Game Preview and Thread: Knicks @ Lakers
December 29th, 2011 by Thomas B. | Comments | Permalink |
New York (1-1) visits Los Angeles (1-2) in the second game of New York’s lone trip to California this season. Hopefully the Knicks left the bricks (eFG% 42.9, 4-21 on 3pfg) back in Oakland and can put together a solid showing on offense.
In three games so far Los Angeles is 13th in offensive efficiency (104.6), and an impressive 7th in defensive efficiency (98.8). New York will have their work cut out for them if they can’t find a way to score efficiently. Shoot 4-21 from deep will not get it done. New York needs better rebounding and much better play from the point guard position as well.
Iman Shumpert and Jared Jeffries (how will we ever replace his offense?) are out for the Knicks. For the Lakers, Matt Barnes is questionable, and Derrick Caracter is out.
Your in game thoughts here.
@Don't bother; I don't tweet
I am not Spree. go Knicks!
I just hope they show up for this game.
So tired after last night. Hope I’m not becoming a masochist…:)
Go to espn.com/nba and check out the Daily Dime Live if you want to chat during the Knicks Lakers game. Put KB in your username so I can pick your comments out of the storm.
Gallo’s jumper looks hideous right now. Line drive bricks galore. His ball-handling really has improved greatly though.
Kevin Durant is pretty good at basketball
That was an amazing finish.
Maybe TD’s right shoulder is still not 100% after the surgery?? I mean he is missing 3pters by a mile right now.
Melo looking like he’s engaged tonight
TDDWTDD is taking on an entirely new meaning
TD of course looking pretty pathetic. bad layup, should have pulled it back. Bad three. and a missed defensive play on Fisher from 3
Amare looks pretty good from 3
Offense looking 10000X better tonight so far. Of course making shots helps.
Troubled that I have to listen to Reggie Miller all night…
wow, that OKC game. KD is just so smooth. Ice water in his veins. Let’s go knicks!
DRIVE, Amare!
That floor level full court camera angle is a horrible idea
I think I saw a PnR???
TD is just putrid right now. It’s comical. He can’t bring the ball up, he can’t hit 3′s, he can’t finish in the open court. He can’t D up 37 year old D-fish, who is out of shape from being the players rep. What use is TD? He is dead weight. Free Jeremy Lin!
I wonder if he’s wearing a lakers hat
Okc is looking very smooth. Westbrook basically kept them there.
Is this knicks game on MSG on Time Warner in NYC?
… can’t find it.
If I’m the Lakers, I’m okay defending Amare outside. It’s why they don’t have to double him. He’s only double worthy in the Paint.
TNT
Stat is going to shoot us right out of this game. Someone said he put on like 15lbs this summer. He looks stiff.
Put Jeffries on Kobe???
And back to the bricklaying. Amare needs to stop with all the fucking long jumpers all the time. Reggie is going to be the death of me if we keep this up
melo running point doesn’t work either. At this point they need to start mike bibby’s corpse, and give Lin some burn.
I know everyone likes trashing Melo but the venom should probably be directed more towards Amar’e right now. Playing like pure garbage at the moment.
14-0 pts in the paint for LA. That’s more of an indictment of O than D
2:00 left in the first and we have 0 points in the paint. That’s unacceptable.
wow! it’s going to be a long season if B-diddy doesn’t get healthy. Just unbelievable how this season now hinges on an overweight, underachieving, 32 year old point guard.
steve blake now taking forays into the lane.
Jorts is not an NBA ready player
the immortal steve blake strikes again
Helluva take by Melo there.
Knicks D looking like the same garbage we saw all last year.
tyson chandler nets us 0 points there with the missed freethrow and the tech.
bibby looked afraid to shoot that 3. Shoot the god damn rock when you are open! jesus h christ! why are players in a mike dantoni system so tetative?
harrelson is also turrible.
reverse psychology baby!
I don’t know, Jorts is not an NBA player, but at least he’s getting in position down low to do something. Why can’t the athletes get into those spots?
WOW. Stat cant get by Gasol and gets his shot blocked then comes down and goal tends a shot that wasnt even close to going in.
