Knicks Morning News (Wednesday, Jan 16 2013)
January 16th, 2013 by Mike Kurylo | @KnickerBlogger | Comments | Permalink |
Kobe Bryant played relentless defense, spurring his fellow Los Angeles Lakers to do the same. Dwight Howard dominated the paint, scoring easy baskets and blocking shots against the bewildered Bucks.
Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant formed a dominant inside-outside combination to maintain the Los Angeles Lakers’ winning momentum with a 104-88 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday.
Wilson Chandler hit a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 14.9 seconds remaining in overtime and the Denver Nuggets beat the Portland Trail Blazers 115-111 Tuesday night for their season-best sixth consecutive victory.
Playing in the closing minutes of a tight game for the first time in a while, Mirza Teletovic’s 10 points in a career-high 22 minutes helped Brooklyn beat Toronto at Barclays Center.
Chicago’s Joakim Noah was of the opinion that the Knicks’ three losses against the Bulls might have been a factor.
Jamal Crawford scored a season-high 30 points and the visiting Los Angeles Clippers looked good without Chris Paul in a 117-109 win over the struggling Houston Rockets.
Brook Lopez had 22 points and nine rebounds, Joe Johnson and Deron Williams each scored 21 points, and the Brooklyn Nets extended their season-high winning streak to seven games with a 113-106 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night.
Roy Hibbert had 18 points and seven rebounds, and the Indiana Pacers handed the Charlotte Bobcats their 13th straight home loss with a 103-76 victory Tuesday night.
Greivis Vasquez scored 23 points, Eric Gordon added 19 and the New Orleans Hornets beat the Philadelphia 76ers 111-99 on Tuesday night.
Sacramento’s mayor has won consent from the NBA to submit a proposal that would keep the Sacramento Kings from leaving town, a spokesman said on Tuesday, amid reports that an investor group was looking to buy the team and move it to Seattle.
Still deft at irking opponents, Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls is averaging season highs in points, assists, blocks and minutes.
LONDON â?? The man behind the window is generous to a fault.
“It is cold outside,â? he says. “Can I get you some coffee? Some tea?â?
I do not want coffee. I do not want tea, or hot chocolate, or even a room-temperature ale. I want to place a bet.
“I…
LONDON â?? You could call Carmelo Anthony deaf and numb.
The Knicks superstar said he was unaware he was being miked up for Friday’s Bulls game and Sunday’s game vs. the Hornets on orders from owner James Dolan, and he doesn’t care.
As Anthony arrived with his wife…
LONDON â?? Knicks coach Mike Woodson won’t rule out starting Iman Shumpert Thursday when he makes his season debut.
Shumpert, returning from ACL surgery after a first-team All-Rookie campaign, will participate in one last practice Wednesday in London before Woodson declares him a definite. But unless there’s a setback…
LONDON â?? Roger Moreland, the British basketball chairman, knows two things about Thursday’s Knicks-Pistons contest at O2 Arena.
First, it will continue the recent popularity of basketball in Britain.
And secondly, there will be more fans pulling for the orange and the blue. The British just don’t do holidays…
At least when the Beatles touched down on New York soil nearly 50 years ago there were screaming girls and television cameras to welcome the boys from Liverpool. When the NBA’s oldest roster arrived here early Tuesday they did so with little fanfare, fewer fans and very groggy from the red eye flight.
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).
Thought this article was pretty interesting on Mark Jackson. Typical puff piece yes, but I thought this quote from Lee was pretty interesting. I don’t think coaches matter much but this seems to be working, although the Warriors are also 3 games over their differential so far, and have been unusually healthy.
“He had that very confident arrogant attitude as a commentator that made him so entertaining,” Lee said. “I didn’t know when I came into training camp what to expect off the court. But he couldn’t be further from that. He is a guy who not only asks for input from his players, but he is also a friend to each one of us off the court.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba–old-feud-with-ex-knicks-bosses-shaped-mark-jackson-s-coaching-philosophy-with-warriors-065716706.html
Going into his coaching career, the one thing I thought Jackson had going for him was that he was clearly going to be a player’s coach and I thought that that would serve him well, but I was not prepared for him being able to make the Warriors play such strong defense.
From the Mark Jackson article:
No idea if this method of discipline is commonplace or not, but it seems pretty clever. You reprimand a player solely by negative psychological reinforcement — singling him out and appealing to his personal sense of shame — not by punishing him by fining him or cutting his minutes.
