Please tell me about Hornacek

[bleedblue3303]

Is he a good coach? Will we like him in NYC? Please tell me some good news. After suffering for so many years this Knicks fan needs some good news!!


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[islanders11040]

Yes please. Also how will he use Porzingis on offense.

[Saberestar]

IMO he doesn't have the personality and character to be a respected coach.

I am happy that he is not our HC anymore.

[lilfishi22]

Damn what a move for Jeff. I was confident he would get a lot of interest in the market for a HC job and he may have just got the most high profile but also more scrutinized role yet.

[Villalobos]

Good and creative offense, bad defense, too laid back and nice. Won't be terrible, won't be great. Might have learned and improved from his stint in Phx though.

[SkinnyOMiller]

Smart, charismatic coach that might be a bit too laid back for the NBA game. I could see him doing well with a strong team of veterans, not sure how he'll go about handling the entity known as Carmelo.

[Qwigglez]

He's good at letting players play isolation basketball so he might be a good coach for Melo. He developed Markieff Morris pretty well too so that bodes well for KP. Hornacek is really laid back though so don't expect much facial reactions from him like our last head coach that went to the Knicks.
Hoping for the best for him.

[RaisingArizona]

Emotionless.

[NTB]

Good and creative offense, bad defense, too laid back and nice. Won't be terrible, won't be great. Might have learned and improved from his stint in Phx though.

I disagree with "creative offense" part.

[Blackification]

Don't expect many plays or a complex offensive system. He ran a lot of pick and rolls the first season when he had spacing with chaning frye. A lot of isos and at times players just did whatever they wanted after dragic left, he might have porzingis try to develop a three point shot if he doesn't already have one (I dont watch enough knick games to know) I just know Horny loves stretch fours and his offensive went to **** without Channing

[bwgood77]

Is he a good coach? Will we like him in NYC? Please tell me some good news. After suffering for so many years this Knicks fan needs some good news!!

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Yes, he's a good coach. Most here will say he is not because they blame him for what happened to our team since that year. He took a team designed to be terrible and had them get to 48 wins.

The following season he had some awkward changes in personnel, losing half of the most unstoppable pick n roll/pop tandems in the league in Frye, and bringing in a third pg, when we already had two starting caliber ones. This created chemistry problems.

Despite all that he had the team at 29-21 (a team without much frontcourt talent AT ALL) and then Dragic started to voice that he wanted out. He liked Hornacek, but he felt he couldn't trust management (who apparently had told them IT would be traded).

Anyway, at that point, the team got completely blown up again at the deadline, shipping off Dragic, IT, Plumlee, Ennis and bringing back one player in Knight. So now they had to figure out chemistry on the fly, but then Knight got injured and our whole frontcourt got decimated, so they end up 39-43.

Then of course management trades one of the Morris twins, and Markieff showed up not wanting to contribute. So suddenly we lost our starting PF, had to start Jon Leuer. Tyson Chandler gets injured. But the Markieff situation cast a dark shadow over the team. Then Bledsoe went down for the season.

This season was awful, but what happened in the year he coached and the team looked bad (from trade deadline last year to about January this year) was largely due to so much roster reshuffling, teammates unhappy with management decisions, and injuries. Zero continuity.

But the focus with most fans here was gradually steered to picking apart every small coaching detail he made even though we are playing with Jon Leuer, PJ Tucker, Ronnie Price, etc.

He showed he can coach, even with a putrid roster, as long as management isn't causing roster implosions and/or the team isn't decimated with injuries.

NY is a tough place to coach, so I'm sure he will have plenty of non supporters as well, but he is well respected among peers and the smart media because he is a very smart coach who can relate to players well.

[GMATCallahan]

IMO he doesn't have the personality and character to be a respected coach.

I am happy that he is not our HC anymore.

Why does he lack the "character"?

[GMATCallahan]

Damn what a move for Jeff. I was confident he would get a lot of interest in the market for a HC job and he may have just got the most high profile but also more scrutinized role yet.

He really landed on his feet; I am happy for him. Whatever one thinks of Hornacek's coaching, Phoenix's ownership/management undermined him and hung out to dry by shuffling his staff twice in his final nine months on the job. To do so once, after a season concludes, is understandable if questionable. To do so a second time, in the middle of a season and one month before you then fire the head coach himself, is downright clueless and unprofessional—this is not Celebrity Apprentice or some reality show where you should be looking to squeeze a guy for dramatic effect. Does anyone really believe that coaching for Robert Sarver is that great of a job? Sarver is like a desert George Steinbrenner without the "street cred" or charisma.

Being head coach of the Knicks is a big deal. Even if it ends poorly for Hornacek, at least he can say that he held one of the prime coaching jobs in sports.