STAT just looks off. I guess he really does need a competent point guard to be dominant. Unless melo plays transcendent, like he did on sunday, it’s going to be tough for the knicks to win games without a point guard.
World peace now looks like ron artest pre-palace brawl, offensively.
Are you telling me the D league doesn’t have one point guard who can pass? Seriously, is the well this dry?
I know i’m beating a dead horse, but I cringe every time TD shoots
god, Douglas is just laying bricks
TD’s shoulder has to still be bothering him some. Its one thing for him to suck at passing but he is not this bad a shooter.
I’m not going to panic, but I’m going to bed.
They really look awful on both ends, Josh Harrelson possibly excluded.
Knicks are cursed. Forever a team in transition. D’Antoni has had like seven teams in four years. They’re going to be working out the kinks for some time.
I’m going to panic AND go to bed.
Novak might suck at 95% of basketball aspects but he sure as hell can shoot.
I dont even know if what I just said made any sense lol
Hey, only down 11 at the moment. Keep it to around 10 at the half and all is not lost.
watching that dallas game, and seeing how they move the ball was really a thing of beauty. I know dallas lost, but they are so unselfish on offense. Nowitski kicking to terry for the corner 3 near the end of the game is symbolic of that teams offense. The knicks used to move the ball like that, pre melo trade. You really don’t need a great point guard to swing the ball quick to open shooters. Just poor fundamentals right now from the bockers.
Is it just me or does chandler not rebound or block shots very well?
We are all icing and no cake. Even when we get points it seems completely random, minus Anthony just taking over occasionally.
interviewing baron right now. Just hearing speak made me hopeful. I’m such a pathetic knick fan. Starved for some good basketball.
The things that Baron told Craig Sager he wanted to do with the offense – downhill penetration, opening up the lane, lobs for Tyson – none of that is happening right now. The offense right now is like a machine running on the wrong fuel.
Here is my bold prediction: D’Antoni gets fired either during or after this season, leaves to coach the Clippers and wins a title in the next 3 seasons. The Knicks continue to struggle, the next coach takes the blame.
How many back door baskets are they going to give up tonight?
Tyson Chandler: 8 rebounds in 71 minutes in a NY uniform. Yikes.
Still mystified by this.
tyson just looks goofy out there. My boy dante who hates all the new fangled stats that most guys here love, told me this when they signed chandler, “Tyson chandler, 14 million!, the man did 6 points 6 boards one year and he;s 7’1″ for god’s sake. Tyson chandler!” we’ll be lucky if we get those number from him this year.
Adding to the mystery: Andrea Bargnani is rebounding better than Chandler so far. And that’s not because Bargnani has improved at all.
TD’s point guard skills are apparently limited to handing the ball off to a big man 20 feet away from the basket. Infuriating.
world peace is everywhere, defensively and offensively.
I think the problem is that Chandler literally has to box out every single player on the floor.
Tyson has never had to play minutes like this with this kind of scrutiny. He’s really going to have to man up this year.
Sorry, calling him World Peace is friggin’ weird.
The refs are making an insufferable game to watch even more so with all these away from the ball foul calls.
I’d say it’s encouraging that the Knicks are only down ten with the Lakers shooting 70% from the field, but I don’t see how LA cools off if they’re shooting lay-ups all night.
Amazing it’s only an 11 point deficit.
Heady play there, Bill.
ok, i’m going to have to destress for a while. Going to watch breaking back on netflix. Be back for the 4th quarter.
72 percent????
they’re hitting 72 percent of their shots…?
Lakers: 72% shooting
Knicks: 31% shooting
THIS IS PATHETIC.
This defense is so pathetic and infuriating to watch. One of these days I am going to break my TV by throwing my laptop at it.
63 points for the Lakers, 30 of them in the paint. Wow.
Im just hoping to win at Sacramento and be 2-2 at the end of this week. If thats the case no harm no foul.
Would love another peak at Jordan and Lin this half. They couldn’t be worse than Jorts and Bibby.
