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For those who follow fantasy, we play with three keepers who you get to keep in the same round you snagged ‘em the year before.  Thus our first overall pick was Dirk Nowitzki because CP3, Durant & LeBron had all been kept.  And as with past years, I’m mostly not gonna analyze keepers since they should almost always be great picks.  Keepers are noted by a (K) before their name.

Lastly, picks won’t be penalized if the player got injured because no one can predict that.  Well, unless they’re an injury prone player, like say Yao, in which case, then you will be mercilessly heckled.  Rich.

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Speaking of awards, New Yorkers should be ashamed because the second round of All-Star votes have been tallied, and other cities are clearly voting more for their players than we’ve been doing. We may be chanting MVP every time Amar’e Stoudmire shoots free throws, but not enough of us have been voting to make him an All-Star starter.  He’s currently third in Eastern Conference Forwards, with only the top two getting the nod.  He has 637,486 votes, behind understandably LeBron James (969,459) but unforgivably also about 75,000 behind Boston’s Kevin Garnett (712,555).

Perhaps even more disappointing is the showing for Raymond Felton, who while he may not be one of the two best guards in the East, he definitely should be far higher than his current 8th place.  Sure, fine, let Dwayne Wade, Rajon Rondo and Derrick Rose be head and shoulders above the rest up top.  However, it’s shameful that he’s behind Ray Allen (having only an average year), John Wall (injured for large chunks of the season already), Gilbert Arenas (having a mediocre season as a bench player for both Washington and now Orlando) and Brandon Jennings (also injured, but shooting an awful percentage and his team the Milwaukee Bucks has a worse record than the Knicks).

So get out there and vote!  Yes, it ain’t as important as voting in our governmental elections, but the good thing is that you can vote again every day!  Let’s get Amar’e starting and give Felty a great showing.

Oddly, since teams often start sluggishly in afternoon games (with the Knicks particularly egregious in this regard at home), they both came out firing.  Even odder, one would think that would favor the Knicks (the Pacers are ranked 24th in offensive efficiency), yet the first stanza ended with us down 30-32.  It wasn’t because they shot lights-out, but rather because in a Zydrunas-Ilgauskas-esque nightmarish way they outrebounded us by five boards in that quarter alone.

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First, despite popular wisdom, the Knicks actually do play some very good defense at times.  Wilson Chandler, Landry Fields, Ronny Turiaf and Toney Douglas have been great at scrambling all over the court and causing chaos, while Raymond Felton can be quite the bulldog on D himself.  And Amar’e, while simply awful at one-on-one defense, can be a good help shot blocker.  Thus we’ve actually had several games where our D clamped down at the end of the games and really save the day for us.  So why am I complaining today — is it just because we lost?  No, it’s because this time D’Antoni came up with a specific defensive game plan that I feel put us in a big hole.  What was it?

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After the Cleveland game where I got another DNP – Coach’s decision, I have read – yet another time – that Mozgov is losing is losing the trust of the coach.

I’ll say this: on my part there’s no panic!

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Hottest Seats:

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Did the '04-'05 Phoenix Suns prove that offense can't win championships, or just leave the question still unanswered?

The old adage is that defense wins championships, and until the last 48 hours I believed that pretty strongly.  For those who have been following my comments on various posts, I keep harping that the thing we most need is a shot-blocking defensive center because I was no moron: I know offense can only take you so far.  Eventually shots won’t fall, and that’s why you need to be able to rely on defense.  However, after watching the Knicks/Celts game and then last night the San Antonio Spurs against the Denver Nuggets, I saw reasons to believe offense could lead to a ring and question my very own beliefs that D is dee way to win.

No, no, I’m not saying I’m delusional and that after one close game against the Celtics that now I think that this New York team has a shot at winning a championship this year.  And up until just last night, I was the same acolyte as you, praying at the Holy Altar Of Defensive Stops. My hope was that coach Mike D’Antoni could get us up to that elite level of those high-octane offensive teams of the past decade (like his own Phoenix Suns, but also the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks).  At that point, we’d then follow the Mavericks blueprint to the next step, firing the old offense-only coach (in their case, Don Nelson) and bringing in a defensive-minded coach as the closer (new coach Avery Johnson did bring them to near the brink of acquiring some shiny new rings until Dwayne Wade went nuts).  And while I still believe that’s probably the best way to go, I now can’t help but feel there is another way.  What made me change so radically that I’d be willing to forgo my dearest, closest beliefs?

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The New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Raptors last night, winning their sixth straight game and 11 out of their last 12, but it took Amar’e Stoudemire once again performing like an MVP, and Raymond Felton’s clinching three-pointer bouncing off the rim five times (plus once off the backboard) before falling in.  With our record at 14-9, it’s the best we’ve been since 2001.  And tonight we have one last easy game (against Washington, who also might likely be playing without John Wall, perhaps their best player).  Then the true test begins when we finally start playing teams with winning records.
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See how Amar'e received the ball here in a position where he could easily get past his own guy, forcing the little guy to either foul or tickle him in the armpit? Earlier in the year he never got the rock like that. No wonder he wasn't laughing and smiling until now. (Source: AP)

While many of us were thrilled that the Knicks beat the New Orleans Hornets Friday night because they were the first team with a winning record we’d gone up against in a while, stat-heads likely were just as impressed (if not more so) with our commanding 116-99 victory over the Toronto Raptors because of the huge point differential.  In the world of advanced statistical analysis, one surprising revelation has been that a better indicator of team success is not whether you defeat good teams, but rather by how many points you outscore your opponent.

