Derrick Willis, the excellent blogger over at FanSided’s Minnesota Timberwolves blog, Dunking With Wolves, sent me some great questions about today’s game against his team.  Here are his questions and my answers:
1. Where do you think the Knicks have the biggest advantage in tonight’s game?
For the Knicks I don’t usually examine teams in a position-by-position analysis since the team does a lot of switching, swarming and zoning, very rarely leaving one guy isolated to play D against another one.  So for instance, we don’t have any good low-post defenders, meaning Big Al should kill us, but in the last game [...]

David Lee found out shortly before the game that he was not one of the players chosen by the coaches to be an All-Star this year.  He was bummed, but as he realized, it seemed that the coaches only chose players from teams that are .500 or better.  The Knicks ain’t.  The odd thing was that the Hawks’ center, Al Horford, was chosen.  Horford’s been good, but not as good as David Lee, and not even as good as his own teammate, Josh Smith, who was snubbed too.  So it was kinda odd.  The other unexpected choice for me was [...]

Rather than wait a few hours to find out the answer to that question, let’s check out the possibilities.  For those who don’t know, while the All-Star starters were voted in by the fans, the reserves are voted in by the coaches.  The coaches are asked to vote for 7 players (but they can’t vote for any on their own team): 2 guards, 2 forwards, 1 center, and 2 wild cards (in other words any position they want).  With the 1 center spot, things seem to look good for David Lee.  Statistically his numbers are great, while his skills have [...]

After being severely, and historically, whupped by Dallas by 50 points the other day, last night the Knicks came out determined to show their stuff and won by nearly 30 points.  Jared Jeffries got the team off on the right note.  The first two times Minnesota tried to bring it up court, the 6′11″ Jeffries stole it from the Timberwolves’ maybe 6″ point guard, Jonny Flynn, before he even made it across half-court.  Both resulted in baskets.  Flynn, who played in Syracuse last year and was part of an epic 6-OT extravaganza, was darn psyched to play in NYC for [...]

Yes, girls, it’s true.  According to the New York Post, young Danilo Gallinari, our l’il Gallo, is one of New York City’s most eligible bachelors:

Those deep, chocolate eyes. Those arms. That earning power. According to the NBA’s rookie scale, Gallinari will make $2.6 million over his first three years. Currently in his second year, the Knicks’ Italian Stallion — he hails from Milan, with a to-die-for accent — lives in Westchester, near the team’s practice pad. (Psst: We hear he hits his favorite Italian restaurant, Via Della Pace, in the East Village after every home game, so you’ll know where [...]

Sunday afternoon the Knicks had their worst loss in Madison Square Garden EVER.  But at least they lost by a nice round number: 50 points.  There’s no point going too deep into this game because clearly it’s an outlier, but there are definitely a few things to take away from it.
1. Duhon finally got a couple of shots to go in.  Maybe that’ll help get his confidence back.  Interestingly, even though he’s been missing everything, his shot has looked good and is lined up, it’s just either a tad short or a tad long, but it’s how you want to [...]

For two quarters, the Knicks looked great.  During the third quarter they lost a bit of their mojo, but they played good defense, keeping the Lakers’ mojo out of the conversation too.  They even enter the final quarter up by a point.  Alas, after a few minutes the Lakers kicked it into a higher gear, while the Knicks remained in neutral.  Part of it was indeed the Lakers taking over when it got to “winning time.”  However, even in the third quarter, you could see the Knicks lacked that energy and hustle that had served them so well in the [...]

ESPN reports that Stephon Marbury, NYC’s own Starbury, is back in the basketball league!  The Chinese basketball league.  He joined the Shanxi club, currently 15th out of 17th, so clearly they could use some help.  Word is that his salary will
not be too high because [Marbury] wanted to promote his personal brand of shoes in China.
Hopefully this will give him a clean slate, as it seems unlikely there could be much controversy in a Chinese league, right?  Er, no.
Shanxi last season hired former NBA player Bonzi Wells, who scored as many as 50 points a game. The contract ended after [...]

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 [...]