Knicks at the Combine

New Coach David Fizdale and Perry Felton spoke to the media from the NBA Combine again today. Once again, they kept saying all the right things about establishing a defense first culture, and taking the BPA at 9 since they are still in the talent acquisition stage of their rebuild.

Defense first is really important and has been a Knick tradition since the days of Red Holzman, in fact, the championship Knicks set their positions by who they were defending -  for example Bill Bradley didn't have the lateral quicks to stay with guards but could stay with forwards, so he became a forward - and so on and so on.  But on offense, they just hit the open man and didn't have a point guard running the show.  Frazier, Monroe and Barnett were all just guards. In this sense, the Knicks were a lot like the "positionless basketball" everyone is talking about these days.  You were what you could guard, and tried to get open or set a screen so someone else could on O.   The Knicks had had a PG when Dick McGuire was on the team, but moved to two guards for the championship era, then didn't try to get back to having PG's untile Ray Williams then Sugar Ray Richardson in the later 70s.

And of course, Riley brought back the defensive firt culture, then mistakenly forgot to get Patrick the secondary scorers they needed to overcome the Bulls.  Hopefully, they play D like Riley, but find guys who can play O as well as D like Holzman did.  He was the scout who put the Knicks together before leading them to two titles as coach.

Another important thing I think Fizdale is doing is reaching out to the players and suping them up.  He plans to meet KP and his family a few times over the summer, starting next week or something but he really is working on this relationships. This should all sound great to Knicks fans as it does to me.  He also said he's trying to put together the best staff possible, but we'll have to see what that is.

It does seem like we were right and that Mills and Perry really wanted to create a three headed leadership council with whomever they hired.  And though I feard that would make Fizdale their functionary, I'm really seeing how this can and is working through the first few weeks.  I said I'd give him a chance once he was hired, and so far he's running with it.  Of course, if KP hates him, so do I, but I don't think that's a possibility.