One of the leaders of basketball’s new statistical revolution is ESPN’s John Hollinger.  As of today, he gives the Knicks a phenomenal 87.7% chance of making it to the playoffs.  His worst case scenario, meaning rock bottom awful, is that we only win 29 games this year.  In other words, even if everything goes to hell from here on out, we’d at least still match last season’s total.  What’s the best case?  60 wins.  That seems incredibly unlikely, which all the more makes you realize that it’s equally incredibly unlikely that we only equal our ’09-’10 results.  Meanwhile, Amar’e Stoudemire’s former team, the Phoenix Suns, is listed as having only a 56.5% playoff chance and with a maximum win total of 58 games.  Although in all fairness, that’s because there are so many more good teams in the West that it’s harder to predict with certainty.  It’s not that hard to imagine teams like Portland, Houston, Memphis or Golden State going on a run and getting into the playoff picture.  Yet even the most fertile imagination and most fervent local fan probably has trouble seeing a future where Detroit, Philadelphia or New Jersey can be amongst the top 8 Eastsiders this season.

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LeBron James showed up strong last night, but will he ever truly be able to recover what he lost? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

In a game that many (including myself) thought would cause LeBron James to melt like the Wicked Witch Of The West meeting a bucket o’ water, the man came through impressively, silencing his critics.  Well, silencing some.  Perhaps how silenced people are has to do with how injured they were, or what exactly about his “Decision” upset them.  There are four main reasons why people were angry, and me, I fall into the fourth category.  They are:

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Tonight the deposed king returns to Cleveland for the first time, and man, if you think the Knicks get savaged by ESPN/non-NY outlets, he has been getting it hard.  Wanna build up your anger to a froth before the game?  Check out these bits:

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To donate to the FanSided and Site5 Holiday Season Charity Drive and help us help the BGCA help our children, visit this link.

Here are some things I’m thankful for in the world o’ Knicks (feel free to add your own thankful bits in the comments section below):

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Why are we using a picture of Shawne Williams as a Memphis Tiger? Because before Sunday he'd never played on the court in a Knicks jersey. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

One of the oddest things about the New York Knicks’ double-overtime victory over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday was that it also featured both coaches using double rotation strategies: getting everyone a shot initially, only to end up with a short leash.  By the end of the first quarter, Detroit coach John Kuester had already gone ten players deep.  For the Knicks, Mike D’Antoni went nine-deep in the first half, which might not seem like he went too deep into his bench, until you see who he played.

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Forget athleticism, today we're looking at the math behind (and in front of) the Knicks.

Welcome, class.  Today we’ll be using basic math to discuss the future of your New York Knickerbockers, using yesterday’s 125-116 double-overtime victory over the Detroit Pistons as a springboard. Once again, the numbers show that we let a solid lead in the fourth disappear (up by 6 with barely more than 2 minutes to go), but once again the final tally reveals we still managed to hang on for the win.  More numbers?  The victory brought us back up to .500, our 9-9 record keeping us at 7 in the east, only 1/2 a game back from the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat for the #5 spot.  Most of our wins have been against teams with losing records, and we do keep letting teams get back into games, so once again we wonder if we should be optimistic or view our record as a fluke?  Let’s dig further into the most basic of numbers to see if we can answer that question.

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Raymond Felton hurt his back last night, but that wasn't gonna stop him from gutting out a win against his former team. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Last night, your New York Knickerbockers defeated Raymond Felton’s former team, the Charlotte Bobcats, 110-107, giving us a four-game winning streak and more.  It moved us into sole possession of the seventh seed in the East (with a full game lead over the eighth and just one behind being tied for fifth).  It left us just one game below .500.  And should we win tonight’s rematch against the Bobcats, we would have our longest winning streak in nearly five years.  Perhaps even more important, taking the rematch would also give us the season series against the Cats since we only play them three times.  Since they’re one of the teams who we’ll be fighting for the final playoff spots, that tie-breaker could end up being crucial.  But before we jump ahead to thoughts of April, let’s stay in November for a moment and discuss last night’s ART (The Awful, The Remarkable and The Terrific).

The Awful

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Blake Griffin had the game of his life, but the Knicks happily had the game. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

With two victories over the weekend against the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers, the Knicks have managed to pull themselves up to being tied for seventh in the East.  Our 3-1 record on the road trip was, amazingly (and depressingly), the best we’ve done on the road since 1998.  Yes, during it we beat two of the league’s weaker teams (the Kings & Clips), and the Warriors were missing one of their best players (our former fan-fave, David Lee).  However, keep in mind that previously we had been losing to those weaker teams, even ones missing top players (the Sixers without Andre Iguodala, and the Rockets without Yao Ming and Aaron Brooks).  The results were so different than the early part of the season, that it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s Memorex.  So who are we?

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Mike D'Antoni weighing the benefits of whether or not to play Anthony Randolph. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks finally had a decent night offensively, and as we’ve been saying here, that made all the difference, giving them a much needed 113-106 victory over the Sacramento Kings.  Yes, part of it is that they were helped by the fact that the Kings are a weak team, but the hope entering the season was that if we beat the bad teams and lose to the good ones, we’ll still be good enough to slip into the playoffs.  No, we won’t be a team that can challenge for higher than a 7th seed as some deluded fans dreamed, but we just might not be as bad as we’ve seemed.

Looking back, our record isn’t nearly as awful as it seems.  The truth is that Minnesota needed a historic night in order to beat us, so we easily could be 5-7 instead of 4-8, and that would have us just a half game outside of the playoffs.  Right now, as is, we’re still only a game and a half out, which is pretty sweet considering how awful we’ve been.  The loss to Houston also was tough to handle because of their poor record, but their record may be deceiving in that of their 8 losses, 7 of ‘em were against teams likely to end up over .500.  The only inexcusable loss was against Philadelphia, and my feeling is that since we had a winning record at the time (3-2) and Phillie not only had looked bad but was also missing their top player (Andre Iguodala) that we entered the game a bit too confident and not with the desperation we needed.

Our next game is a rematch against Golden State, but they’ll be missing David Lee (they’ve gone 1-2 without him).  The next night we go up against the one-win Los Angeles Clippers, so we’ve got two very winnable games.  If we snag ‘em both, that’d leave us just half a game out.  Then we have a home-and-away against Charlotte, one  of the teams who we’ll be fighting against for the final spots.  Hopefully we can at least split those.  Then after that, two of our next three games are also very winnable (versus the Pistons and the Nets).

