Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni is no stranger to receiving criticism for his rotations. But when former Knicks player Jordan Hill gave his two cents about not getting any playing time in New York as a rookie, D'Antoni defended himself.
"Where does that come from?" D'Antoni told the New York Post in rebuttal. "Seriously. It's something that cracks me up. I don't play rookies? I don't like to play bad rookies."
If D'Antoni was taking a jab at his former player, Hill proved he was no bad rookie against the Knicks on Sunday. The forward scored season-high 13 points in the Rockets’s 116-112 win to get a little payback.
Hill was sent to Houston as part of the three-team, nine-player Tracy McGrady trade in February.
"It's part of the trade I really didn't want to do," Knicks president Donnie Walsh told Post. "Bottom line is I did it. But I really didn't want to give up on him because I like him just like Toney [Douglas]. Both are going to be good NBA players, and [I] still think that about Jordan. What it came down to — you know what it came down to — it put us in a more flexible position this summer."
With the Knicks out of playoff contention and Hill proving he can produce when given minutes, his comments are not groundless.
Many rookies have ridden the pine under D’Antoni. Toney Douglas, also from the 2009 draft class, has played in 44 of New York's 70 games, logging an average 16 minutes per game — though the young point guard has recently started ahead of Chris Duhon and Sergio Rodriguez and logged 30 or more minutes in four of the past five games. A 2008 rookie, Danilo Gallinari, played just 28 games last season while hampered by a back injury, averaging only of 14 minutes per game when he did get on the court.
D'Antoni's also had some rookies in Phoenix — including D.J. Strawberry, Alando Tucker, Sharrod Ford, Dijon Thompson, Jackson Vroman (who, like Hill, found a niche after being traded) and Yuta Tabuse – who didn’t see much of the court. However, the only one of those players who the Suns drafted in the first round was Tucker, unlike the trio of Hill, Douglas and Gallinari, who were all taken in round one.
But NBA Fanhouse’s Tom Ziller isn’t buying the coach-hates-rookies talk. Ziller points to Leandro Barbosa as evidence of a first-year player who played a lot in D’Antoni’s system.
The Knicks’ coach claimed the same.
"I don't have anything against rookies at all, I like them," D'Antoni added in the Post. "Jordan was in a position, if you noticed, where we had Al [Harrington], Jared [Jeffries], David Lee, [Darko] Milicic for a while. We had about five guys. Rookies are usually in the pecking order of the last guy."