And these guys are so loaded, a fine is really not a deterrent.
On another note, nice for the Knicks to have some time to practice. I think this will help Amare get more comfortable in the defense and offense.
It also gives more time for healing for a few of the ailing players.
Nice break. Expect their play to be vastly improved.
That video on the sidebar speculating that LeBron will return to Cleveland as a free agent in 2014 is hilarious.
I can see it now: “Hey Cavs fans, I know you publicly burned my jersey and the team’s crazy owner published a Comic Sans screed about my treachery after I left in 2010, but Dwyane Wade is kind of old now and I’ve got the whole ‘winning championships’ thing out of my system anyway, so… I thought I’d semi-retire to my hometown! Welcome back, right? Who is this Kyrie person everyone keeps talking about?”
Actually it would be a pretty freaking clever strategy. Ditch the team so that they can rebuild and get a couple of stars via the draft, then come back as a FA to put a solid, young team over the top and bring Cleveland its first chip, then retire in hometown glory. Everyone wins! (except us, of course)
Looks like the target date for Felton’s return is next Saturday (26th) at Philly.
Thanks for the pointer to the article. I agree with David Lee. When I heard him comment on games as an analyst he sounded as far from an effective coach as I could imagine and I thought he would be awful. But clearly that is not the case.
Yeah, i said the same thing many times on this board. I thought Jackson said some of the dumbest things ever heard by a broadcaster. But it’s working so far…..
So is Sheed still day-to-day??:
http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/story/_/id/8850867/new-york-knicks-fear-rasheed-wallace-miss-rest-season-according-sources
Totally off topic, but this Manti Te’o dead girlfriend story is just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.
http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax
Check out Notre Dame’s official response:
https://www.facebook.com/NDFootball/posts/553537038009180
Yeah, pretty amazing stuff. Score one for Deadspin.
Does Manti get out of this alive? Can’t figure out if it’s possible he was the victim of a hoax. Seems, umm, unlikely….
If you asked me ten, or heck, five years ago, I’d say that there’s no way someone could fall for such a hoax. However, we’ve seen it happen frequently since then, so I can believe it. I would not be surprised if he is full of shit, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if this is legit.
Unlikely, sure. But then again, it was only recently that certain deft commentors determined with near certainty that a certain overly enthusiastic, defensively outspoken, and all-lowercase poster on this site is not, in fact, a former ASU student-paper beatwriter but, in fact, a certain 6’8″ gunslinging swingman who hails from a city made famous by an acclaimed HBO drama. I guess they’re perpetrated on different levels, though.
Te’o's father said that the girl would come to Hawai’i to visit him during periods of time that he was at home.
This is a hoax. There is absolutely no way that everyone got duped this badly. I mean, this is the age of Skype. The dude is going to fall in love with a girl to the point that he gets a game ball following her “death” and never ask her to Skype? Come on.
The most likely explanation to me is that Te’o is deep in the closet and used the fake girlfriend as a cover for a secret relationship.
With the guy who was linked to the “girlfriend’s” twitter, that is.
They have a show on Mtv about people getting duped by phony online relationships. However if hid pops said the girl used to visit and now Teo is saying she does not exist. Something aint right
The eerie part is how far it went. Why go through all the trouble of making her “real,” like giving her a name and everything. How many girlfriends of college players can you name?
I think that it’s either an absurdly evil gambit for national press coverage (and thus a Heisman bid) or an aborted attempt at a national-level beard. If it’s the latter (which I hope), it’ll be interesting to see if he becomes one of the nation’s most beloved (and hated) public gay men or if he does some Mark McGwire-level denial for the rest of his career. I couldn’t blame the guy for not wanting to be outed, but if he really is gay, this could be a paradigm shift in sport culture.
As a card-carrying Gay, I sincerely hope the first openly gay player in a major sport (and like, a real player… not John Amaechi) will be a normal, well-adjusted human being and not the perpetrator of an over-the-top (and frankly, kind of twisted) hoax. Plenty of gays have the proverbial “girlfriend in Canada” or whatever, but most don’t find it necessary to milk the sympathy and attention they’d get from telling the world she had a horrible car accident and then died of leukemia, etc.
@22 and @21 both valid. For his sake rather it be the beard. For the sake of gay acceptance in sports I hope he is not.