But back to last night’s game.  Let’s talk about a few of the key factors that lead to the victory:

-More importantly than shooting really well from the three-point line (40%) was the fact that we took a far more reasonable amount of them (15) rather than the 25+ we’ve been putting up regularly.  Just as if one lives by the sword then one dies by the sword, if ya live by the three you’re gonna die by it too.  Wilson Chandler played 34 minutes and nicely only took one three (which he made, but happily that didn’t make him go trigger-happy).

-Mozgov only got six minutes of playing time and Anthony Randolph didn’t get on the court at all.  Both of those guys may have tons of potential, but it’d be a compliment to say they’ve only played miserably.  We need wins and can’t just give our young guys minutes to screw up in hopes that they’ll improve down the road.  These guys need to be growing during practice time, and until they’re consistent there, they shouldn’t be playing.

-Along that line, it was also helpful that Ronny Turiaf didn’t get into foul trouble like he had the previous night in Denver, so he was able to log 30 minutes.

-Toney Douglas finally hit some shots, going 5-for-9 for 12 points in 21 minutes.  He doesn’t need to be on fire like he was during that two-game stretch earlier in the season, but he can’t come in and be a total stinkfest on O.  He’s Toney Tone, not Jared Jeffries.

-Of note is that we only had 14 assists, with Felton only getting 3.  This, to me, further proves my point that our issue is not with the point guard position but rather that our perimeter players haven’t been consistently hitting their outside shots.  We can survive if our shooters have a slightly sub-par night, but not if they have truly awful nights like they’ve been doing.

Hopefully we can use this win to help us sneak into Oakland on Friday and steal a victory back from the Warriors.

Gallinari, apparently bored with the game, throws up his arm ("forget y'all!") and walks away while Melo scores. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks, who had been down by as much as 16 points in the fourth quarter, clawed their way back to a tie, only to run out of time in the end against the Denver Nuggets.  For once, the offense didn’t grind to a halt.  However, much like in the game against Golden State, Amar’e Stoudemire had key misses from the free-throw line that likely cost us the game.

Over the last five years, Stat’s free throw percentage has been superb for a big man, ranging from 77.1% to 83.5%.  This year he’s shooting 72%, the worst he’s done since his second year in the league.  Last night he didn’t just shoot poorly for himself at the line, he shot poorly for like Shaq or Dwight Howard, going just 3-of-8 or 37.5%.  In a game decided by two points, that’s pretty huge.  When you miss free throws, particularly if you tend to miss them more toward the end of games, it’s clearly a mental issue.  Stat called out the team after the last game, saying they lacked a winning mentality, but one could easily make a case that he’s been the most responsible for not closing out games.

Though Stoudemire ended up with 24 points on a nice 10-for-19 shooting, he had only 6 rebounds and needs to dramatically improve his shot selection.  He tends to get the ball a little past the free throw line and then likes to try to drive to the side of his defender, getting some contact and putting up an awkward shot.  It only occasionally results in foul shots, but it always results in tougher attempts than had he just shot the open jumper when he caught it.  In fact, there were many times where he caught it in that area, with his man playing several feet off of him, and Stoudemire didn’t even look to shoot, instead passing it off to someone else.  For him to be truly dangerous, he needs to get his defenders to respect that outside shot.  That will force them to close out on him and make it easier for him to drive past them.  Right now they play a step off of him, making his drives tough even when no help defenders come over to clog the lane.

On the other side of the coin, in the world of and-that-guy-is-who?, the game featured two wonderful performances from unheralded rookies.  The Nuggets’ undrafted rookie, small forward Gary Forbes, notched 19 points on 8-of-13 shooting, going 3-for-3 from distance, and adding an impressive 9 rebounds.  Not to be outdone, our own Landry Fields, who many people thought shouldn’t have been drafted, rang in an even more impressive 21 points on 10-of-15 shooting, plus an insane 17 rebounds.  By contrast, our three centers (Timofey Mozgov, Ronny Turiaf and Anthony Randolph) only combined for a paltry 5 boards.

Point guard Raymond Felton also had a good all-around game, with 19 points, 8 rebounds, 11 assists, and only 1 turnover.  Actually, we were pretty darn good in keeping our turns down, only having 11 of ‘em.  Stoudemire too had a good game in that regard, only losing the ball twice.  One thing that seemed to help him get some easier buckets is that often after getting a defensive rebound with his man right on his back, Stat handed off the ball to Felton and then just sprinted down the court.  Felton would then pass the ball ahead to Amar’e who, yes, ugh, would take a few dribbles, but at these points at least there was usually just one defender, and that guy was backpeddling.

Other bits:

-Mozgov and Randolph were useless.  Actually, often they were worse than useless, frequently doing dumb things that hurt the team.  On one play, a Nugget was fouled, and because of continuation, took another step and just lobbed up the ball to ensure he got free-throws.  Randolph came over, trying to be like Kevin Garnett, and swatted the ball away.  However, since it was continuation and not, as KG does, a block on a shot taken after a dead ball, it was goal-tending, giving the Nugs two free points.

-Toney Douglas’ shot still wouldn’t fall, and since he doesn’t really know how to pass like a real point guard, it limits his usefulness.  Luckily, coach Mike D’Antoni seems to have realized this and thus limited Toney to just 16 minutes.

-Too many threes.  Heading into the fourth, the Knicks had already attempted 22 threes, only hitting five of ‘em.  In the fourth, they finally started to hit ‘em, going an excellent 4-for-9, but 31 threes on just 29% shooting is ridiculous.

