the wrath of diddy
01-15-2006, 03:58 PM
LB's 'plan' panning out posted: Saturday, January 14, 2006
NEW YORK -- Isiah Thomas had a nice, hearty laugh Saturday afternoon when I told him how I had finally figured out Larry Brown.
Those 21 losses in the first 28 games? It was all part of Brown's secret scheme to sacrifice a large enough portion of the season to ensure that the Knicks would be able to secure the No. 8 seed in the conference.
The No. 8 seed brings a matchup with the No. 1 seed. And the No. 1 seed, needless to say, will be the Detroit Pistons ... the team Brown will never forgive after his nasty breakup last summer.
"That would be something, wouldn't it?" Thomas chuckled before the Knicks departed their practice facility for a charter flight to Toronto, the six-game winning streak they carried in tow having transformed a season that appeared utterly unsalvageable two short weeks ago.
At stake Sunday for the Knicks is a chance for their first seven-game winning streak since 2000-01 and a chance to go for eight in a row against Minnesota on Monday in the annual Martin Luther King Day matinee at Madison Square Garden. It's been 11 seasons, by the way, since the Knicks strung together eight straight Ws.
It's no coincidence that the Knicks' success has come since Brown ceased mixing and matching his lineups and rotations, leaving his players with no idea what their roles should be or how they could interact best with the players they were randomly paired with. The team was lost, and Brown finally realized it.
"I didn't know who to play. I think you get sensitive trying to find out who's going to get minutes each night, and we stopped coaching," Brown said, turning introspective in explaining why the blame had to fall on him for the Knicks' poor start.
Brown's coaching career has been marked by slow starts and big turnarounds, and he compared this episode to his first years in New Jersey, Indiana and Philadelphia.
"I didn't remember ever feeling like this, but my wife kept reminding me there had been other times," Brown said. "I looked at the schedule and thought we could never win another game. And that's the truth."
The Knicks' winning streak began with a triple OT victory over Phoenix and has included Washington, Seattle, Cleveland, Dallas and Atlanta.
The Pistons will be paying their first visit of the season to New York on Thursday, and it should be interesting to see whether they see a little bit of themselves in the Knicks. Marbury has been playing as well for Brown during the six-game winning streak as Chauncey Billups ever did, Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford are performing the role of Richard Hamilton (except with better 3-point shooting), David Lee is starting to remind people of Tayshaun Prince and Channing Frye is providing a similar sort of inside-outside game as Rasheed Wallace brings to the Pistons. Brown is also starting to figure out how to get the most from Eddy Curry, the type of player he never had in Detroit.
"We're basically running the same stuff the Pistons ran last year," Thomas said. "And I guess any time you're being compared to the Pistons, you must be doing pretty good."
New York's win over Atlanta on Friday night, Brown's 1,000th as an NBA coach, left the Knicks just two games behind Washington for eighth place in the East.
All Brown needs to do now is keep the Knicks a .500 ballclub for another five weeks, try to help Thomas find takers for Penny Hardaway, Jerome James and Quentin Richardson by the trading deadline, then bring his club through the final seven weeks of the season with just enough juice to lock into that eighth spot and a first-round opener back in Auburn Hills. That's exactly the way Brown's planning.
NEW YORK -- Isiah Thomas had a nice, hearty laugh Saturday afternoon when I told him how I had finally figured out Larry Brown.
Those 21 losses in the first 28 games? It was all part of Brown's secret scheme to sacrifice a large enough portion of the season to ensure that the Knicks would be able to secure the No. 8 seed in the conference.
The No. 8 seed brings a matchup with the No. 1 seed. And the No. 1 seed, needless to say, will be the Detroit Pistons ... the team Brown will never forgive after his nasty breakup last summer.
"That would be something, wouldn't it?" Thomas chuckled before the Knicks departed their practice facility for a charter flight to Toronto, the six-game winning streak they carried in tow having transformed a season that appeared utterly unsalvageable two short weeks ago.
At stake Sunday for the Knicks is a chance for their first seven-game winning streak since 2000-01 and a chance to go for eight in a row against Minnesota on Monday in the annual Martin Luther King Day matinee at Madison Square Garden. It's been 11 seasons, by the way, since the Knicks strung together eight straight Ws.
It's no coincidence that the Knicks' success has come since Brown ceased mixing and matching his lineups and rotations, leaving his players with no idea what their roles should be or how they could interact best with the players they were randomly paired with. The team was lost, and Brown finally realized it.
"I didn't know who to play. I think you get sensitive trying to find out who's going to get minutes each night, and we stopped coaching," Brown said, turning introspective in explaining why the blame had to fall on him for the Knicks' poor start.
Brown's coaching career has been marked by slow starts and big turnarounds, and he compared this episode to his first years in New Jersey, Indiana and Philadelphia.
"I didn't remember ever feeling like this, but my wife kept reminding me there had been other times," Brown said. "I looked at the schedule and thought we could never win another game. And that's the truth."
The Knicks' winning streak began with a triple OT victory over Phoenix and has included Washington, Seattle, Cleveland, Dallas and Atlanta.
The Pistons will be paying their first visit of the season to New York on Thursday, and it should be interesting to see whether they see a little bit of themselves in the Knicks. Marbury has been playing as well for Brown during the six-game winning streak as Chauncey Billups ever did, Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford are performing the role of Richard Hamilton (except with better 3-point shooting), David Lee is starting to remind people of Tayshaun Prince and Channing Frye is providing a similar sort of inside-outside game as Rasheed Wallace brings to the Pistons. Brown is also starting to figure out how to get the most from Eddy Curry, the type of player he never had in Detroit.
"We're basically running the same stuff the Pistons ran last year," Thomas said. "And I guess any time you're being compared to the Pistons, you must be doing pretty good."
New York's win over Atlanta on Friday night, Brown's 1,000th as an NBA coach, left the Knicks just two games behind Washington for eighth place in the East.
All Brown needs to do now is keep the Knicks a .500 ballclub for another five weeks, try to help Thomas find takers for Penny Hardaway, Jerome James and Quentin Richardson by the trading deadline, then bring his club through the final seven weeks of the season with just enough juice to lock into that eighth spot and a first-round opener back in Auburn Hills. That's exactly the way Brown's planning.