Knicks Morning News (Wednesday, Mar 20 2013)
March 20th, 2013 by Mike Kurylo | @KnickerBlogger | Comments | Permalink |
The old, decrepit Knicks have become a caricature of themselves.
The glow of their lone West Coast victory and likely return of Carmelo Anthony tonight was dimmed by yesterday’s grim MRI exam results for centers Tyson Chandler and Kurt Thomas.
The league’s oldest team could not savor even…
Even amid the giddiness of a locker room tasting victory for the first time in nine long days, Kurt Thomas knew enough to be a voice of reason.
All around him late Monday night in Salt Lake City, teammates were joyously chanting his initials (“K! T!â?) and breaking his chops…
The question asked of the Knicks front office in October is worth repeating again one month before the start of the NBA playoffs; did they build a roster capable of beating Miami or one that should just retire there?
Marcus Thornton had 25 points, Toney Douglas scored 17 of his 19 in the fourth quarter and the Sacramento Kings rallied from eight down in the final 11 minutes to stun the Los Angeles Clippers 116-101 on Tuesday night.
Ty Lawson scored 25 points, Andre Miller had 20 points and nine assists and the Denver Nuggets beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 114-104, Tuesday night.
Brandon Jennings scored 24 points and Monta Ellis added 21 to help the Milwaukee Bucks hang on for a 102-95 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night.
Paul George scored 19 points and Tyler Hansbrough had 14 points and 14 rebounds, leading the Indiana Pacers to a 95-73 rout of the struggling Orlando Magic on Tuesday night.
Forward Kurt Thomas may need two to four weeks to recover from his right foot injury, but center Tyson Chandler will need only about a week to recover from a bulging disk in his neck.
The Cavaliers’ rookie guard Dion Waiters will miss at least one week with a sore left knee and may need surgery.
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).
TDDWTDD just had his Mosgov game. Good for him. Probably keeps him in the league in extra year.
When someone wrote on the previous thread that “TDDWTDD is killing the Clippers right now”, I thought ‘I didn’t know Toney Douglas was traded to the Clippers’.
No joke. The thought of Toney Douglas playing well against an opposing team didn’t even register. (That’s how bad the pervasive pessimism has gotten…)
Found this really interesting article about critical thought. Worth a read for everyone.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking/
Yes! I had basically the exact same thought except I assumed the person posting the comment just typed the wrong team name accidentally (I was pretty sure TD wasn’t a Clip since we just played them). It took me about 5 full seconds to put together that they meant killing them in a good way.
Also, in relation to ephus’ comment, TD was brutal last year, but he’s an NBA player. He’s back to 37% on 3s this year (186 attempts), which is basically right where he was as a Knick before the shoulder surgery and still plays enthusiastic defense (if not always “good” in the classical sense). He’s no PG, but on a team that runs their offense through other positions he’s a decent bench player, not a guy who’s really in danger of falling out of the league.
At least that’s how I see it, but I can admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for TD, even when he was doing a PG interpretation last year that made me pine for the days of Starbury.
Keep those draft picks and use them wisely kids!
Imagine: The Knicks draft Lawson instead of Hill.
Then, instead of trading Lawson to rid ourselves of Jeffries – who isn’t a terrible bench guy, mind you – for the crackpot idea of getting LBJ and one of his homies, maybe we just KEEP him and y’know, teach him some more basketball?
Assuming we still sign A’mare (or even keep Lee) then we look like Lawson, Shump, Gallo, A’mare or Lee. Sure we probably don’t get Chandler in that situation (maybe we do) or maybe we wait til free agency to get Melo (he was coming here anyway) then maybe you’re looking at D’Antoni and Lawson, Shump, Gallo, Melo and Amare OR Lee and Chandler PLUS a whole barrel of draft picks. Maybe you add to that Vucevic? or Faried?
I’m not living in the past. I weep for the future.
Seriously, woudn’t it be nice not to have to tear down and rebuild this piece of shit team ever 3 years???