-Speaking of threes, we’ve seemed to have trouble hitting them and thus keeping the opposing team honest.  Toney, Landry, Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and Anthony Mason have all been unable to consistently hit from range.  I’ve hoped that Kelenna Azubuike might eventually return and provide that steady threat, however maybe we already have our guy.  Last season, in his 27 games with us, Bill Walker shot an insane percentage from deep.  Last night he went 2-for-3 from downtown, so I was surprised that D’Antoni didn’t reinsert him when we needed a three at the end.  Walker hasn’t been as unconscious as he was in his limited run the previous year, but he’s still shooting a very impressive 36.8% (for comparison sake, since three pointers obviously get you more points than two pointers, shooting 33% from deep is the same as shooting a very impressive 50% from two-point land).  Maybe it’s time for D’Antoni to start giving him more than 14.3 minutes a night?  I dunno.  We clearly need to switch something up and get a boost from somewhere.

-Lastly, although we won the battle of the boards last night, clearly we need help at the center position.  It is thus with heavy heart (and still much confusion) that I write that last year’s surprising end-of-the-year flier, Earl Barron, has finally signed on with an NBA team — the Phoenix Suns.  I assume he’s getting the minimum and it’s just a one-year deal, so I still have no idea why we didn’t bring him back.  Is it really better to instead use that roster spot on keeping Shawne Williams glued to the bench?

Don't jump to conclusions about the Heat, a team that's only had two weeks to play together, because they lost twice to the Celtics, the best defensive team in the league and a crew who've played together for three years. Come April, the Heat will be much more polished. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The media and fans (particularly in New York) are always quick, way too quick, to jump to conclusions and predict downfalls based on small sample sizes.  For the media, it’s ‘cuz they’re looking for stories.  When Amar’e Stoudemire was asked earlier in the week if he thought that the reason Andrew Bogut elbowed him extra hard was due to him being slightly involved in Bogut’s injury the previous year.  Stat’s reasonable response of “It’s possible” turned into a story of him claiming Bogut was purposefully out for payback.  Likewise, with the Knicks at 2-5 and the Heat at 5-4, suddenly people are roaring that neither team is anywhere near as good as people had expected.  Don’t buy it.  Yet.  It’s too early to know these things.  And just like how we don’t have enough information to know what’s real and what’s memorex yet, you also need to take the Golden State Warrior’s marvelous .667 winning record and the Indiana Pacers being at .500 with a skeptical eye.  Heck, I wouldn’t fault you for having two skeptical eyes either.  Let’s look at each team to better understand what’s going on:

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David Lee returned to New York with style last night. He left in a familiar manner: with the Knicks losing. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks dropped to 3-5 with their 122-117 loss to David Lee’s new team, the Golden State Warriors.  While the Warriors have been a laughable team, like the Knicks, for the past few years, this year they’ve started out on a tear.  At 6-2, they actually have are tied for the 4th best record in the league.  Yes, it’s early in the season, so that’s a bit of a mirage, but the point is that while they’re not quite as good as that record would indicate, neither are they as bad as their recent history would indicate.

If you didn’t watch the game, the five point difference might seem large, but really it was a one-point game in the closing seconds, that only was extended to five due to purposeful fouls (the last of which shouldn’t have even happened with only 1.5 seconds left, so really the score should’ve been 120-117).  Likewise, if you just look at the box score, you’d see Golden State shot an insane 52.8% from the field and assume our defense is as awful as it was last year.  The truth though is that our half-court defense was actually pretty darn good at times and definitely got us back in the game, despite being down as much as 19.  So what was the real story?

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Amar'e Stoudemire's struggled to create good looks for himself, but even though the Knicks lost last night, he took a step forward. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Last night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks was over by the end of the first quarter, which left us down by 22 points.  In the end, yes, we lost by 27 points, but really they only added to their lead at the very end when we played the bench dregs for almost the entire fourth quarter.  One might be tempted to say that since we scored only 80 points that our offense was the problem, and yes, it sure was awful, but really it all came down to that lack of defense in the first quarter.

Truth is it wasn’t just that our D wasn’t as crisp as it could’ve been, but also that the Bucks just were on fire.  They scored 41, but then we clamped down, limiting them to 23, 26 and 17 in the final three quarters.  And they only got 26 in the third thanks to an at-the-buzzer-shot, so we practically kept them under 25 points a quarter after that disastrous first one.  Here are a four things that I’m concerned/thinking about:

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More sky-is-falling sign-of-the-apocalypse news: a Mike D'Antoni team is better at defense than offense. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Tonight we go to Chicago to play the Bulls, but somehow the stats tell us that we’re arriving looking like a defensive juggernaut that doesn’t know how to play offense.  Huh?  The blog By The Horns brought up these truly backwards stats:

how weird is this:

The Knicks — a presumably defenseless team that relies on Mike D’Antoni’s wacky offensive system to outscore their opponents — currently rank 24th in Offensive Rating (101.1) and 8th in Defensive Rating (102.4). Seriously.

As for the Bulls, they’re 15th in Offensive Rating (106.4) and 9th in Defensive Rating (102.6). So…Tom Thibodeau’s team is worse at playing defense than Mike D’Antoni’s squad, but better at putting points on the board?

In related news: Dogs are now living with cats. Mass hysteria!

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There are positives though as I wrote in Tuesday’s post.  Beside the fact that a loss to Orlando could’ve provoked more sky-is-falling screaming from the media & fans, there are two other good things:

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We’ll then be asking for the following:

• Name
• Age/Location
• Writing Background (If any)
• If there are any qualities/background info that would make you especially qualified/unique to contribute.
• Writing Sample(s)
• Any other information you think we should know
• And most importantly: what you think the meaning of life is.

…Okay, maybe you don’t need to know the last one.

But, wow, serious bonus points if you can enlighten me on that.

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UPDATE:

Love that a bunch of you responded!

