Caleb: I love me Landry but no way is he a better prospect than Favors, who’s 6’10 and 3 years younger. And doing quite well, on his own. See where he is in 3 years.
It’s all moot because the Jersey deal won’t happen unless Melo signs an extension there, and if he wouldn’t back then, I doubt he would now.  

OK, I get that Favors is younger and taller and might have more upside than Landry, I guess I just get peeved at this constant drumbeat of how superior any Nets offer is to any Knicks deal, like the Knicks players are garbage and Favors plus draft picks is nirvana.

Frank: @137 – I think we’re not so worried about the Atlantas of the world, more about the actually good defensive teams out there that will be able to take STAT out of the game, or at least make him much less efficient.  

Atlanta’s the 13th best defense so far and was better last year. They’re no Boston or Miami, but they are a good defensive team.

JK47:If we could swing something like #1 in offensive rating and #15 in defensive rating we’d be a contender.We need to improve on both ends of the ball really.  

Even if this is true, we have as far to travel to get to #15 on defense as we do to get to #1 on offense. And I don’t think Melo’s an improvement defensively. I just don’t think it’s as clear cut a get as the media makes it out to be…

And Melo’s not a BAD defender – he’s probably average to above average. He’s a better defender than Gallo, especially when he applies himself, so it would probably be a net + defensively if he replaces Gallo in the starting lineup or if Gallo gets traded.

I’ll tell you this much though – if WC has been playing poorly because of the stress of the situation, Carmelo has been the exact opposite. Dude is seriously lighting it up despite all the distractions. Numbers for February — 9 games, 33 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 53% from the field, 46% from 3. That’s a TS of 64% and a relatively palatable TO-R of 10.6.

Our offense isn’t #4, it’s #8. If we’re going to win with SSOL our offense is going to have to be a lot better than #8. D’Antoni’s Suns teams were all either #1 or #2 in offensive rating. Right now the Nuggets are the #1 offense in the NBA.

If we could swing something like #1 in offensive rating and #15 in defensive rating we’d be a contender. We need to improve on both ends of the ball really.

In conclusion, last night it sure didn’t look like we needed Melo at all. He might bring a little more scoring than the Gallo/Chandler combo, but he won’t bring more defense which is mostly what we need at the 3 or 4 and that extension could effectively kill any future moves. I know you can’t judge on one game, but it does look like the guys are starting to gel: Ray is getting it to Gallo now and Mozgov and Turiaf really help move the ball around as well. If Stat could be just a little less of a ball stopper, we would have a very nice offense.

But back to Melo, would it help us to improve our offense from 4th to 2nd? The only pro-Melo argument I still cling to is that he is likely to help us get CP3, but will we even have the assets by then? Right now we really need our depth. Having guys like Gallo and Chandler who overlap somewhat is a luxury, not a problem.

And I think Rautins should get a little bit of a shot at pg. He’s there and knows the system so he’s worth a look before getting another back up pg. But that seems like our greatest area of need right now.

Good luck with that, jerks. What’s our team supposed to be then? Billups-Douglas-Melo-Stoudemire-Turiaf, with Shawne Williams and Bill Walker off the bench? Go F yourselves.

“Hahn writes that the Knicks are not confident that Denver actually knows what it wants from a deal for Anthony and offers his opinion that it is “amateur hour” in the Nuggets’ front office.”

That sounds about right.

-Was very surprised to see this morning that Mozgov had so few stats – 4 pts and a rebound – while seemingly strongly effecting the game while he was in. It doesn’t show in the stats, but he changed a lot of shots and could be part of the reason that the Hawks’ shooting was so cold in the first half. He also looked really good as a man defender and only takes smart looks on offense. Then Turiaf played more in the 2nd half and also did good things. Atlanta doesn’t run a traditional center much, which helped those two but I remember the Hawks brutalizing us in the paint the last time we played. That was not the case last night.

-Gallo looked great. His dunks are always so surprising, I would jump out of my chair a bit and think “oh right, he’s practically seven feet tall.” And his outside shot looked much better than it has of late. He looked like a complete offensive player, and at least respectable on defense.

Chandler looked confident off the bench. Had a few bonehead mistakes, but that runner in the lane of his is seemingly unstoppable. He gets up really high, pauses, and fires sort of like Jordan minus the tongue. His value off the bench is immense.

-Our biggest standout flaw was clearly Felton’s shooting. He shot too often and not well enough. To be fair, often our guys had trouble getting open and Felton would have to take a shot at the end of the shot clock, but other times, he would take a three 5 seconds into the shot clock and brick it. There is really no pnr game with Ray anymore. It’s more about him dumping it into Stat than a two man game. I which case I wish Gallo or Fields would just take over the dumper roll. Felton had some nice passes (he has a good feel with Wil) in transition and his D was good aside from Bibby scorching the nets.

-Also, the Hawks just didn’t have it last night. Smith looked terrible and Johnson seemed low on…

Right after the headline, it shows a snippet of the article…

“This might have been the last night to see Landry Fields or Danilo Gallinari in a New York Knicks uniform at Madison Square Garden, because if the Bockers are going to get the Carmelo Anthony trade done, one of them might have to go.”

Lordy.