Peek. There are no peaks for this time.
team. And with that, I quit.
No peaks for this time?
The Celtics game might have been the peak for this team…
Oh my b
Free Jeremy Lin!!!!!! we are going to lose. Let the kid play.
Thank God Bynum isn’t playing.
are we 9-1 yet? :)
It looks like Hollinger may have been too generous with his prediction for the Knicks.
This is pathetic. I kinda miss the days when we could laugh at Zeke and Marbury. At least we could hope for the future. Now we’re locked into three years and 60 million dollars for the two most overrated players in the league and a good defender who can’t get 10 rebounds.
At the very least, they need a new coach.
For some reason I cant envision MDA giving his Knute Rockne speech in the locker room right now. He’s not a motivator.
meanwhile the Denver/Portland game is awesome.
Guys this game has been brutal as was the 4th quarter last night but c’mon now with the this team sucks stuff.
For all of you haters that didn’t want nate robinson back, at least he plays with some fire, and could get the ball in the hoop. I would absolutely want him over TD.
Crawford having a big 4th quarter after bricking everything in the first 3 quarters.
Arenas is looking like less and less of a bad option every game.
Chandler is this generations version of Marvin Webster without the offense,little that it was.it’s early but I fear Chandler is an overrated one dimensional player and his only dimension – defense- is problematical on this team because he gets little help and it puts him in jeopardy for foul trouble.
TD has all your useless three pointers early in the shot clock.
Fields passes up another open corner 3pter. He is getting good at that.
Well at least he took that one…
The Knicks could break the single technical fouls record even in a shortened season.
*single season
I dont care what everyone here says, I think Id rather have Melo shoot 50 times a game on this team. Probably best chance they have at scoring lol
McRoberts scared Amare from going strong to the rim… what has this team become?
the college football game on ESPN now is crazy, 60-56 with a few minutes left.
Agreed. I’m starting to feel bad for him. No one else can hit shots consistently… Stat looks like he unlearned how to shoot his deadly mid ranger jumper this offseason.
Remember how inept the offense looked the first 10 games of last season when Felton and Amare had no idea how to play together? Basically the same shit. I’m not that worried.
Amar’e is just dumb. He does something dumb at least twice a minute.
I’m telling you guys. There was a lot of talk about how Amare added about 15 or 20 lbs of muscle in the off season and it is completely affecting his fluidity.
Does Chandler know what a rebound is? I’m not convinced after 2 and 3/4 games.
Kobe has hit some ridiculous shots tonight.
Here we go. It’s one-on-one basketball time, starring Carmelo Anthony.
Oh, you.
Relax, he’s got 9 so far and it’s still the 3rd quarter
Who’s he supposed to pass to? Jorts? Balkman?
That may be an issue, I remember the same thing happened to Camby when he tried to do the same thing, and I know that when Bosh put on a lot of weight in Toronto his inside game improved but his mid range and face up game suffered.
Like I was saying about Kobe….
Yes? What kind of question is that? I don’t care who is on the floor with you, if you don’t run an offense the team doesn’t get good looks. This is the kind of mentality that fosters the ugliest brand of hero ball.
Baylor has 779 yards of offense with 2 minutes left.
Annnd that’s why Renaldo Balkman doesn’t belong in the rotation.
Kobe is Kobe. Man.
Yes! pass to the open man. It works.
Or in A rotation, I should say.
We don’t have an NBA-level point guard right now. What offensive system are you expecting?
Kobe with the 4-point play. This is just stupid.
it’s not even Melo’s lack of passing that bugs me, it’s the way he just holds and holds and holds the ball without doing anything, over and over and over.
Agree 100%
Balkman is sticking to Kobe like glue, not like it matters.
Say what you will about Bibby but at least he actually looks to push the pace.
I was excited to see the knicks get a rebound and get out in transition, then i saw it was Bibby with the ball with Jorts and Balkman on the wings.
Let’s get mad at the guy with 23 points on 11 shots. It’s obviously his fault we’re losing.
I can handle him getting burned. I have less patience for him fouling Kobe with the shot clock winding down 45 feet from the basket.