A few additional things:

1. You don’t need to fill out the above info in these comments, just when I email you.

2. I will contact everyone.

3. Pretty much none of the above info I asked for matters, it’ll just be about your writing sample(s).  So don’t worry if you’ve never written jack before.  And in terms of writing samples, I’ll want to read something basketball-related.  Perhaps if your sample is solid, I’ll post ‘em up here even if we don’t ultimately choose you.

4. For the writing sample I want you to write what you’d like to write.  I don’t care if you write something that disagrees with things I’ve written or if it’s nothing like what we have here.  If you tend to think about things humorously, then do something that expresses that.  If you’re more analytical and into stats, go for that.  If, like say Andy below, you enjoy writing lyrics, then feel free to write a Knick song or whatever.  If you prefer to just write in snippets of thoughts rather than full-fledged paragraphs, do that.  It doesn’t need to be the most brilliant piece of writing ever, just something that you think is kinda interesting and which you’d enjoy reading if you came across it on a blog.

5. There is no pay for this.  Maybe down the road there could be a little bit, but for now assume you will never make a nickel doing it.  This should be about the joy/love of expressing your thoughts/feelings on bball.

Tony Parker won't be walking through that door to save us. Then again, with Dwight Howard not coming tonight, hopefully we can avoid feeling we need to be saved. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Rumors of dissatisfaction and Big Apple longing have made New Yorkers constantly hoping to land Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul, but at the end of last season we were all fantasizing about snagging a different star: Tony Parker.  Apparently the San Antonio Spurs’ All-Star point guard was now expendable because backup George Hill had performed admirably.  Plus with TP married to glamorous actress Eva Longoria, clearly she’d prefer he move to Manhattan.  We here at Buckets even posted about a rumored potential trade of Tony for David Lee.  However, after CP3′s toast at ‘Melo’s wedding that they’d team up with Amar’e Stoudemire to form their own Big Three on the Knicks, Mr. Parker-Longoria slipped from many people’s minds.

Rest assured that Knick president Donnie Walsh hadn’t forgotten about the former Finals MVP.  Thus he, like any seriously knowledgable Knick fan, was distressed to hear that Tony signed a multi-year extension with the Spurs over the weekend.  While Chris Paul might be better, Parker’s contract ended this year, making him a serious possibility for us to snag.  Players who receive max contracts, like LeBron and Amar’e, they can be tough to lure as the NBA’s rules allow their home team to offer them more money.  However, with players like Tony Parker who aren’t quite at that level, we could’ve potentially offered a more lucrative contract than San Antonio (he signed for four years at only about $50 million).  That meant he was the easiest, most realistic top baller we could’ve gotten.

With Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili aging, wouldn’t it have made sense for him to at least wait until the off-season to see what options were available?  Well, due to injuries, the last three years Parker missed 13, 10 and 26 games.  So part of the reason he likely signed the deal was to be safe in case anything serious happened to him this year.  The other big concern of course is that a new Collective Bargaining Agreement will be signed, which means that there’s a chance he might not be able to get as good a deal once the new CBA is in place.  I still think he should’ve held off, because again, with him not getting a max contract, it seems like it’s pretty likely he could’ve signed just as lucrative a deal.  Bottom line: cross him off the list.  Sure we can still trade for him, but now there’s nothing about him that makes that more conceivable than any other trade we might make.

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In other news, asbestos fell from the ceiling in Madison Square Garden so tonight’s game against Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic has been cancelled.  You’re probably bummed about that if you had tickets to tonight’s game (or if you have any Knick or Magic player on your fantasy squad and put them in your line-up).  However, honestly, I think it might be good for us.  I keep harping on the difficulty of our first five games.  If you agree with my power ranking, then Orlando would be the third top five team we played in a row (after having played Boston & Portland over the week).  In other words, even if we are significantly better than last year, it would be quite an upset or coup to beat Orlando.  But most people look only at win-loss record rather than difficulty of schedule, and a third loss in a row would throw fans and journalists into a further panic of are-we-just-as-bad-as-we-were-last-year.  Instead now we have a far more winnable game against the Chicago Bulls, followed by two games we should win against Washington and Philadelphia.  Yes, we will have to play that Orlando game eventually, but it’s better to have it later in the year where a loss won’t cause any early season panic to erupt.

Stoudemire's 1st Knick game in NYC may not have resulted in a win, but it set the tone for a great, gritty, exciting rebirth of a season (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks lost both games this weekend, including the home opener against Portland where we led by 9 points with under six minutes remaining, but make no mistake: these are not last year’s Knicks.  We had tight games against both the Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers, two teams who, as I wrote in my pre-season Power Rankings, I believe are amongst the top five teams in the entire league.  Throw in the fact that in the last two minutes of the Blazers game we played some great lockdown defense, and clearly you should ignore the opening to the snarky recap by the Associated Press:

The elaborate pregame festivities were designed to emphasize that these are the “new” New York Knicks.

Crunch time was the same ol’ story.

Neither weekend game was anything like ones from previous years, so let’s look at what can be gleaned from them in order to better understand our new-look Knicks.  Last year we frequently had to examine things Clint Eastwood-style, checking out the Good, the Bad & the Ugly.  Life is looking up this season, so now and then we’ll check out a game’s ART (the Awful, the Remarkable & the Terrific):

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Nuthin' like playing with two great friends to make the game a blast. Above we see Wade, Bosh & LeBron yukking it up. (Yardbarker.com)

The world instantly judged the Miami Heat as Not Worthy after losing the opening game of the season to the Boston Celtics.  Despite them wining the next night in Philadelphia, Bill Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, published an early eulogy for LeBron James and company.  Now I’m no fan of LeBron or the Heat, but this seems like something many men suffer from: premature evaluation.

