overtime.

Last-second tactics were at fault in the team's 86–85 loss to Seattle on Saturday night as well. With the tired Knicks trailing by one and with only seconds to go, the locals eschewed the Crawford solo play and instead isolated Randolph on the baseline. But as a second option, rather than set up Crawford (who was having a good shooting night at 9-20), the team used Robinson, who was clearly feeling the effects of the night before and missed all nine of his shots. When the double team came for Randolph, the Knicks' only alternative was Robinson, who bricked his open look.

I'm not saying that a Rick Carlisle-coached squad wins all four of these games. It's entirely possible that, with Kobe being Kobe, and the Warriors being the Warriors, some of these games were just going to be losses. But it is clear that with better coaching, the Knicks will win more.

Most people have focused on the roster construction and contract problems facing the Knicks, and those problems are intractable. But after a dreadful, lethargic start, the Knicks are playing hard and doing enough to win on the road. It's time for the coaching to make the same step up that they've received from their players.

mjohnson@nysun.com