Tag: Knicks

Is it too early to panic?

The Knicks are 2-3 and look disjointed and unfocused. They lack aggressiveness — they are last in the league in rebounds and, while they are getting to the line more than just about any other team, they are taking more three pointers as a percentage of their shots than the rest of the league.

Tim Legler gets at one of the team’s problems — a seeming unwillingness to do the dirty work — and Stephen A. Smith has remarked on the guard play. But I think this goes deeper. The team has one of the top low-post players — Amar’e Stoudamire — in the league and has not consistently run the office through the post. The team has been thinking outside first and not running it inside-out.

Yes, Toney Douglas is a primary culprit and management should have known it before opening he season without a real point guard. Baron Davis is going to help — how can he not? Landry Fields needs to get back to doing what he did last year — hitting the boards from the backcourt (to help Tyson Chandler, who’s necessarily aggressive defense takes him out of position for defensive rebounds) and moving without the ball. Stat also needs to rebound more and the team, aside from Chandler, needs to be better on the defensive end (though, to be fair, had the Knicks held opponents to 95 points a game last year, they would have won 50-plus games).

Ultimately, though, the key is refocusing the offense to make Stat and Carmelo Anthony equal partners.

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And, to the Knicks….

Iman Shumpert of Georgia Tech.

Cue the moaning and booing fans.

I guess at pick no. 17, we shouldn’t care. But Iman Shumpert was a player most scouts and draft watchers had falling to the second round.

And they passed on Chris Singleton, who the same scouts view as a lock-down defender.

Shumpert is also supposed to be a good defender, so maybe this is just a lot of unnecessary jabbering.

But this is the Knicks, a team that has proven that when a mistake can be made it will be made.

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• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

In a world ruled by sane men — which generally leaves the folks at Madison Square Garden outside of the mix — the Knicks would have retained Donnie Walsh as president and general manager and let Mike D’Antoni go at the end of his coaching contract. Walsh, after all, has done a remarkable job of cleaning up the mess he inherited and getting the Knicks into the playoffs.

So, where does this team go now?

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• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

This certainly appears to be a blockbuster, and quite expensive for the Knicks, but if you break it down, what actually happened?

If the reports are right, the Knicks gave up three of their top six, plus the big Russian who is just starting to look like he might have an NBA future.

Contracts aside, this is probably more than Melo is worth. But contracts play into this and there was a good chance that Wilson Chandler was not going to be part of the Knicks’ longterm future, because he becomes a restricted free agent (read this over the weekend, but cannot remember where).

Mozgov is nice, but nothing to block a trade. And Felton for Billups — well, Billups remains the better player in the short term, a champion with a proven track record. I like Felton — he is tough — but we may have seen his best ball already this season. And Billups’ contract expires in 2012, like Felton’s, so that is a wash.

Looked at this way, removing Chandler, Billups and Felton, it comes down to Melo and spare parts for Danilo Gallinari, Mozgov, a first-rounder and Anthony Randolph. Who wouldn’t do that?

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The headline on today’s NY Post Web site is a bit of a stretch — “Rivalry Renewed” — but I can’t blame the headline writer. Tonight offers the most meaningful Celtic-Knicks game in nearly two decades, even if it is too early to start calling it a rivalry.

The Knicks are playing their best ball in years, thanks to the best player they have had in uniform since Patrick Ewing (Amar’e Stoudamire) and Ray Felton’s imitation of Walt Frazier.

But the 16-9 Knicks can make a statement tonight, demonstrating that they belong in the discussion of legitimate playoff teams.

The Celtics remain the conference’s elite team, despite Miami’s spending splurge and the continued growth of Orlando bigman Dwight Howard. The team is riding a big winning streak of its own, so someone is going to see a streak end.

Let’s hope it’s the team in the green.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.