It kinda reminds me of the scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail where an undertaker walks through a town calling “Bring out yer dead!” but after a body is dropped on the heap it chirps up, “I’m not quite dead yet.”  When the undertaker reveals he won’t be back for a while, the person who dropped off the body decides it’d just be in everyone’s best interest to kill this person and get it over with now.  Luckily for the Heat, there are still 80 games left, not to mention that playoff thing, so there’s no need to rush to conclusions and cold-cock ‘em over the head (much as many of us would like to do).  That said, c’mon, I’m a guy, so I want to jump to some conclusions too.  Here are mine, none of which will corpsify the Heat:

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This is how the game would've looked to you if you were a piece of the hardwood. Reason #431 why it's good not to be a floor board. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks won their season opener 98-93 over the Toronto Raptors, thanks largely not to Amar’e Stoudemire but to the just-relegated-to-the-bench Wilson Chandler.  Just last week we asked who would be the Knicks #2 behind Stat.  Danilo Gallinari was the runaway favorite by our voters, followed by Raymond Felton and even Toney Douglas before we got to Chandler.  Okay, in fairness, after Gallo the next highest total was that a different player would step up each night, and chances are that’s what’ll happen rather than Chandler regularly being this unstoppable.

What are the takeaways from this game?  Just as we said during the preseason that there’s a danger into reading into too much from those games, clearly it’s equally presumptuous to make large scale assumptions based on a single game.  But that won’t stop me.  Here are my comments: (more…)

Who's the Knicks' starting 2-guard? Landry. Landry who? Landry Fields, the rook above from Stanford. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

As many of y’all have probably already heard, second-round draft pick, rookie Landy Fields, has surprisingly won the starting shooting guard spot for opening night.  It had seemed like Wilson Chandler had it wrapped up (particularly with potential best SG fit Kelenna Azubuike still recovering from injury), with Toney Douglas’ inspired play having possibly given him a shot.  So it was quite a shock that Landry, who did have good preseason and summer league performances, came out on top.  A couple of brief thoughts on it:

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Kobe bites his shirt! Does that mean he's worried the Lakers won't be on top this year? Nah, probably he just forgot to eat dinner. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

With the season beginning tonight, it’s time to rank how strong all the teams are at this point.  This isn’t who will be strongest at the end of the season or who will have the best regular season.  This measures how strong each team is right NOW.  If a team engaged in a seven game series today with any of the teams listed below them, I’m saying they’d win.  So yeah, injuries count big time.  And chemistry.  And like, how good they are.  It’s basically a highly complex formula that you mere mortals wouldn’t understand.  Either that or it’s all based on pure opinion.

1. Los Angeles Lakers — Even with the recovering Kobe shooting 28% this pre-season they’d still beat everyone.  Hell, he only shot 24% in Game 7 of Finals.

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Patrick Ewing Jr has not had the same post-Georgetown success that his dad had. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks, needing to cut their roster down to the league-mandated 15 players, chose to cut Patrick Ewing Jr.  This is the second time in three years that we’ve sent our former franchise player’s son packing.  Supposedly Poppa Patrick even tried to put in a good word and convince management to keep his boy on our squad.  Instead, we opted to keep Shawne Williams.

A couple of facts:

-The 15th player pretty much never plays.  Maybe if it’s a blow-out or if there’s a bizarre set of circumstances like last year in Golden State where every single player got injured, but otherwise forget it.

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Gallinari, like everyone on the Knicks not named Stoudemire, has vacilated between inconsistent and awful. (Yardbarker.com)

While Amar’e Stoudemire has been a Master of Consistent Brilliance during the preseason, his fellow Knicks have been Apprentices at the Temple Of Inconsistency & Mediocrity.  As Buckets’ reader Brendan pointed out in his comments: will anyone else step up?  To have any hope at making the playoffs, let alone securing more than 35 wins, we need at least one more guy to produce regularly at a solid level.

The possibilities for the other rock to lean on have been flawed in both different and similar ways.  Point guard Raymond Felton was supposed to be our other huge upgrade partly because he simply wasn’t Chris Duhon.  While Felton has had a few games with decent assist totals, his shooting has in fact been consistently Duhonesque.  Yup, poor shooting and inconsistent assist numbers hasn’t inspired the Garden Faithful with hope.

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Ray Felton's been coming along slowly. With only one preseason game left, will he be ready when the season starts next week? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

As hard as it is to glean anything from preseason games, it’s even harder when we sit most of our starters, like in last night’s 118-91 pummeling by the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers.  Coach Mike D’Antoni decided to give Amar’e Stoudemire, Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari the night off.  Throw in the fact that Kelenna Azubuike is still recovering from injury, and it’s quite possible that we had four of our five eventual starters sitting.  How come those particular guys didn’t play?  My guess is because they’re the three guys who’ve had tons of experience playing in D’Antoni’s system so Coach wanted to give the other players more “real” game time to run it.

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New whispers of Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks... for the 17th time. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Sorry things have been sparse here lately but I’ve been traveling, and now it looks like it’s possible a certain Carmelo Anthony also could travel to the Knicks.  A few weeks ago, it seemed like his trade to the Nets was a sure thing.  Even after that fell through, many journalistic idiots (like say, me) propagated the unfounded rumor that the Denver Nuggets were bitter with the Knicks and refusing to listen to us.  But it turned out, shockingly, that they weren’t running a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars as though they were spiteful five-year olds who when they get mad cover their ears and won’t listen.  They just weren’t enamored with the options we offered them.  According to ESPN.com, things have now changed:

The offers the Knicks have proposed have always centered around packages including Anthony Randolph, the expiring contract of Eddy Curry and a first-round draft pick they would acquire from a third team, and New York has softened its stance on including forward Danilo Gallinari in a trade.

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Anthony Randolph, still figuring out the game of basketball, apparently didn't know that you're not supposed to lift up the other guy and carry him to the basket. Talk about embarrassing. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Sorry this didn’t come out earlier, but here are my belated thoughts on Knicks-Celts pre-season game #1 (they play again on Sunday in the neutral territory of Hartford, Connecticut):

-Many questioned whether Amar’e Stoudemire was worth the $100 million contract, and so far he’s been a man amongst boys.  He had another insane evening where he shot nearly 70% from the field, plus he got to the free throw line an impressive 15 times.  In just 27 minutes.  However, again the rebounds were anemic at just 5.  But he did also get 2 blocks, so at least he’s looking to protect the basket a bit more than he has the last couple of years.  Warning, most of the rest of this post is negative after this.