As bad as the knicks are playing it’s shocking how they are down only 8
I love all the Melo bashing. So far tonight thru 3 quarters he has 23 pts on 11 FGA with 6 rebs and 5 asts.
Steve Novak. Not bad.
it’s absurd to criticize melo for this game
Yeah, Melo is the least of their problems right now.
Melo has single-handedly kept the Knicks in this game.
Oh, well if he is scoring then he is beyond criticism because the only thing a basketball team needs is for one guy to put the ball in the basket.
Now, if Melo lights it up in the 4th Q and the knicks win he’s a big hero. But if the knicks were playing good basketball they’d be up by double digits now, and there’d be no need for heroics.
This is where most people get tricked.
Shut up with your “stats”, BBA! Why don’t you stop doing sex to your spreadsheets and actually watch the game for once! Melo is an offensive cancer to this team and is the destroyer of everything I love about basketball. I BELIEVE IN MY NARRATIVE AND THAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
Watching a game on TNT is really amazing, it’s the Lakers against ??, and Kobe is the only player on the court. At halftime, the crew spent the entire segment talking about Kobe and the offense under Mike Brown. I know we’re not exactly impressive tonight, but c’mon.
Amare sucks
Wow, Amare gambled and when it didn’t work out he completely gave up on the play, then he gets the offensive foul. That dude is struggling out there.
How was Gasol set on that play?
Reggie Miller: “If the knicks would … share the basketball…”
Wow
Well I’m glad we’ve stopped blaming Carmelo for all our problems.
Amar’e, WTF are you doing.
I mean Stat has literally just come in and blown the game. It’s kinda unreal.
Amar’e is a freaking black hole out there. How about that for a narrative, Amar’e Stoudemire is a mess.
Knicks finally getting stops but they cant score now.
We might be getting ahead of ourselves asking for a true point guard. How about we find a guy who can dribble. Three straight possessions with a dribbling related turnover.
No but he signed here 1st so he is a good guy he is not an asshole like Melo.
Hulahoop you moron, you do realize he was defending me and mocking people like you.
That sums it up perfectly
Knicks and Lakers each with 29 rebs right now.
We’re not going to get back those three or so possessions that Amare burned.
Shit, Knicks shooting 32.7% from the floor right now. Would be higher if Melo wasnt only 6 for 11.
Chandler is being active as hell tonight. Cant complain about him.
We can all agree on one thing. It’s another ugly one.
Cant disagree with you there!! lol
No I wasn’t, NERD! Guys like me and hoolahoop are the smart fans!
Lakers are making a big mistake by letting the knicks stay close. If they catch fire we can actually win this game.
God Bless Fields, at least he is trying I guess.
54.5% from the field? UGH CLASSIC MELO.
This has to be one of the ugliest Knicks games I’ve watched in a long time. I’m praying for a power failure so I can walk away from the damn TV.
So will Melo finally decide to man up and attempt to guard kobe yet?
BBA. I think not. you should read his posts again.
Melo does have 5 TO’s.
The thing is Im not a Melo defender or whatever, I just dont get all the hatred he gets from this site. The man is a very good basketball player, the best player the Knicks have had since Ewing (with all due respect to Amar’e). Of course he takes some stupid shots and puts up stinkers like last night once in awhile. He is not in Lebron’s or Wade’s or Durant’s class. But he is still a pretty damn good player.
the Melo criticisms, just like the Fields criticisms and the D’Antoni criticisms, are not just about what’s happened tonight. there are bodies of work here, that’s what’s being criticized.
Toney Douglas deserves to be grounded.
TD looked like Mark Sanchez with that pass.
Game over.
Somebody’s sarcasm detector is broken.
Oh, and this game is over, mainly because the team fell apart with Melo on the bench.
Some people criticize carmelo as a player. Most criticized his acquisition due to his incompatibility with amare, which is something on display in its full glory the last two nights. Any scoring guard can get his. WHen you can handle the ball and score from the perimeter, you’re not dependent on others all that much to get your shots up.
