Knicks Morning News (Friday, Mar 01 2013)
March 1st, 2013 by Mike Kurylo | @KnickerBlogger | Comments | Permalink |
Kobe Bryant scored 33 points and Antawn Jamison added 17 in the Los Angeles Lakers’ 21st consecutive victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, 116-94 on Thursday night.
The mayor of Sacramento said on Thursday evening that 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov would bid to buy the NBA’s Sacramento Kings to keep the basketball team from moving to Seattle, the Sacramento Bee newspaper reported.
Chris Paul scored 29 points to help the Los Angeles Clippers hold off Indiana’s late charge for a victory.
Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau needed just three words to sum up Joakim Noah’s big night on Thursday.
Keith Bogans’s transformation from a rim-running point guard to a reliable jump shooter off the Nets’ bench is another N.B.A. survivor story.
Chris Paul scored 29 points, and Blake Griffin finished with 18 points and 14 rebounds to help the Los Angeles Clippers hold off Indiana’s late charge for a 99-91 victory Thursday.
Add the Miami Heat to the “Harlem Shake” craze.
Walt Frazier’s performance Wednesday on the MSG Network, when Stephen Curry turned the Garden into his personal target range, was one of his most memorable. It provided another reason as to why he needs to be taken seriously as a pure analyst, not a Gulag sideshow.
At least the Knicks don’t have to worry about Stephen Curry putting on a shooting clinic not for another 10 days. Now, their No. 1 problem is keeping up with John Wall.
Mike Kurylo is the founder and editor of KnickerBlogger.net. His book on the 2012 Knicks, "We’ll Always Have Linsanity," is on sale now. Follow him on twitter (@KnickerBlogger).
Bulls pick up Sweet Lou Amundson. If the Casspi buyout happens, I’d love to pick him up as a bench forward defender. Plus he’s a nice Jewish boy.
All signings have to be done by the end of tonight for a player to be eligible for the playoffs, right?
I, too, would love Casspi. He seemed to have some major issues in Cleveland. He’d love New York. I was at a Knicks/Kings game on Jewish Heritage Night one time and it was brutal to hear so many people cheering for Casspi over the Knicks. Blech. But I do like him as a player!
man the knicks can go on a tear before the western road trip. If they do i think we are pretty much locked into the 2-4 seed. They should have a revenge victory at wash, 50/50 against the heat at home, should beat clev and det 50/50 with OKC at home and they should beat the Jazz.
While I agree that the Knicks should beat the Wizards, I hope that they don’t look past them. Their record is extremely deceiving. Over the last 2 months, they have been a very good team. Their record over their last 24 games is 14-10, with 10 of their 14 wins over teams that would be in the playoffs if the season ended today, including wins over the Thunder, Hawks, Nuggets (twice), Bulls, Clippers, Knicks, Nets, Bucks and Rockets.
Knicks have to be no worse than 3-1 over the next 4 games.
Have the Knicks released Sheed ?
If they haven’t. This franchise/Front Office is a joke.
Yeah why would they want to keep a guy who’s injury caused a major defensive slide and could potentially be healthy for the playoffs. Really makes no sense especially with how durable Camby’s been.
LoL i know right. Why would they want to keep a guy who needed a few games JUST to get in basketball shape? Now is injured with NO guarantee that he is of even of service for what ever round of the playoffs. AND thats assuming he’s been conditioning like crazy to either stay in the shape he’s in or improve.
Way too many if’s, he’s great when he’s on the floor. just like camby. Ty and our interior needs help badly.
The Knicks have James White and Kurt Thomas taking up roster spots. They have plenty of room to cut people if there is a guy out there that they want.
Hey all, the Knicks are 3-0 in home games I’ve attended this year. If you guys want to take up a collection to buy me a ticket for Sunday’s game, I’ll gladly go as a service to the KB community.
After several weeks of reading the press bash the knicks and fawn over the heat, how great would it be if the knicks somehow won this game on sunday? the whole press machine would have to somehow do a full 180. would be interesting to watch the contortions.
I agree with this, but at the same time who are you getting that it’s worth waiving him for? There’s really nothing left out there to pursue that’s even worth waiving an outside shot of having Sheed for. We have addressed the froncourt to an extent with the recent signing of Kenyon Martin as well.
I think there is also something to be said about being loyal to a guy who essentially came out of retirement to do Woodson a favor. It’s also valuable that, as has been the case at every stop in his career, his teammates love having Sheed around.