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If Timofey Mozgov doesn't work as center tonight, maybe it's time for Amare to strap it on and man the middle. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

KnickerBlogger interviews New York Times writer Howard Beck who intelligently wonders if perhaps we should move power forward Amar’e Stoudemire over to center?

Mike Kurylo: Speaking of Amar’e – is he really going to play the 4 exclusively, primarily, or occasionally? What’s your take from what you’ve seen in practice?

Howard Beck: That’s a great question because over the last week or so, watching Turiaf struggle a little bit and watching Mozgov flash between promising and foul prone I’ve been thinking about that same thing. And I’ll ask Mike D’Antoni about that today when I get there. In Phoenix, the Suns were widely successful with Amar’e as their so-called undersized/non-traditional center, and I don’t know why the Knicks can’t be successful as well. I think they have to (try) a banger/traditional center next to Amar’e to help him out and keep him out of foul trouble. But I think there is a lot of merit of playing it the Suns way – which is go undersized at every position and just outrun the other team up and down the court. You know there are only a few true centers who are scoring centers in the league anyway, so it’s not as if Amar’e Stoudemire is going to just sit there every night and get banged on by low-post/back-you-down centers. There just aren’t many of them anymore. I think we’ll end up seeing Stoudemire at the 5 a lot, but I think Mike D’Antoni doesn’t want to start that way. He’s inclined to, if he can, keep Amar’e at his natural position.

Personally, while I’ve enjoyed pushing all the Mozgov Could Be Great propaganda, I just have a hard time picturing him being a big contributor for the first few months of the season (if not longer).  Initially I’d actually assumed that we’d eventually realize we needed to move Amar’e to the 5 spot not just because both Moz and Turiaf are more 10-20 minute guys rather than starters, but also because we’d be itching to give Anthony Randolph more minutes.  Even though we’ve mentioned Randolph in the center conversation, he’s really more suited to play power forward or small forward.  Which are the ideal positions of probably our two best players in Stat and Danilo Gallinari, thus limiting the backup minutes available.  So I assumed we’d need to play Stat at the 5 to allow Randolph more time.  The problem is Randolph’s been so mediocre in training camp/pre-season, the coaching staff correctly hasn’t been searching to get him more minutes.  Perhaps he’ll grow more comfortable as the season goes on and will work his way into the starting line-up.  Beck, however, predicts that we will indeed move Amare over eventually, but it will be to get Kelenna Azubuike in at shooting guard.

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Move over Felix and Oscar, there’s a new, even odder couple in town.  Former Knick fan fave Anthony Mason makes one think of hustle, toughness, solid defense & rebounding, making the most out of one’s limited abilities, and surprisingly intelligent passing.

Words to describe Eddy Curry?  Indifferent, lazy, poor defender & rebounder, never fully tapped his incredible abilities, and a guy who’d rather turn the ball over than pass it back out to a teammate.

No, these two guys are not developing a sitcom or reality tv show (although I’d pay big bucks to watch that).  Instead, according to the New York Post

The Knicks have enlisted former Knicks defensive stalwart Anthony Mason to work with Eddy Curry and try to motivate him to save his career, The Post has learned.

Mason, a former Knicks forward who embodied the team’s defense and toughness from the 1991-1996 glory days, wore a Knicks coaching shirt yesterday and appeared briefly on the court. But mostly Mason’s work with Curry will be behind the scenes, in the weight room where they will be workout partners.

Curry, who could be cleared for practice in the next two weeks, is out with a right hamstring strain, but the Knicks also want him to lose more weight and Mase is on the case.

Curry was not permitted to go to Milan and Paris, partly to work out with Mason.

Mason, out of Springfield Gardens, is trying to get back into the league as a coach/special instructor.

[Knicks President Donnie] Walsh said the Curry idea made sense because Mason, also trying to drop a few pounds, already was using the team’s practice facility to work out.

First, let me apologize for mistakenly writing and bashing Curry for not going to Europe to bond with the team.  It had been reported that he had chosen to stay behind which I thought was a big mistake because it would only further alienate him from his new teammates.  Second, I’m impressed that Walsh hasn’t given up on Curry since nearly everyone else in the world has.  Honestly, as the Post says in their first line, if Mason is able to turn Curry around, it would more save Curry’s career than help the Knicks.  So that’s a pretty nice move by Walsh.  Third, along those same lines, since Mason is trying to break into coaching circles, this is also a pretty generous move on Walsh’s part to give him his shot.  If anything, this seems more like a really nice goodwill move rather than an intelligent basketball decision, but since owner Jimmy Dolan is made of money, who cares?  Fourth, Anthony Frickin’ Mason and Eddy Curry together????

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Over at SportsIllustrated.com, Ian Thomsen does an Atlantic Division preview with a very dispiriting view of the Knicks chances.  Naturally he lists the Celtics as the top team in our division, but sadly we come in fourth out of five, only ahead of the Toronto Raptors, but with Philadelphia at number two and New Jersey at number three.  While my hopes have dimmed a bit after our first two pre-season games (although I’m hoping our performance tonight will renew my faith — particularly you Ray Felton), if we end the season behind both those teams I will be really, really, really, really, really, really bummed.  I’m talking really, really.  Here’s the summary capsule, but there’s also a video preview of the Knicks at the link:

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Lastly, on an even more depressing note since it’s about real life and not fluff like basketball, NBA Fanhouse tells this sad story:

Former New York Knicks captain Ray Williams was driving away last week in his faded, 1998 Chevy Tahoe, finally regaining possession again after it sat in the transmission repair shop for almost a year, waiting for him to scrape together $2,900 to pay the repair bill.

