03:18 PM ET  04.10 |     At the beginning of the 2010-2011 NBA season Mike D'Antoni had a Knicks' lineup that seemed tailor made for his system, Amare Stoudemire at center, Raymond Felton running the point and three athletic wing players around them: Danilo Galinari, Wilson Chandler and Landry Fields. With a quick athlete at center and four three-point shooters surrounding him, it was much like the teams D'Antoni coached with great success in Phoenix. After only 29 wins the year before, this team looked like it had the makings of a playoff team, something the Knicks hadn't been since 2003-2004. They were 28-26 before making a blockbuster trade for Carmelo Anthony and 14-14 after the trade, but they did still make the playoffs for the first time in seven years.

    While disappointing that they were unable to have a winning record after trading for a superstar intended to improve their team, it was even more disappointing to be swept out of the playoffs 4-0 by the Celtics.  Many wrote off these disappointments as it taking D'Antoni, Anthony and the rest of the team some time to gel. This explanation seemed quite reasonable given that the Knicks had traded away four players, including three starters, to get Melo.

    The reality was a bit more complicated. While the trade might have been a talent upgrade, especially since New York also acquired Chauncy Billups in the trade, it changed the personnel in a way that was ill suited to D'Antoni's system. While Felton is far from a premier point guard, he played like an All-Star in D'Antoni's system. While Billups is a better shooter and certainly a better overall talent than Felton, he was ill suited to running the frantic, uptempo, ball sharing, floor spreading offense that coach D'Antoni is famous for. In addition, the Knicks had traded away two three-point sharpshooting forwards in Galinari and Chandler and gotten a mid-range shooter in Anthony. Anthony is a bit of a ball stopper who is used to dominating the offense in isolation sets. While he has played up tempo ball in Denver and shared the ball at the Olympics, this was clearly an awkward fit for his talents.

    While D'Antoni clearly had quite a bit of input in initial assembly of the Knicks' lineup, such as the selection of Fields and Galinari in the draft and the acquisition of Stoudemire and Felton in free agency, the trade for Anthony was at the insistence of New York ownership. Prior to the trade, coach D'Antoni had been accustomed to shaping the personnel of his teams to his system, rather than vice versa. Unfortunately for D'Antoni, he wasn't really able to adapt to the personnel that was forced on him.

    Many people, myself included, hoped for better results this season.  When the Knicks first acquired D'Antoni to be head coach, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was a fan of the Phoenix Suns under his regime. His system was exciting to watch and clearly capable of taking a team to the playoffs, something Knicks fans were yearning for after years of lottery frustration. On the other hand, it has yet to be proven to me that an NBA team can win a championship without an elite defense, something that has never been a hallmark of a D'Antoni team. The good news was at the beginning of this season they brought in a defensive minded assistant coach, Mike Woodson and also an amazing defender to play center, Tyson Chandler.

    The problem was that the Knicks' personnel were getting even farther from the type of team suited for D'Antoni's system. With a starting lineup of Chandler, Stoudemire, Anthony, Fields and Toney Douglas, the Knicks suddenly had a team full of players that liked to play in or near the paint, without a premier point guard or an elite three-point shooter. As the season progressed, the excitement of acquiring Anthony and Chandler began to wear off as dreams of a second trip to the playoffs started to look like a pipe dream.

`    Just when it looked like D'Antoni was on the verge of being fired, several important things happened. First, Anthony and Stoudemire got hurt and second, a desperate D'Antoni discovered Jeremy Lin and Steve Novak, who were previously buried at the end of the bench. Suddenly, the Knicks had both an elite point guard and an elite three-point bomber. In addition, they no longer had Stoudemire or Anthony stopping the ball. The Knicks started to look even more like a D'Antoni team with the acquisition of another three-point sharpshooter, JR Smith. Of course D'Antoni still needed to determine what to do with the return of Anthony and Stoudemire from their injuries and their return was far from smooth.

    With everyone healthy and trying hard to work together, the Knicks started to look like a team that still wasn't going to make the playoffs. While Anthony was clearly trying to fit into the offense and making a career high number of assists, his scoring and field goal percentage were woeful by his career standards. As the losses mounted and rumors of Anthony wanting D'Antoni out, D'Antoni resigned.

    I may be old school, but I like to believe the coach should be in charge, not the players. So the appearance that Melo pushed D'Antoni out rubbed me the wrong way. I had mixed feelings of course, because I'm a Syracuse Alumni and a long time fan of Carmelo Anthony as well as the Knicks. I didn't have too much time to stay upset, however. The Knicks are now 11-3 since the departure of D'Antoni and the takeover of new head coach, Mike Woodson. Perhaps the most surprising part of this has been the fact that the Knicks are 5-2 in their last seven games, while Lin and Stoudemire have been out with injuries, including wins over the Bulls and the Magic.

    This is not a coincidence. Much of the credit can be clearly traced to the coaching change. As was quite obvious during Melo's 43 point outburst against Chicago, Woodson is using Anthony in ways he's more comfortable with and better suited to his skills. Running much of the offense through Anthony, including frequent isolation plays allowing Melo to freelance and find offense for himself and others.  Lesson one: match your system and your personnel, rather than trying to force your players into a system that they're poorly suited for.

    The biggest change however, has been on defense. Over the last 14 games the Knicks have played defense on an elite level, giving up the fewest points per game of any team in the NBA. This is a team that just last season had one of the worst defenses in the entire NBA. Much of this relates to personnel as well. This season the Knicks have added several defensive stalwarts in Chandler, Iman Shumpert and even the much maligned Smith. Much of the Knicks newfound success has been based on offense created by forcing turnovers on the defensive end. Woodson's defense-first system is better suited to the Knicks personnel than D'Antoni's freewheeling offense-first one, but it may also be more profound than that.

Lesson two: if you want to be a truly elite team in the NBA, you need to play defense. The top four teams in the league in terms of points allowed per game are the Clippers, the Heat, the Mavericks and the Bulls. The Bulls and the Heat are clearly the two best teams in the East and they have both locked up playoff berths. The Clippers seem likely to have home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs and the defending champion Mavericks look to be headed back to the playoffs as well. The biggest exception to this would seem to be the first place Thunder, who are in the bottom 10 in the league in points allowed per game, but they haven't maybe it to the finals yet either. Part of the reason for the Thunder giving up so many points per game is the fast pace they play at, they are among the league leaders in opponent's field goal percentage allowed.

So it's not surprising that when the Knicks add some good defensive players, switch to a defensive oriented coach and start playing great defense, they start winning lots more games than they lose. While I felt that 14 games was a big enough sample size to do some analysis, it is still only 14 games and the Knicks still have time to collapse before the playoffs or if/when they get there. If they do collapse, I think I'll remain convinced of this: Melo was right. D'Antoni was no longer the right fit for this team if it was going to continue evolving in the direction of an elite team. Knicks fans owe D'Antoni a debt of thanks for finally getting them back to the playoffs, but now the team's aspirations and personnel are starting to look past just making it there. I don't know if the Knicks management will go with Mike Woodson as the head coach next season, but if the Knicks get into the playoffs and give a good accounting against a team like the Bulls or the Heat, I sure hope so.