Amare’s offense is extremely dependent on others. He is awful when just catching the ball from 18 feet. He is practically unstoppable when he catches the on the way to the rim. That can’t happen off a carmelo isolation.
How is it possible that everyone on this roster has regressed from last year, including the all mighty offensive guru who goes by the name of Mike D’antoni?
What? At what point of this game was the team together?
I think the Knicks over/under for points this quarter is 6.5.
(giant propeller plane flies slowly over hoolahoop’s head)
I’m feeling wise for not watching this second half, and just following the score online. goddamn, even that is almost too ugly to watch.
I’m taking the under.
Just beat Sacramento on Saturday and go home 2-2 and all will be OK in the world.
this is the second 4th quarter in a row that this team has been just demolished, hopefully not the start of a trend.
Ok we’re 1-2, the season is lost, time to hit the panic button. Fire D’Antoni, trade Melo and Stat for Bill Bradley and Clyde and start thinking about who we want in the draft lottery when we fail to make the playoffs. Goodnight.
Ehhhhhhhhhhh, not sure about that.
I will say this site has helped me get thru this ugly game alot more enjoyably lol
The four starters not named Carmelo Anthony are 8 for 33 from the floor. At least 15 of those missed shots were open jumpers.
The season’s not lost or anything, but this team seems to have some pretty serious structural problems.
Oh there will still be problems but a 2-2 record then going home for a few cupcakes I can live with lol
As a raw talent, he’s one of the best in the league.
But, Melo plays a losing style of basketball. Selfish, ugly and it doesn’t win enough games.
Team basketball is a winning style.
Ball movement. Player motion. Loose balls. Rebounds. Defense.
That’s how to win. That’s not Melo’s style.
He plays Iso, stand around, don’t move the ball, don’t pass, don’t defend.
How about getting Chandler out of there in a 20-point blowout with 2 minutes left? I don’t think we’re coming back in this one, Pringles.
I will say Ive seen alot of game so far this season and alot of them have been ugly like these past 2 nights. Early on its really just about getting wins any way you can. So thats why when I said win on Saturday and return home 2-2 I will be totally fine with that.
I’m not sure who you’re taking about (could be me) but that’s a great line.
Not that it would have mattered much the past two games, but damn Toney Douglas. You’re supposed to be able to at least shoot.
Denver ran an iso offense centered around Melo and they had the best offense in the NBA last year. They ran an iso offense centered around Melo the year before and had the 3rd best offense in the NBA. They were 7th the year before with the same offense.
You can have a very successful offense with Melo as the centerpiece of an ISO offense.
Just not with the rest of the personnel the Knicks have. It is not Melo’s fault that the team around him doesn’t fit the offense that he thrives in. It is the poor decision-making of the Knick front office in trading for Melo in the first place when their team was not going to fit him.
Chandler with 13 pts on 3 FGA lol
Also has 11 rebs, 3 stls and 2 blks.
Great question.
Melo is a good individual player. That’s not what the Knicks needed, though. It’s not really what any NBA team needs.
But my distaste for Melo stems from this: he could have signed with NY this offseason with last seasons core of Amare/Felton/Fields/Gallo/Douglas and maybe even Wilson Chandler intact. That leaves them with some nice pieces to move to fill in holes and a very versatile lineup even if those holes can’t be filled. Instead, he chose to force the Knicks to gut the roster to acquire him so he can make a few extra million on his contract; to me, that says winning is at best a secondary concern for him.
A few months prior we had Wade, Lebron and Bosh taking less money to play together. Guys who were better than him and needed less help to win were still willing to sacrifice more than he was to win basketball games and make deep playoff runs.
Well observed.
Hey Lin has his first Knick points!
I definitely feel you there, xduckshoex, but eh, I can’t blame anyone for wanting the most money possible. It is not like Lebron and Bosh gave up much money at all. They gave up roughly $15 million for the lifetime of their contracts (or basically $3 million a year), and how much of that is made up by Florida’s lack of income taxes? And they both made their deals before a lockout that could have dramatically reduced the max salary – Melo wanted to do the same. It was a tough situation for him to be in.
