Comments on: Easter Famine: Celtics end series, Knicks’ season

By: The Honorable Cock Jowles

The Honorable Cock Jowles — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:12:28 +0000

tenebrous,

If you think Amar’e game is going to mysteriously evolve into that of an able-bodied 24 year old All-NBA PF, you’re forgetting about this little thing called “aging” that happens to athletes. Don’t get your hopes up.

By: tenebrous

tenebrous — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:23:38 +0000

I wouldn’t want to trade melo or stat cause I see there game evolving – faster than anyone else on the squad. If cb is on the squad I see his game evolving as well. I also think we would have went way deeper without this trade but the trade – last I checked – is still here and I’d rather buy a ticket with stat and melonon the floor. It’s not about beating Maimi it’s about beating Boston and the Knicks need blockers and, like someone said, real post defenders to help stat and melo. So it’s either triangle or the other two: 1: ssol with melon becoming a helper a la WC or 2: pnr with stat and 2 7′ for rebounding at all times. If I’m in fantasy land – I kinda like it here right now. Also, yes trade for Galo. Galo is not 7′ but he is starting to get tithe basket, from the 3 line and draws faul calls faster like crazy – his game has been evolving I believe than you can have 7′ and Galo will also spread the floor allowing stat and melo to have more space. MDA new something when drafting Galo. Anyway, Galo, Fried, Lucas (if he’s there), I also heard there are 10 FA 7′ at the end ofthis year. Also I really don’t believe JDog or Kobe would have done as well in NY. How about Galo for Fields & TD. Or KM for Feilds and TD?

By: JK47

JK47 — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:07:55 +0000

Amar’e's TS% fell off a cliff this year– it was 50 points lower than in 2009-2010. Either it’s an outlier and it was simply an off year, or Amare’s health isn’t what it used to be, or there really was something to the “Amar’e needs Nash” thing. Reasons 2 and 3 make you sort of think that Amar’e is kind of a problematic player.

Also, his TRB% was at an all-time low despite the fact that there wasn’t exactly anybody out there competing with him for the rebounds. Hopefully the big guy can turn it around and become the .600+ TS% player he’s always been. If not, he’s a pretty bad max contract.

By: tenebrous

tenebrous — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:06:38 +0000

I am beginning to think that melo cannot and will not play well in ssol. Yes melo played the 3, played extermely hard on D and ran out of gas way faster than Amare did. This leaves the knicks either A: adapting a new system or play iso or trade melo. I’d rather have Amare in any system rather than melo in his 1 system. Denver did a lot over the years to please Melo and they still didn’t win a championship. So to apease Melo’s style of play the Knicks would probably need to perhaps adopt the triangle offense but at all times leave melon and Amare on the opposite sides of the court. Amare surprised me – by a long shot – in the POffs when he got those 3 offensive rebounds as a help wing defender. We did lose because of our and Amare’s gaga over – wait melo has the ball let’s see what he does with it. We need two or three 7′s with some hops with this team and a good penetrating pg – no dougyfresh is a 2. Melo and stat need to play on opposite sides of the court in a triangle or triangle type offense where we can trust them to make moves and stuff. This is actually what I believe WC and stat where doing but the gaga of being on the same team took away from winning the game. Anyway, melo gets very tired very fast and the pnr with melon and stat the I thought would work didn’t or doesn’t. I agree to give MDA another shot with training camp and a Mozzy or 3 7 footer somehow. A lot of teams have 3 7′ers – lakers / okc / etc. I don’t know what I’m saying – scratch everything.

By: stratomatic

stratomatic — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:54:01 +0000

>>(unless of course you think it’s actually possible they would trade Amare or Melo and get the best of the deal lol)<<

Out the two, IMO Melo would be the more logical to keep for several reasons.

1. Younger
2. Healthier
3. Easier to build a team around.

I'll explain #3. Amare's value primarily comes from his offense and his ability to finish in the paint. In order to take advantage of that speed and athleticism you either have to either play small ball and put him at 5 (and get more on offense than he gives up on defense) or find a very unqiue C with shooting range that won't clog the middle that is also a great rebounder defender to make up for his deficiencies.

The disadvantage of Melo is that IMO he's a primma donna and a particularly likeable or loyal guy. I base thi on Denver also, but he just joined our team and he and Billups are already extremely lukewarm in their support of D'Antoni and his style of play. It's not supposed to work that way. You are supposed to come in, do WTF you are told, and then if it fails for a couple of seasons voice your concerns. Amare is the man in NY. Things were working well but Melo is already talking about changing styles, having input on new players, not endorsing the coach etc…

Amare has turned out to be an extremely likable, loyal guy and a great leader. He's a perfect fit for NY. After innitially being somewhat cool to the idea of signing him for the max. at least I really like the guy a lot.

By: Jim Cavan

Jim Cavan — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:41:42 +0000

New Chauncey post up. Dig it.

By: stratomatic

stratomatic — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:35:45 +0000

Caleb,

I understand what you are saying, but this team has a “long term” hole at PG (Billups is on his way down and out), a gaping hole at C unless we play D’Antoni small ball, a SG whose late season play in a more half courted oriented system raised doubts about whether he can be the SG of the future, not nearly enough of a bench, and two “stars” that are at the lower levels of productivity among max players in the league. The latter means we need very high level players at some of those positions to become serious contenders. This is not Miami where they may have 2 of the 5 best players in the NBA and one of them may be top 5 all time. Miami needs pieces. The Knicks need stars or borderline stars at 2 positions. It simply doesn’t fit. They can become a 50 win team. Maybe even a little better thna that, but they have virtually no chance of being a serious contender from here (unless of course you think it’s actually possible they would trade Amare or Melo and get the best of the deal lol)

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:28:40 +0000

continuing –
if we hadn’t made the deal, the only thing that changes is that we would have either Mozgov AND either Gallo OR Chandler, instead of Melo. We still would only have room for one max player, and no room for other mid-priced players (like Felton or any other serviceable C or PG).

Don’t get me wrong – I loved our ex-Knicks and would have liked to see how they did going forward. I also think we gave up WAY too much. But this idea that we could have fielded such a better lineup in 2012 if we hadn’t made the trade just isn’t obviously true.

By: stratomatic

stratomatic — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:27:41 +0000

6. I’m not the biggest D’Antoni fan. IMO, like all good coaches he has some positives and negatives. However, I think the positives are greater than the negatives. IMO there is no way that Melo and Billups fit the system or type of team the Knicks have been trying to build since he joined the team. He and Walsh (and the fans) spent two years in hell trying to build the team he wanted. They finally had a lot of perfect pieces, extra cap space to fill out the holes, flexibility to make deals, and at least a few picks to get to the next level. Now he’s stuck with an old slow half court PG that’s not a great playmaker and ISO player that’s a primma donna and doesn’t want to play SSOL.

I’m not arguing about value per dollar in that trade (though IMO that debate is a no brainer). As starters IMO Billups > Felton and Melo > Gallo, but this is not a good fit for D’Antoni. If I were him I’d walk for that reason alone. He can easily find another job without having to deal with the total short term oriented imbeciles in the NY media (Howard Beck excepted) and the greatest pinhead owner in all of sports.

By: The Honorable Cock Jowles

The Honorable Cock Jowles — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:25:01 +0000

Caleb: Could version 1.0 have won fewer playoff games than version 2.0?

I love rhetorical questions, and this one is no exception. A: No-- hahahahahahahaha.