Author: max fisher-cohen

I have written before about how the NBA holds an unfair amount of power in comparison to the Players’ Association. Strict tampering rules, the collective bargaining agreement, and the NBA’s monopoly as the premiere professional basketball league give the NBA a technical advantage, and the brevity of the average players’ career along with many players’ immaturity in handling their finances gives the league a financial one. However, there is one person, with the help of perhaps the most powerful agency in the NBA, who appears to be fighting back, at least for a handful of the league’s superstars. Henry Abbott, …continue reading

Aesop taught us when we were very small that the slow and steady tortoise can beat the hare. Have the Knicks been slow and steady in their improvement, or did they, like the hare, wait around, give only partial effort for half the season, assuming that all the other NBA teams were wearing half-shells? Many point to the firing of D’Antoni as the moment when the Knicks woke up and began to run for their lives. However, if you take a look at the chart below, you can see that this year’s team should be called the Turtle-Knicks, for they …continue reading

Fellow Citizens of Knick: The influence of our Great Leader is wide, but I have found safety from his agents in the small town of Tallahassee, Florida, five hundred miles from the nearest Dolan stronghold of Miami, where the watchful eye of Great Leader’s right hand man, Isiah Thomas, is everywhere. I write to you today from exile, but also in solidarity, in faith that as impotent as the truth may seem right now, it is still important, more important than anything. As Buddha once said, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Since …continue reading

Once upon a time, in the midst of Melo hysteria, this blog seemed like the sole bastion of reason. Mike Kurylo argued on more than one occasion that we should temper our expectations, that while Melo could improve the team, whether he would and just how much he would was an open question (1, 2). I don’t bring this up just to stir up poop. I do it to point out the irony of the phase shift that is already beginning to occur. By the end of this season, KnickerBlogger’s constituency may contain some of the last of the Melo-hicans. …continue reading

The “Quick Reaction” format premiered the last time we met the Raptors. It was in NYC, a five point loss, and in it, Mike Kurylo poetically promised us that: It’s not time to panic. Thomas B.’s response was, If I may quote the esteemed galactic Senator Jar Jar Binks: “Monsters out there, leaking in here. Weesa all sinking and no power. Whena yousa thinking we are in trouble?”   For a time, Jar Jar and Thomas B.’s concerns proved prescient. The Knicks went on to lose twelve of their next eighteen contests. Then, a New Hope was born. Jeremy Lin, …continue reading

There has been lots of talk of the regrets that previous GMs must be having now that Lin appears to be for real, yo. “How could a guy like this go undrafted?” “How could he have been waived by all thirty-six teams, including the Anchorage Yetis?” “Fire all the GMs!” Maybe the appropriate place to start answering this question is by looking at Lin’s numbers this season and last: Season Minutes Played Points/36 Assists/36 AST% TS% USG% Steals/36 Turnovers/36 2010-11 284 9.6 5.3 20.5% 45.8% 15.7% 4.2 2.3 2011-12 171 22.5 8.7 47.2% 61.3% 29.3% 1.7 4.0 That is quite the …continue reading