@Z-Man Kidd played hard but we would have lost this game by 20 (a true embarrassment) with 48 minutes of our starting lineup. Philly completely ignored both Kidd and Shumpert, and if not for a dominating performance by Amar’e, this would have been a loss, so yeah, Kidd got rebounds and Amar’e didn’t, but Amar’e was the MAN in this game nonetheless as far as how he affected the outcome.

Kidd, on the other hand, despite a good effort on the boards, was still a huge burden. I could see a D but nothing higher.

@Nick, I didn’t change the grades, nor did I fix the typos or the way wordpress screwed up my line breaks. Oh well.

Knicks 3FG% 3FGA/FGA
nov. ….. 41,6 34,6
dec. …. 37,1 34,7
jan. ….. 36,0 34,5
feb. ….. 33,7 38,0

Reasons? better defenses or are Knicks just tired. I’m afraid the legs are just not that fresh any more. Rest’n'tank I would.

Kidd and Shumoert need their minutes cut in the worst way. I’m okay with Novak in at SF when Amar’e and another big are on the floor. I am not okay with Novak at PF, ever.

I really hope this is the second act on the typical hollywood narrative that someone mentioned yesterday, but as long as i’ve been alive the knicks have never lived that script, tragedy is our specialty people.

The difference this season is that it will be meaningful in a way it hasn’t been for over a decade. As flawed as this team is, it has a tiny, improbable chance at the title. And when we inevitably, heartbreakingly and likely disgracefully bow out, I’ll thank and applaud this team and coach for making NY basketball worth suffering for again.

That being said, and i love the man, Novak has no business playing meaningful minutes. Every single opposing coach attacks him on defense, and you can see all of our defenders nervously cheating of their man to bail Novak out. A B Grade for 3 points on two shots on 20 minutes seems egregious. I get that we have no outside shooters other than melo and JR and Woody’s hand is forced to an extent, but watching that man on the court is embarrassing, plus-minus be damned.

David Crockett: My big concern right now is actually with Chandler’s minutes rather than Melo’s. … He’s gotta be right in the spring for us to have a shot.

totally agree – the last few games and also that stretch of 20 rebound games shows how great Tyson can be when he gives 100% effort. It’s just so painfully obvious when he’s taking plays or even whole games off.

Also agree that we need to take a breath before condemning this team to the 6 seed or worse. Maybe that’ll happen, and certainly the schedule will not do us any favors, but we do have to remember we probably have had the worst injury problems in the league. If you look at all the real contenders (for argument’s sake I’ll say Miami, Indiana, Chicago, OKC, San Antonio, and the Clips) — none of them have had injury issues like us. Sure, Indiana has missed Granger the whole year, and Chicago hasn’t had Rose, but as many others have said, it’s a totally different thing to have a guy out from the beginning than to have created a chemistry and system that relies on a guy then have that guy taken away by injury. And even so, Indiana was very average in the beginning of the year until they sort of got it together the last month+. The Clips were horrible without CP3. And Miami never seems to have injuries for some reason (hmm…Miami, the new center of PED universe… hmmm.). We’ve had to shuttle in guys in and out based on injuries, find new lineups/chemistry, etc.

Anyway, I think we will have enough to take the Atlantic, and hopefully we will have 2 of K-Mart, Sheed, and Camby healthy for the stretch run (late March to end of season) so Woody can find the optimal units to run out there, and so those units can really develop chemistry and communication.

btw Woody deserves some credit for rejiggering the subs so that Tyson plays with Amare in the 2nd Q. Much better.

RE: this win – I think the margin of victory is pretty misleading. Philly never got within 1 possession, and we were up by 8-12 for almost the entire second half. Sure, it would’ve been nice to put the game away with a couple Novak daggers, but I literally was never worried.

Re: Shump – totally agree that he looks lost out there. He literally is playing with zero swag right now, which is just so different from last year. Even his jumper form looks tentative, like he’s already expecting to be running back on D after a long rebound.

btw love how we were running in the first half – not so much the second. Not sure why all teams don’t run it up the floor on most possessions, if only to get 3-4 more seconds to get a good shot.

My big concern right now is actually with Chandler’s minutes rather than Melo’s. My expectation was that neither Sheed nor Camby would play a lot this season. My *hope* was that we could keep one or the other healthy enough to keep Chandler in the 30-32 mpg area. As it is, NY is only giving up 1.5 pts/100 poss more than Miami. (Their relative def rating rankings–18th vs 11th–suggest a much wider disparity.) What worries me is that he’s the glue holding it together. He’s gotta be right in the spring for us to have a shot.