Is J.R. Giddens a good defender? Philadelphia's Andre Iguodala looks skeptical. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Like with most of New York  -Hell, like with most of America, we here at Buckets have recently become a teeny, eensy, weency bit obsessed with this summer’s upcoming free agency extravaganza.  However, in our desire for newness, we shouldn’t completely forget about what we already have.  Thus we return to our ongoing Clash-song-inspired series, Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?, where we look at our players from last season who don’t have fully guaranteed contracts with the Knicks for next year.  We’ve gone alphabetically, already covering the following:

Earl Barron

Jonathan Bender

Chris Duhon

And now we bring you our first player with whom we hold all the cards: JR Giddens.   (more…)

Pacers' coach, Jim O'Brien, watches, appalled that the Knicks made him seem competent by forcing his team to look like an offensive juggernaut (source: Yardbarker.com)

We all love an epic battle between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.  The Knicks’ game last night against the Pacers was the opposite.  Indiana, the third worst shooting team in the league, is far from an unstoppable force on offense.  And us, New York, tied for second in allowing their opponents to shoot the highest percentage, is no one’s idea of an immovable object on D.  They like to shoot only .442, but we like to give up .482.  In backwards world it meant: could we force them to score more than they normally do, or would they make our defense look better than it is?  Turns out we decided to go 50/50.

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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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Poor Outlet Passing

On two separate occasions, the Knicks turned the ball over in the backcourt.  The first comes after a Rockets three pointer:

Now, both J.R. Giddens and Chris Duhon are at fault here:

(source: NBAPlaybook.com)

This is because Trevor Ariza is hanging around and it should have been noticed by either guy (or at least 1).  This is something that a lot of teams do to get the ball out of the PGs hands, but it rarely turns into a steal.  However, Giddens grabs the ball out of the net and just tosses to where Duhon is without looking.  For his part, Duhon floats away from the basketball as it comes to him instead of meeting the ball and ensuring the catch.  The Rockets went from being down 14 to being down 9 after this.  This was a huge 5 point swing in this game as the Knicks went from pulling away to trying to hang on to the lead.

This happened yet again later in the game, this time coming off of a missed basket:

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