Alright guys it was a blast tonight lol
Dunno how much I will be online next few days but definitely wanna wish a Happy New Year to everyone here and lets hope the Knicks end this year at 2-2!!
I can’t blame him for wanting the most money possible, but it makes it pretty clear where his priorities lie. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he wanted the money from a Bird rights contract and the spotlight from playing in NY more than he wanted to bring a title to NY.
As a businessman, great move. As a Knicks fan, f*** that guy.
Our guards were 5-22 from the floor and 1-12 from 3 point range. That is some stanky guard play.
Couldn’t agree more. He waits until the offseason, takes a MILD pay cut, and the Knicks are real contenders. Now? Not so much…
smh what a horror show by the knicks smh im sorry but does antbody see any coaching being done by coach d. not even his personel changes make sense smh the only good thing ive seen in these two games is one we need shump and two jerome jordan can play some d
How could you expect him to get by on $60 million for three years?
Smh.
I’ve been a D’antoni supporter from day one.
Now, I think he’s part of the problem. He has no control of this team. It’s hard to coach big time, big ego players, but if you can’t do it you’re handcuffed.
The worst part in these two losses is not being able to constantly repeat “shump-shump.”
Who is that guy wearing 1, and what has he done with Amar’e Stoudemire?
he had 27pts on 14 shots with 7 rebs and 5 asst, how is that not a winning style? This loss was on a lot of people that are not melo.
Nah, it doesn’t work that way. I like Phil Jackson’s analogy that basketball is like jazz because it works on a lot of different levels. In this case, Melo is the saxophone player in a band that goes off for some amazing solos, but while he is doing that the rest of the band gets knocked off a little bit, whether it’s from distaste for one guy trying too hard to shine by himself or not being the kind of player who keeps rhythm for someone and nothing else or any other of the long list of reasons that doesn’t work for musicians. In order to produce a great piece of music everyone has to be in sync, and if they’re not there is not one person in that band that is above criticism.
The fate of the Knicks and Nuggets is an interesting case study. After the Melo trade, the Nuggets were significantly improved on both ends of the floor. The Knicks got worse on defense and stayed roughly the same on offense. This year, it still looks like the Nuggets got the better end of that deal. If the team that traded away the great individual talent is the team that got better and the team that acquired him is the one that got worse, isn’t it fair to say that there may be some fundamental flaws in that players approach to the game that his talent is not able to compensate for?
Great analogy.
Melo is not the problem he is our finisher, Amare is not our problem he is our leader, Tyson chandler is our anchor, defensive presence, and board machine, Fields is our role player and hustler, TD Douglas is our three point specialist, do you see the problem MDA is not catering to the strengths of the team. Amare will always be a pic n pop, blow past your defender if he bites, use that. If not tell him to pass it off make sure someone like TD is open on the outside and fields gets closer and next to him to receive a pass. If he has no option he turns it over doesn’t create of the dribble u know his limitations so use others to hide his deficiencies. Second Melo: get him the ball early in the clock, make the double come to him let him facilitate, hes a offensive savant so work to his abilities, you have a great opportunity to play more zone, rest on defense, you front the other team, get in-between the ball and the players, make them waste time and energy while you rest a little bit, clog the lanes, put your hands out there every time whether on man or zone, and 3 things happen turnover, shot clock violation, or a bad shot that’s your defensive scheme use it to the max. and Douglas does not need to facilitate he just needs to be the perimeter player he is. It’s simple to teach because they have all done this in every game in 2011. It can be done. Use your bench more to keep your starters fresh, use them wisely not all at once (like in the third and end of the fourth). For instance when chandler was out and you need speed use Jerome Jordan you don’t lose size and he’s quick on defense and to the boards and can actually shoot not go the total opposite and go small. When Fields or Melo is not in the game put walker in you do not lose size and still have a perimeter shooter who attacks the basket. When you put Bibby in let him facilitate, not Melo. When Melo comes out put Bibby in simple. Just saying coach you have the tools and the personnel anybody can see that.
Sorry.
So, i take it that most of you guys have Professional careers?