Brian Cronin:
I am going to the Brooklyn game. The Knicks better kick their asses!

Very cool. report please.

thought this was a great piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/sports/basketball/carmelo-anthony-likes-knicks-offense-to-go-through-jason-kidd.html

Happy for Lin. He has a very strange looking skill curve….

True enough but Lin has been playing like one of the worst PGs in the league all season with Harden dominating the ball. It’s interesting that he has a breakout game– at least on the offensive end– when Harden misses a game.

Yeah, but what are the Rockets supposed to do? Not have Harden dominate the ball? Come on. Yes, this is clearly not the role best suited for Lin (it is essentially the same role he was bad at in Golden State – the TS% are eerily similar), but if you’re the Rockets, how can you really care? If it is one or the other, you have to go with Harden every day of the week and twice on Sundays. It’s just slightly tough luck for Lin that he went to the Rockets right before they acquired a guy who is also best when he dominates the ball but is also a lot better overall. I say “slightly” because he is still making a ton of money and is a starter, so can he really complain that his role is not ideal? Screw that. He should count his blessings along with his millions.

JK47: True enough but Lin has been playing like one of the worst PGs in the league all season with Harden dominating the ball. It’s interesting that he has a breakout game– at least on the offensive end– when Harden misses a game.

You know, without stooping to Owen’s level and making a remark about Harden holding Lin back, if you actually watch the rockets play with both guys Lin has the ball in his hands quite a bit is often really passive.

If it’s true that Lin needs the ball in his hands every play to be effective, good luck building a succesfull team around him.

I just think he needed an every-possession-touch game to get his rhythm back, but I still think a lot of the shots he made tonight were the same he has struggled with all year. They are incredibly diffiuclt looks to live on, and when you can’t shoot, that’s a problem.

Also….

Let’s all remember that when Amar’e played with Melo, Chandler and either Davis or Lin as the starting pg, he had a ts% of .594 (Atlanta game at home and after) in the regular season, and a .631 TS% in the playoffs.

You throw in a player like Amar’e in place of Brewer, while you certainly lose on individual defense and rotation, you gain defensive rebounding, offensive rebounding, and extremely efficient scoring, which, imo, will have a positive effect on Melo and Felton by reducing their usage and tough shots.

All of a sudden, the best offensive lineup in the NBA gets a lot better. it should be good enough on defense, and when you can bring Smith, Shump, Brewer and Wallace off the bench starting at that 6 min mark, you’re in pretty damn fine shape on that end, too.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this, and it’s pretty clear that the only thing that really matters to Amar’e in an offense is whether there is a point guard who can either drive or make a timely pass when he slips a screen.

There are a handful of lineups where Amar’e has done well the last 4 years without that piece, but it hasn’t mattered if there was another big man or relatively poor spacing around him so long as he could get the ball on the move or there was penetration prior to him getting it.

Even without a penetration or quality passing pg play, there were times two years ago where both Melo and Amar’e were totally dominant at the same time.

There are a variety of reasons that didn’t happen much last year, save for that Atlanta game late in the year where they were both basically unstoppable.

The Felton/Kidd backcourt is perfect combo for a Chandler/Melo/Amare frontcourt. Sure, that frontcourt is going staggered with rotations to maximize Amar’e in pnr with either Melo at the 4 or Wallace at the 5.

Those 6 minutes in the second and 4th quarters has killed the Knicks all year, but Amar’e will change that.

But the main point is that with Felton Kidd you get everything you could ask for with ther Melo/Amar’e/Chandler frontcourt — spacing, penetration and high pnr, side pnr skills and a true fulcrum for the offense in Kidd.

Is there a better passing backourt combo that combines with a better, more efficient scoring frontcourt? I don’t think so.

Let’s all remember how the Hornets functioned with Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler and David West, the latter of whom does basically all the same things on offense Amar’e does but is significantly less talented at everything.

West got wide open jumpers all game long, which Amar’e prior to last year, knocked down at a very high rate.

………