Also I would love it if the Nets lost tonight.
Oh I would also enjoy a nice Pacers loss to Orl
I’m with you here, but at the same time, it’s a testament to how ridiculously, absurdly far a man in a supremely homophobic industry will go to cover up his preference to make out with dudes rather than ladies.
Throw in a Heat loss too and it would be a perfect night lol.
True, but I still think it would be both easier and less insane to have a flesh-and-blood beard, or in his case, play the “I’m far too religious to have sex before marriage” card. I know the closet can make people do weird and bad things, but while it might just be tribal loyalty talking I prefer to think he’s either legitimately crazy or reeeeeally stupid (or both!) rather than hope he plays for my team.
Man, never even considered that possibility. He is a Mormon right?
Awaiting developments and enjoying Lin-Harden on ESPN. Though Denver – OKC would be spicy….
Well, a spicy blowout that is…..
Harden is like a T.O. machine. I hardly watch Houston except for the occasional computer glimpse. I would say it was a bad game but they said he leads the league in t.o’s
They are 21-18 but are 7-14 vs the West, wouldnt be surprised if they finished under .500. But if they make a trade by the deadline it could obviously change things.
What are the odds that Te’o's girlfriend is actually Lance Armstrong?
As a Rockets fan, I honestly don’t mind if they miss the playoffs and get a lottery pick. They have no chance against either the Clippers or OKC, and now that they have some kind of foundation to start building around, it makes sense to get as much talent as possible. They’re going to need another star to build around, and they need to hope Jeremy Lin becomes substantially better, but Harden is going to be one of the top offensive players in the league for years to come, hopefully he develops more of his game beyond his lethal pick and roll.
Hope you’d also enjoy a Boston loss to New Orleans as well! haha
Yup Boston about to lose at home vs the Hornets. If only the Bulls wouldnt have pulled out a win in OT at Toronto this really wouldve been a great night for the Knicks in the standings. Heat losing would be awesome too but with Steph Curry out for the Warriors gonna be tough for the Warriors to win.
This Te’o story just gets weirder and weirder:
http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2013/01/16/lennay-kekua-manti-teos-fake-dead-girlfriend-was-real-says-arizona-cardinals-fullback-reagan-mauia-who-claims-to-have-met-her/
Lol Lin TO to end it
They have room for a max deal in the offseason. As bad as Harden and Lin are with turnovers, if they add someone like Paul Millsap in free agency and Asik keeps improving, they’re a contender in the West.
Yeah. Rethinking my point about the lengths of a homophobic homosexual, I can’t really imagine that this kind of hoax is the work of a sane person.
What are the odds that the narrative has been spun by Deadspin so as to eliminate the possibility that a super-famous 22-year-old had a phone-and-internet-only Mormon-virgin-style relationship with a fake girl and actually got duped himself? I mean, like, what if?
LOL I always laugh when you say as a rockets fan. And weren’t you opposed to the Harden trade when it first happened?
I’ve never heard of this guy Te’o before, but this story sounds a lot like the movie Catfish.
It also reminds me of the Vanity Fair story about the woman who got Warren Beatty, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Robert DeNiro, and a whole bunch of other celebs in the ’70s to fall in love with her, sight unseen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Grosvenor
He was for the trade, as clearly it was a great deal for the Rockets. I don’t think there was a single poster here who thought that it was a bad move for the Rockets. The debate at the time was only over how good Harden was. Everyone knew that it was a bit of a no-brainer for the Rockets, it was just a matter of how good Harden would be and how good/bad OKC would be after the trade, as it led into discussions about interaction effects and how OKC might not miss Harden as much as you’d think for losing a guy as good as Harden is.
Exactly. I can pull up posts calling the move a no brainer for the Rockets, even with the attached max contract. I also thought OKC would be perfectly fine without him since he wasn’t as valuable in the role he played in OKC. Just because I think Jeremy Lin is a below average point guard doesn’t mean I’m not a Rockets fan lol
He wasn’t as valuable because he had an excellent backup and the Thunder got another good player at his position in return. It has nothing to do with role; it has everything to do with substitution. If you’ve got Chris Paul and John Stockton as your point guards, losing one of them wouldn’t be a crushing blow if it meant getting more value at a position of need.
If they had traded him for Jarryd Bayless (47 TS%), would we be saying the same thing about Harden’s value?