i'm not freaking out about the loss, but i think it's a bad loss. what i am freaking out about is coach d.
this is the third year in his system. every year it has been the same thing. the team cannot play well (note i said "well" not "at all") without nash. and yeah, you take the best player away from any team for a stretch and they're gonna struggle. but you take nash away for a few minutes in a game and we struggle. what does that indicate to me? it indicates that no one (NO ONE) can effectively drive dantoni's system but nash. when we substitute for nash in a game we stink. when he's out for a few games we stink. doesn't matter who we've tried to plug into his spot the results are always the same. what does that say to me? dantoni is inflexible. he can't realize that he needs nash to drive to his system. if he did realize that then he'd implement a different offense, with offensive sets, that work for players that require structure to succeed. nash is unique in his abilities. dantoni may recognize it, but he hasn't taken action to take advantage of his other players' skills by putting THEM in the position to succeed when nash is out. that is the damnation of dantoni.
Wow, an ally from an unlikely direction!
I have to give D'Antoni his due this year as many of the things I've moaned about since he took over have improved significantly - off ball screens and movement along the baseline, for example. Heck, Raja and Leandro were awful in their offball movement before this year and this year they've become quite good - even James Jones has improved a bit. I don't know that it is D'Antoni's doing but since he got the blame before, he gets the credit now. (I wouldn't be shocked to learn that Nash was responsible.)
Even in this game (Atlanta) I saw something I liked - he had Amare operating more from the 'elbow' than down low, where he was in the Portland game. EJ mentioned that in the broadcast, saying that one effect was that it was harder to double team him though I'm inclined to think it is more that they don't have a way to get him the ball down low when Nash isn't playing.
But I do agree that D'A is missing the boat by not using some set plays when Nash isn't on the floor. In prior years he claimed that they did have a playbook with set plays though I haven't heard that from him this year. In any case, the plays don't do any good if you don't work on them enough to be able to execute them.
During the summer when someone asked me what I thought the coaches should do to help Marcus Banks succeed as a backup PG, I said the main thing would be to put in a number of set plays for him to run, assuming he wasn't a master of the P&R. The same thing they should have done long ago to help Barbosa succeed. In fact, I still think it would be beneficial to him. The other thing would be to give Marcus a slot in the rotation and stick with it through thick and thin. To his credit, I believe D'Antoni wanted to to the latter but he just couldn't make himself follow through - and, admittedly, it would have been very hard to do.
In retrospect, I'd add another thing - coach the heck out of him on defense. I didn't foresee a problem in that area with all the hype we heard about his defensive ability. The reality proved to be that he has the skills to be a good defender but they're not sharpened to the point he actually defends very well.
