New York Knicks: Don’t Blame The Triangle, Blame The Defense

The Quotes

New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony exposed his team’s defense during the regular season. He told Fred Kerber of The New York Post that the coaches don’t make in-game adjustments on defense.

"“We play the same way throughout the course of the game,” Anthony said. “And when teams make adjustments we’re still playing the same way as teams make those adjustments defensively.”"

Derrick Rose has been preaching defense since day one. Rose stepped up to head coach Jeff Hornacek on January 15 and told Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News that Hornacek needs to do better coming up with defensive schemes.

"“We were just talking about defensive schemes, what I see with our defense, what he thinks our problems are. I just told him, it’s defense. Our defense triggers a lot of things,” Rose said. “And I told him he has to be on us hard about defense every day. Like, beat it in our heads where we get tired of hearing him talking about it.”"

New York has a tendency to do a lot of switching on the pick and roll, which causes its defense to get off balance.

Here’s an example of the Knicks pick and roll defense. In this video, you will see Ron Baker and Justin Holiday confused on who to defend on the pick and roll.

Holiday was supposed to switch on to Wall, and Baker was meant to defend Bradley Beal. Instead, Baker followed Wall through the pick, which caused both players to misread on their respective defensive pickups.

Rose was one of the main players who was preaching defense since opening day. After the loss to the Utah Jazz on November 6, he told Mike Vorkunov of The New York Times that the problem is in fact the pick and roll defense.

"“It was defense the entire game,” said Rose, who had 18 points and 8 assists. “We have to figure out what we want to do with the 1-3 and 1-4 pick-and-roll. It was multiple times where two guys went to one guy, or it was just miscommunication, and they made us pay for it.”"

Here’s an example of what Rose is talking about with the 1-3 and 1-4 pick and roll.

The switch on defense was right, but the 3-point help was not there. In this video, you will see Baker and Mindaugas Kuzminskas leave their men at the 3-point to go help in the paint.

To sum it all up, coach Hornacek explains to you why good players find it easy to pick apart the Knicks’ defense. The Knicks are scoring 105 points per game, and they aren’t able to hold up on the other end of the ball.

The ideal situation would be to get rid of the bad defensive players in the offseason.

Must Read: The New York Knicks should draft a small forward

If the New York Knicks get rid of the below-average defensive players, then the focus could turn to creating new ways to score.