Isiah Thomas: The Knicks haven't made NYCers "proud" since 1973.

Unfortunately, every other coach in the country watched it, and saw it was (relatively) successful against Jordan and the Bulls, decided to mimic it, and here we are today and sludgeball has strangled the entire sport, top to bottom.

 

Actually, the NBA did respond, with the tighter handcheck rules, which is why there is so much more scoring. That would have killed those Knicks, as Derek Harper and Doc Rivers couldn't overpower other point guards.

 

You guys are right. A team with limited offensive talent should have just tried to run and gun with the Bulls and everyone else for the good of the sport. Defense is boring. Why bother trying to win games? : :

 

Nobody is saying they shouldn't win games. We (at least I) are saying that they were a dreadfully boring, unlikeable team which then, and now, generates much more discussion both on SportsJournalists.com and nationally (due to the media of the home team and the provincialism of the fanbois on this thread) than their accomplishments deserve.

Lets look at another team from that era which lost 2 NBA Finals: The Utah Jazz.

That team had two players better than anyone on the Knicks. Lost two Finals.

Which team is discussed endlessly, and which do we never hear about?

The 1990's era Knicks are the last three decades of the Milwaukee Bucks, except placed in MSG.

 

You're right, no one ever talks about Stockton and Malone.

And I don't think that the 1990s Knicks are discussed endlessly. They did, however, have 5 or so of the most dramatic playoff series of that era.

Actually, the team which is shortchanged in discussions of great NBA teams from that era are the Pacers.

 

Yea, cause that Denver-Golden State game last night had no offense whatsoever. I don't watch a ton of NBA game but I always try to catch good Western Conference matchups because most of those teams do play a fun style to watch.

 

My guess, dreunc, is Starman hasn't watched an NBA game since 1999 and is talking out of his ass as usual.
Even the East is more open now, especially with Garnett, Allen and Pierce in Boston.

 

To get back to Isiah for a moment, this is one narrow area in which he's getting unfairly criticized. His point was that the Knicks haven't won a title since '73, and the teams that fans remember the most proudly are the ones that won championships, not the ones that came close. He even clarified his statement later in the interview, but papers like the Daily News still ran misleading headlines saying Isiah Rips Knicks of '90s. He did no such thing.

As for those thugball Knick teams, put me in the camp that says although they certainly weren't beautiful, they were entertaining in their own way. The Knicks-Heat series of that era were intense, dramatic, compelling affairs. There's a difference between ugly and boring. Those Knicks were not boring.

 

...so why should he bother, right?

 

Poindexter's just pissed no one waxes poetic about the Clippers.

 

"So much" more scoring ??

The NBA this season overall averaged 95.4 ppg.

In 2003-4, the nadir of the sludgeball era, the league averaged 93.4 ppg.

One basket per game, per team. Not exactly an offensive explosion.

Things are getting somewhat better, as the influence of the sludgeball Bad Boys and Knicks recedes, and some of the leading sludgeball coaches (Riley, Larry Brown, Hubie Brown, Fratello, Wilkens, Carlisle) pass out of the league, but scoring overall is still 15 ppg behind what it was in the 1980s.

 

How stoopid is Isiah Thomas? He'd ship all the standard two-ply to the Vancouver Grizzlies and then pay four times as much as he paid for two ply for eight years' worth of one-ply that could take rust off a battleship. Three years later, he'd realize the Grizzlies aren't in Vancouver anymore.