[GMATCallahan]

Working for a young rookie general manager who never played in the NBA is not optimal, either. I am not looking to fire McDonough, but he sent too many mixed messages to Hornacek. First he was willing to sign Isiah Thomas even as he sought to bring back Eric Bledsoe in restricted free agency and even with Goran Dragic one year from free agency, risking a roster logjam and imbalance—albeit one with some upside. Then, instead of giving Hornacek at least a full season to see if he could make the mix work, McDonough pulled the plug after a few months and traded both Thomas and Dragic in one fell swoop, replacing them with Brandon Knight. McDonough declared Knight the best of the lot and now he looks like the worst. Moreover, Bledsoe and Knight both went down in Hornacek's third year. Making matters worse, McDonough traded Marcus Morris without jettisoning Markieff Morris at the same time, which left the Suns with a cancerous situation. Trading Marcus Morris a year after letting Channing Frye leave also meant that McDonough wanted Hornacek to run a guard-oriented offense without one of the most important ingredients to making that kind of offense work in today's game (given the space that today's guards are accustomed to): an established, three-point-shooting, floor-spacing power forward who can also provide decent defense. (The decent defense better enables to guards to run and play in the open court, where they are usually most dangerous.)

One can debate the individual moves, especially relative to salary cap space, draft picks, and long-term planning. What I am saying, though, is that McDonough's moves lacked strategic and tactical sense in terms of on-court dynamics and team chemistry.

Sarver and McDonough, then, basically placed Hornacek in a no-win situation. That is not to say that Hornacek was necessarily the man for the job moving forward, but Phoenix's ownership and management essentially knocked a bucket of termites into their head coach's wooden ship.

[GMATCallahan]

Emotionless.

So is Brad Stevens, and often times, so was Phil Jackson ...

[TeamTragic]

Hornacek is garbage. He can't even control his own players. You guys will hate him after he exhibits his weak personality.

[DRK]

Hes an average coach. Lacks creativity on both ends of the floor and doesnt really have a strong defensive midset/game plan.

His offence consisted of a handful of preditable sets which will be used over and over. As the coach of the Knicks I can envision a third of the plays being Melo iso-postups, which is what Markieff did when he was here.

[AtheJ415]

Smart guy, horrible leader, horrible disciplinarian, and horrible at managing egos and players. He will thrive if all of the players are ultra-responsible and fully buy into their roles. If anyone becomes unhappy or doesn't do what he asks, then it will start to fall apart, because he simply doesn't see it as his responsibility to be a leader or to get through to players. If they don't do what he tells them, he has no other way of managing to get through to them. Maybe he's learned from his stint here though. Who knows.

[AtheJ415]

Working for a young rookie general manager who never played in the NBA is not optimal, either. I am not looking to fire McDonough, but he sent too many mixed messages to Hornacek. First he was willing to sign Isiah Thomas even as he sought to bring back Eric Bledsoe in restricted free agency and even with Goran Dragic one year from free agency, risking a roster logjam and imbalance—albeit one with some upside. Then, instead of giving Hornacek at least a full season to see if he could make the mix work, McDonough pulled the plug after a few months and traded both Thomas and Dragic in one fell swoop, replacing them with Brandon Knight. McDonough declared Knight the best of the lot and now he looks like the worst. Moreover, Bledsoe and Knight both went down in Hornacek's third year. Making matters worse, McDonough traded Marcus Morris without jettisoning Markieff Morris at the same time, which left the Suns with a cancerous situation. Trading Marcus Morris a year after letting Channing Frye leave also meant that McDonough wanted Hornacek to run a guard-oriented offense without one of the most important ingredients to making that kind of offense work in today's game (given the space that today's guards are accustomed to): an established, three-point-shooting, floor-spacing power forward who can also provide decent defense. (The decent defense better enables to guards to run and play in the open court, where they are usually most dangerous.)

One can debate the individual moves, especially relative to salary cap space, draft picks, and long-term planning. What I am saying, though, is that McDonough's moves lacked strategic and tactical sense in terms of on-court dynamics and team chemistry.

Sarver and McDonough, then, basically placed Hornacek in a no-win situation. That is not to say that Hornacek was necessarily the man for the job moving forward, but Phoenix's ownership and management essentially knocked a bucket of termites into their head coach's wooden ship.

So did Jeff. Jeff was actually trying to win and did it by playing horrendously one-sided lineups and nonsensical rotations, with little to no creativity in sets. I respect Jeff's X's and O's. I believe they are his strength, but last year they were flat out nonsense. As in there is no rational way to justify what he was attempting to do on the court.

[AtheJ415]

Damn what a move for Jeff. I was confident he would get a lot of interest in the market for a HC job and he may have just got the most high profile but also more scrutinized role yet.

He really landed on his feet; I am happy for him. Whatever one thinks of Hornacek's coaching, Phoenix's ownership/management undermined him and hung out to dry by shuffling his staff twice in his final nine months on the job. To do so once, after a season concludes, is understandable if questionable. To do so a second time, in the middle of a season and one month before you then fire the head coach himself, is downright clueless and unprofessional—this is not Celebrity Apprentice or some reality show where you should be looking to squeeze a guy for dramatic effect. Does anyone really believe that coaching for Robert Sarver is that great of a job? Sarver is like a desert George Steinbrenner without the "street cred" or charisma.

Being head coach of the Knicks is a big deal. Even if it ends poorly for Hornacek, at least he can say that he held one of the prime coaching jobs in sports.

And why did they have to do that? Maybe it's because Jeff was awful and other coaches were trying to usurp his job. Ownership/management did him a favor by ousting the assistants. It was a last ditch attempt to make Jeff's tenure work instead of doing the obvious and firing Jeff himself.

Realistically, if Jeff does a good job initially neither happens.