He was beaming. It was one proud moment for a homeless man.

[...] The triumphs of “Sugar Ray,” Williams are dramatically different today.

Williams, now 55, was once the toast of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, where he captained the team that won 50 games during the 1980-81 season, more than any other Knicks team in a 15-year span. He earned his nickname because of his laid-back manner and his sweet style of play, averaging 20.9 and 19.7 points in back-to-back seasons.

A year later, he helped the cross-river New Jersey Nets open a new arena, leading them in scoring, through a 20-win improvement and into the playoffs. In the final game of the regular season, he scored 52 points against Isiah Thomas’s and Bill Laimbeer’s Detroit Pistons, setting a franchise scoring record that still stands today.

Timofey Mozgov (R.) starts at center tomorrow; how will he deal with the pressure? (Source: Yardbarker.com)

On Twitter Chris Sheridan posted that Timofey Mozgov has won the starting center spot.  Sounds like reporter conjecture (which I’m starting to realize Sheridan does a bunch) rather than actual news.  Coach Mike D’Antoni might be leaning that way, but no way has he 100% decided that because he’s concerned about foul trouble.  At the very least, he’ll wait and see how Moz does in his first start on Wednesday against the Celtics (and potentially the-still-extremely-capable-at-getting-opposing-centers-into-foul-trouble Shaq).

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More useless Twitter news?  The NY Post’s Mark Berman twatted:

Eddy Curry is doing shooting drills on his own here at #Knicks practice. Looking OK. Probably back sooner than later.

Reportedly a few words got cut off from the message and it was supposed to read: Probably back [to being a disappointment] sooner than later.

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Don't get frustrated or angry if we're one of the worst teams after 5 games. But if we still are after 17 or 25 games, then heads should roll. Things will only get worse. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

I’m here to warn you: the Knicks will most likely have a losing record after five games.  But don’t give up on ‘em.  New Yorkers expect, nay, demand, a lot from their teams and woe be the team that doth disappoint.  As fans, we often don’t see the big picture and instead focus on the here-and-now.  Denizens of the Big Apple frequently suffer from the old what-have-you-done-for-me-lately syndrome.  After the Knicks sucking for so, so, so, so, so long, there is huge guarded optimism about this season’s team.  But don’t lose hope and turn bitter again when we have one of the worst records in the league just five games into the season.

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Maybe Darko Milicic (R, shooting over Pau Gasol) finally gained the maturity to succeed this year. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

While some speculated that Darko Milicic, the former glued-to-the-bench Knick traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves last year, would seek revenge in last night’s game, instead he showed maturity, acknowledging he was the problem, not Coach Mike D’Antoni.  As the New York Post reported, he even gave helpful advice to the Knicks’ new Russian center Timofey Mozgov:

The Knicks may've lost to the TWolves, but Wilson Chandler may've proved his worth after his lackluster training camp performance. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Playing in Paris, the new-look Knicks’ first game against a NBA opponent, resulted in them coming in second place to the lowly Minnesota Timberwolves, 106-100.  Many people (including yours truly) feel that this year the TWolves could be the worst team in the league, so it ain’t a great sign that we lost to ‘em.  Still, as it is pre-season, just as one can’t read too much into our win on Monday against Milan, neither can ya read too much into a loss here.  Then again, we’ve got nuthin’ better to do, so let’s voice our concerns, knowing full well that by the next game they may be obsolete.

Except for the rooks (oh, and all the healthy players got minutes today), pretty much everyone else looked worse than in the first game.  Amar’e Stoudemire managed only 11 points on 36% shooting.  Will that bring back out all the nay-sayers who said he’d struggle without Steve Nash giving him easy feeds.  I hope not.  Two games does not a sample size make.

The turnovers were lower (19) than last game, but still not low enough.  The two other main issues I brought up also came back to haunt us in this outing:

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During Worlds, Timofey Mozgov had this impressive block on the Phoenix Suns' Goran Dragic from the other side of the basket. It's plays like these that has Knick coach Mike D'Antoni giddy. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

As the New York Post reported, Knick coach Mike D’Antoni is gaga for new Russian center Timofey Mozgov.

“I’m trying to hold down, curb my enthusiasm,” D’Antoni said of Mozgov. “I think he can play. I don’t see anything bad.”

D’Antoni has tried to stop himself from gushing over Mozgov like he used to gush over Danilo Gallinari and David Lee. But D’Antoni has already called Mozgov training camp’s brightest light.

[...]  D’Antoni even marveled at Mozgov during yesterday’s light practice.

“I watched him,” D’Antoni said. “He can shot the ball, nice rhythm. He has a learning curve. But he’s smart. He makes foul shots. His confidence is good. He’s definitely not shying away, attacking the basket.”

One quick comment, and this is just something odd I’m pointing out, so don’t put extra weight in this, but since we’ve been talking about race issues this past week, isn’t it kinda odd that all three of D’Antoni’s faves have been honkeys?

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Earlier in the summer, Amar'e Stoudemire threw out the first pitch. Last night, he threw down for the Knicks for the first time... and it was gooooood. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Yes, believe it or not, though it’s just pre-season, the Knicks have a winning record thanks to their victory over AJ Milano!  It wasn’t always pretty, with a tight first half and 28 turnovers leading to 31 points, but in the end we comfortably came out on top of Danilo Gallinari’s former Italian team, 125-113. In honor of this being not only our first game with our new nucleus, but also our first winning record in who knows how long, we present you with a Super-Sized Buckets today.

Good News:

-Amar’e Stoudemire went nutzzz, scoring 32 points shooting nearly 77% from the field.  No that’s not a typo, that isn’t his free-throw percentage, that’s his field-goal percentage.  From the line he shot nearly 85%.  He was dominant down low, but also even took one three-pointer, which of course he made.  And he did it in just slightly over 28 minutes.  That’s efficiency fer ya, folks.

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