June 7, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy before game six of the Eastern Conference finals of the 2012 NBA playoffs between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-US PRESSWIRE

Like Van Gundy, current head coach Mike Woodson is a defensive-minded coach and the acquisitions should help this team compete for a championship in 2013.

Here’s an excerpt of what Van Gundy had to say to ESPN’s Jared Zwerling last week.

JVG feels the additions will improve a Knicks team that got better down the stretch defensively under Woodson.

It will be interesting with [Raymond] Felton back at the point how they can pressure the ball and also with [Iman] Shumpert out due to injury. Ronnie Brewer gives them length and quickness, and Camby has had a remarkable career and he’s an extremely intelligent player overall. Defensively, in combination with [Tyson] Chandler, they will always have shot-blocking and intelligence along the back line.

In addition, the former Knicks coach told Zwerling that he is looking forward to seeing if the Knicks can maintain the defensive intensity under Woodson for an 82-game season. Like Woodson, Van Gundy also took over the Knicks in the middle of a season. JVG says his success was due in part to the fact that his best players bought into doing the little things, especially on the defensive end of the floor.

That means current players such as Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire must buy in at both ends of the floor for an entire season for the Knicks to have success.

I think you can’t just leave the grunt, blue-collar work for others. The best players have to commit, and I was fortunate. I didn’t have to sell that. They already knew that from their time previously with other coaches, so my job was relatively simple.

That’s a stance that former Knicks forward Charles Oakley already made by calling out both Knicks superstars for their sometimes lack of effort at the defensive end of the floor.

As for Van Gundy, he’s the best analyst in the business and I respect his opinion.

I also like what the team has done this offseason for similar reasons to what Van Gundy stated. It will be interesting to see if ‘Melo and STAT can buy in for an entire season as I also feel that’s of major importance.

We won’t have to wait long though as camp is only a couple months away.

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It shouldn’t be too hard as the Knicks haven’t exactly been blessed with successful head coaches throughout their history.

With that being said, here’s a look at the Top 10 head coaches in Knicks franchise history.

Mar 9, 2012; Milwaukee, WI, USA; New York Knicks head coach Mike D

10. Lenny Wilkens: Wilkens cracks the list, not so much for anything he did on the Knicks bench but because he was one of the best ever and he did lead the franchise to their last playoff berth in 2004 before stepping down in 2005 with a career 40-41 record with the Knicks.

9. Mike D’Antoni (2008-12): This may not be a popular choice and D’Antoni’s record of 121-167 would suggest he wasn’t a great coach, but he was. D’Antoni had as little to work with early in his tenure as any coach in franchise history and ended up getting the Knicks back to the playoffs in 2011 before being forced out in 2012.

8. Willis Reed (1977-78): Great players usually don’t make great coaches and Reed was no exception, although he did finish slightly over .500 in his 96 game stint at 49-47. He also led the Knicks into the playoffs in 1977.

7. Stu Jackson (1989-90): Jackson had a nice first season on the Knicks bench, leading them to a 45-37 record and a trip to the Eastern Conference semi’s in 1990, but didn’t have as much luck his second season and was replaced after getting off to a 7-8 start the following year.

6. Rick Pitino (1987-89): The year before he arrived, the team had won only 24 games. In just two years, Pitino led the Knicks to their first division title in nearly twenty years. He finished with a 90-74 record in three seasons with the Knicks and coached in 13 playoff games, which is actually the sixth highest total of any Knicks coach, which is actually pretty sad.

5. Hubie Brown (1982-86): After reaching the playoffs in each of Brown’s first two seasons, the Knicks plummeted to 24-58 in 1984-85 and 23-59 in 1985-86 and was eventually fired after a 4-12 start the following season. But there were circumstances that were far beyond Brown’s control that led to his downfall. Star forward Bernard King suffered a devastating knee injury in March 1985 in a game against the Kansas City Kings, not fully recovering for two seasons, while Patrick Ewing, the top overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft, missed 32 games in an injury-plagued rookie season. I always felt Brown was a better coach then he got credit for being.

4. Jeff Van Gundy (1996-2001): Van Gundy was the head coach of the Knicks from March 8, 1996 until his resignation on December 8, 2001. He led the team to the playoffs six times, including their Cinderella run to the 1999 NBA Finals. He finished with a career record of 248-172 (third most wins in franchise history) and the 69 postseason games he coached in are the second most in Knicks history. JVG is another coach who I think was underappreciated around the league.

