After 11 seasons in the NBA New York Knicks star Amar’e Stoudemire is revealing why defense has been one of the weaker parts of his game – he doesn’t know how to do it.
“Just having a defensive coach for the first time in my career is going to help. I’ve never been taught defense in my whole career. To now have a coach that actually teaches defense and teaches strategies and knows positioning and posture and how to guard different plays is going to be helpful. I’m going to take it as a challenge, accept the challenge and try to improve as a player.”
Did we mention he’s guaranteed $65 million from the Knicks over the next three seasons to not know everything about his job?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
throwing niggas under the bus is not good, amar’e.
Good for Amar’e to take the initiative and work on his defense. I’m honestly impressed, most players with his salary would just say “whatever” and cash those checks but what he’s doing is inspiring for others in the game to step up their game. I commend him on admitting his weakness in the game in basketball.
what are you talking about?
he didn’t take the initiative at all. he’s been in the league 11 years? if he wasn’t taught defense he had more than enough money to go and get a coach to teach him defensive strategy and positioning.
he’s not admitting a weakness. admitting a weakness is saying, “Man I need to get better at defense and I’ve taken the steps to do so.”
throwing niggas under the bus is saying, “all those years at phoenix and the past few with the knicks, ain’t nobody teach a nigga defense. all these coaches except woodson ain’t shit. this is why i suck.”
he’s blaming other people for his inadequacies and that’s not commendable.
WTF is wrong with you?
Off course, he doesn’t know how to play defense cus his point never required him to focus on defense. why are people surprised? Coaches wanted to make his game around a power forward that means postin up, attacking the basket and blocking shots, not one on one defense. Why can’t shaq or baynum shot 3s? Was Shaq go in defense? No! so why are people so pissed about it? Because it’s the knicks and he makes a lot of money.
ur a dumb bitch if you think shaq wasn’t “good” on defense get the fuck outta here. he was one of the best defensive big men in the league during his time. And your an even bigger dumb ass if you think the power forward position isn’t focused on defense, you ever hear of taj gibson, serge ibaka, fucking KG, or Zach Randolph. Get your middle school educated ass outta here.
Naw that aint true. D’antoni(sp) is infamously offesive minded. His philosophy is that you can win games by scoring the hell outta teams and that’s what he did for years and it worked for a while. It really only started to break down when his players got older and weren’t as fast. He’s having the same issues now in LA.
Maybe Stat shoulda taken the initiative sooner to learn defense but when none of your coaches focused on it why bother.
It was just a shot at d’antoni and everybody knows this, that’s been his coach and he doesn’t emphasis defense at all, even Steven A said that during halftimes he would just say to not worry about it, that it’ll come, just like the struggles going on now in LA, I’m glad he’s back and hopefully all this meshing well with melo crap isn’t true, and they finally get over the hump
you learn D in college. no excuse though.
Amar’e didn’t go to college. high school to pros.
It’s all Mike D’Antoni fault