While holding a 3-0 season series advantage over Miami would be a really nice feather in our cap and I’m sure the press would make a very big deal out of it, the reality is that this Knicks team has to significantly step their game up if they want to even have a chance to face Miami in the playoffs.
Bill Simmons had a great point today. The Kings are now valued at $525 million. Wow, the owners really got over on the players in the CBA.
so let him stay around, make him an assistant coach or a trainer or Chief Ball Don’t Lie cheerleader, but it sounds like there’s zero chance he’ll be able to play again this year.
and as for impact guys, what about Delonte West? yes, he’s certifiable, but he also might be a major upgrade at guard for us, especially if Kidd never comes back to life.
Last week we briefly discussed Kirk Goldsberry’s data about how to quantify defense around the basket – broken down into FGA distribution when the defender is within 5 ft of the basket and FG% when player is within 5 feet of the shooter — and Dwight Howard came out amazingly by the first measure (basically no one even tried to shoot near the rim when Dwight is near it) and Larry Sanders came out great on the 2nd (terrible FG% when Larry is near you). David Lee on the other hand, did poorly on both if I remember correctly.
Here is a tweet from TrueHoop today: Elite rebounders letting scorers shoot in the name of creating more rebound opportunities? @kirkgoldsberry asking.
I remember way back when Lee was still on the Knicks, someone here posted that he had run into Phil Weber and Weber basically called out Lee saying he never contested anything, instead just getting into rebound position. This feels very much like what Goldsberry’s numbers are saying—
And THCJ always talks about how points scored = higher contract. How about double-doubles? The year Lee was looking for his FA contract, didn’t he lead the league (or was 2nd) in double-doubles?
Anyway, just thinking out loud.
Kidd was on the Mavs with West all year last year — pretty sure that if he thought West was worth this team’s time, he’d be on the roster by now.
Here it is – from cgreene Dec 10 2010:
kidd will make it back he just needs a lot of rest. But idk about West, dude is a mental patient. How many more headcases do we need before this locker room implodes? imo i rather shore up our front court then back court. i know we’ve been burned by great guards lately, but i dont expect mario chalmers to put on the same type of hurting that Wall, Irving, CP3/Bledose,Curry have done to us.
Why not bring in Sims from our D-league? we already know what we gonna get with West and other big men. Take a gamble on someone young n unknown
I always thought Lee at least competed on the defensive end his first couple of years and then slowly declined. His last year here he completely bottomed out and challenged nothing- didn’t show at all on screens, never bothered to raise his arms to challenge shots in the paint, etc… I think his impending free agency definitely had something to do with it- he’s smart enough to realize that raw numbers are what get you all star appearances and big contracts. I’d say he and Love are prime examples of what Goldsberry is talking about- of course they’re also guys that aren’t the quickest rotators in the world nor are they quick leapers- it may well be that they’re better off not challenging shots (which they can’t do very well anyway and increases the likelihood of giving up an offensive rebound) and just make sure they get into position to rebound. It’s part of what makes a guy like Noah so valuable- he challenges everything (or mostly everything) and still piles up rebounds.
yowza, Alex Kennedy just tweeted that the Kings are working on a buyout of Aaron Brooks. Knicks have to be all over that. Need someone that can penetrate on that second unit. I love me some Prigs but there’s a reason that second unit can’t score, and he is a big part of that reason.
and then he just tweeted that Knicks may have interest as well. interesting.
damn, i would hate to see prigs go tho…
The Knicks would have to be crazy not to go after Aaron Brooks if it’s only a matter of cutting White or Kurt Thomas.
but then why keep prigs? Prigs doesnt get enough minutes as is. He’ll essentially be getting 0 now.
blah no chance Knicks get him. Houston is looking for a backup PG and they’re $5M under the cap. How is that even possible? Morey is some sort of genius.
As last year’s playoffs demonstrated, you can never have too many emergency PGs. Prigs and Brooks have very different games, anyway.
Here is the article from Goldsberry.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/52811/courtvision-david-lees-interior-defense-a-k-a-the-golden-gate
David Lee is as bad at interior defense as Isiah Thomas is at being a GM.
With Kidd as a SG, Prigioni would be the third PG — not that unusual.
Brooks would be HUGE for this team; if focused, he would be the best PG on the team as, unlike Felton, he can actually shoot the ball. He’s also more competent at picking up scoring slack than Felton, so the team wouldn’t fall apart were Melo to get hurt. Prigioni is extremely limited anyway. He can’t guard, and he refuses to shoot. The passing is lovely, but that only becomes really valuable on a team that runs minimal isolations and with a lot of good offensive players, something that will never be the case with Kidd and Shumpert as major rotation players.