3. Joe Lapchick (1947-56): Lapchick led the Knicks to eight straight winning seasons and eight trips to the playoffs, including three straight NBA Finals from

April 6, 2012; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Pat Riley in attendance at the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Houston Rockets at the Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

1951 to 1953. He was considered a great motivator, but Lapchick had the reputation for being a wild man on the sidelines, stomping on his coat, smashing chairs, and tossing various objects into the air. Stress-management problems forced him to quit near the end of the 1955–56 season. He left the Knicks with a 326-247 NBA coaching record.

2. Pat Riley (1991-95): Riley led the Knicks to the best regular season record in team history in 1993 (tied with the 1969-1970 team) and received his second Coach of the Year award. Riley’s ability to work with the physical, deliberate Knicks was outstanding, considering that he was associated with the fast-paced Lakers in the 1980s. Riley returned to the NBA Finals in 1994, but his Knicks lost in seven games to the Houston Rockets after being up 3–2 in the series.  During his tenure in the Big Apple, Riley posted a career record of 223-105 and his .680 winning percentage is the best in Knicks history.

1. Red Holzman (1967-77, 1978-82): Holzman tops the list and this was an easy choice considering his accomplishments. During a 15-year span as Knicks’ coach, Holzman won a total of 613 games, including two NBA championships in 1970 and 1973.

In 1969, Holzman coached the Knicks to a then single-season NBA record 18-game win streak, breaking the 17-game record first set back in 1946. For his efforts leading up to the Knicks’ 1970 championship win, Holzman was named the NBA Coach of the Year. He was one of very few individuals to have won an NBA championship as both player and coach. In 1985, he was elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The Knicks have retired the number 613 in his honor, equaling the number of wins he accumulated as their head coach.

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Is it time for Mike D'Antoni to go?

Mike D’Antoni, the mastermind behind the run & gun Phoenix Suns. He was supposed to be the savior of Gotham, the architect behind a resurgence at the Mecca. He failed, and it has fallen on Amar’e Stoudemire to lead a rebirth at the Garden. He was supposed to be the main attraction for the much hyped free agent class of 2010. He failed, and LeBron James went south. He is supposed to be the coach that leads New York back to the finals. I’m going to go ahead and call that a fail as well, since the D’Antoni experience seems to be on the fast track too nowhere.

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Back in 2001, Earl Barron played for Memphis. Both he and the Knicks thought they had a promising decade ahead of them. They were wrong. But perhaps now we can combine forces and make the Tens be OUR decade. (source: Yardbarker.com)

For those who don’t know, though I’m a born and bred New Yorker, I’ve spent the last decade-plus in Los Angeles.  While here, I’ve adopted the Clippers as my sad, pathetic little brother to encourage.  That resulted in my creating the site FullyClips.com for the FanSided Network here before I got promoted up to the big leagues and was given the Knicks’ site.  For my first post on this site, I did a piece on The Smackdown Battle For Title Of The Past Decade’s Worst NBA Franchise.  Much to Isiah Thomas’ chagrin, I gave the award to Donald Sterling’s Clippers.  Although to be fair to Isiah, he only had a few years of being in charge to screw up the Knicks, versus Sterling had the entire decade (& more).  I’m sure if Isiah had a larger time frame in which to work his (black) magic, he could’ve stunk up the joint just as poorly as The Donald did.

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Despite the Knicks’ slowing down from their earlier winning pace from a few weeks, this is definitely a different, better team than the one that started this season.  If in November someone told me the Knicks would be only a game and a half out of the playoffs in January, I would’ve responded, “The only way they do that is if they get a great steal of a trade.”  Yet here they are with the same personnel as the beginning of the season (okay, so they picked up Jonathan Bender, who’s been decent, but definitely has been a game-changer.  Plus he seems to have already fallen out of the rotation).   Thus to figure out what helped bring about this change, there’s no better place to start than with Coach Mike D’Antoni (okay, maybe a better place to start would be in a bank that gave away free money and chocolate cake, but they’re hard to find).  Mike Berman of the New York Post gives some insight here:

After the Knicks’ franchise-worst 1-9 start, Mike D’Antoni woke up one morning with an epiphany: To hell with coaching with the future in mind and just try to win now.

D’Antoni’s win-at-all-costs approach has meant a tight-as-a-drum rotation; the end to the Eddy Curry experiment; the exile of their two first-round picks, Jordan Hill and Toney Douglas.

“To be honest with you, when we started off slow, I got off track, too,” D’Antoni said [...]  “It was for 2010. So let’s throw all the rookies in, let’s do this, let’s do that. But after 1-9, there was no way I was going to make 82 games like this. You kind of said, ‘The hell with that. Let’s win today.’ And it’s worked out better than I thought.”

D'Antoni cuts the cord on the still-born that was the Knicks' first 10 games

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