The New York Knicks have a number of passionate and gifted individuals in the organization, but Kristaps Porzingis cited a dangerous lack of communication.
Talent isn’t the issue for the 2016-17 New York Knicks. Carmelo Anthony, Kristaps Porzingis, and Derrick Rose are three of the best scorers at their respective positions, Courtney Lee is a quality shooting guard, and the second unit has exceeded expectations.
Since the beginning of the mid-December collapse, the primary issue with the Knicks has been bigger than basketball; it’s been about communication.
New York’s struggles have been as prominent off the court as they have been on it. Between the poor communication on defense and the rift between the front office and franchise player, there have been no shortage of distractions.
According to Ian Begley of ESPN New York, star power forward Kristaps Porzingis cited a lack of communication as the reason the players have struggled.
"“We’ve been switching things up because at any point of this season we [haven’t] played like we wanted to,” Porzingis said. “It was like, ‘maybe this will work, maybe this will work.’ So we’re kind of looking for stuff. Coaches, they obviously try to do the best job they can and [are] giving us as much as they can so we have the information. But we never really got it all together and were able to execute the way we should have. It’s been a lot of confusion.”"
In other words: the coaches are doing everything they can to help the players, but there’s too much indecision for a healthy system to be run.
Porzingis voiced his support for the return of the triangle offense, but some have questioned the timing. New York rarely ran the triangle offense leading up to the All-Star Break, but has since committed to it in a heavy manner.
Porzingis recently told Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News that the Knicks are now running the triangle offense roughly 90 percent of the time.
Kristaps said the Knicks are running triangle 90 percent of the time now and that's the reason scoring is more balanced.
— Stefan Bondy (@SBondyNYDN) March 12, 2017
Unfortunately, a divide remains.
Phil Jackson recently ran a triangle offense seminar, which the players responded quite warmly to. One of the most telling comments in response to the seminar, however, was Rose stating that Jackson teaches the system differently than the coaching staff.
That seems to be what Porzingis is referring to, as Jeff Hornacek and his coaching staff have limited experience with the system that the team president is requesting they run.
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If the New York Knicks are going to turn the season around in 2016-17 or win in 2017-18, then the lines of communication must be more open than they currently are.