I donno Ess. I understand you, but I see glimmers with this team. Maybe they are just mirages or having sucked for so long I forgot that decent teams have stretches of brilliance. That being said I give it this year and next. I am not optomistic that the in next two years the “star” core of Tyson, Melo, Stat are or can be centerpieces of a 50-55 win team that gets to the conference final. I am sure there are the howls out there of “they never were.”
I’m actually thinking this team will go on a long run in the playoffs. Currently every single news outlet is just killing the Knicks, which is probably the exact time to buy low on this team.
I meant to say after the next two years. This year it’s Miami and other then them Chicago and Indiana have given the Knicks fits, but Boston, Brooklyn, Atlanta and Milwaukee are not exactly juggernauts. I sure would like to get a draft pick and have him contribute, but given Woodson’s theories and comment on rookies, not to mention his substitution patterns, that may be delusional.
+1
Yeah, there is such a strong anti-Knicks bias out there. Case in point: Boston loses at home to Miami after being up 17 and it’s all about “warriors” and “going toe to toe”; we lose to Miami after being up 15 and it’s all about Miami imposing their will and proving we are no threat to them. Oh, and Miami also kicked Indy’s ass last time they played, but the Pacers are still the only threat to the Heat in the playoffs.
Interestingly I was in Chicago over the weekend until Tuesday and watched the Nuggets-Bulls game on Monday night at a bar. Talked to a few Bulls fans and the consensus seemed to be that other than the Bulls only the Knicks were good enough to conceivably beat Miami. That has pretty much been my opinion since the beginning of the year. Pretty easy to get down on the Knicks right now, but I’m not quite sure why so many other teams in the East are worthy of wild optimism.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/45230/downtown-downpour-the-new-york-knicks-are-raining-threes
If we get hot from three we can beat anybody. If we don’t our offense becomes a ton of iso-Melo. I also don’t have the raw data but I would guess with Chandler’s injuries it’s safe to say there might be a reason why he hasn’t exactly maxed out every night as we became accustomed to seeing. Chandler’s impact offensively is important even though he isn’t a particularly skilled offensive player, because when he is diving to the rim teams have to respect that.
We haven’t been nearly as efficient as we were early on in the season using that play and Chandler has shown a lack of ability to convert unless given the perfect pass. This along with Felton’s regression after his hand injury until this month has hurt a lot. Obviously we haven’t been able to reap the benefits of Felton’s improvement this month because of injuries to…
ironically enough if the knicks can right the ship and pull off a few ” upsets” they can still end up second. Indy has a stretch of 8 tough games in a row:
Mar 22 vsMilwaukee 7:00 PM
Mar 23 @Chicago
Mon, Mar 25 vsAtlanta
Wed, Mar 27 @Houston
Thu, Mar 28 @Dallas 8:30 PM
Sat, Mar 30 @Phoenix
Mon, Apr 1 @Los Angeles
Fri, Apr 5 vsOklahoma City 8:00 PM
And of course the BkNets are on that historic 8 game roadie
Yeah. I think it’s going to be tough to get hot from there with Battier, Lebron, Wade, and Chalmers hounding us on the perimeter. We did it once, doing it for 4-7 is another story.
The Heat are a great team, which they have made more obvious lately….
Still, one can hope….
Ess-Dog – We aren’t supposed to entertain such counterfactuals anymore. Which is probably better for my mental health.
Another great Zach Lowe piece today on the SportsVu cameras. If you missed either one go read them both. Like, right away. Anyway, one quote that stuck out in light of constantly ongoing arguments here is :
“Here’s something interesting: Toronto’s analytics team believes isolations — those selfish and allegedly inefficient plays — might be very good things for some offenses, and the Raps’ current data suggests possessions that end via some event that results from an isolation are about as efficient as pick-and-rolls that do the same. This is where the SportVU data can go beyond something like Synergy, a stat-tracking tool every team uses. Isolations come out as very low-efficiency on Synergy, since Synergy measures only shots that come from the player isolating one-on-one. It doesn’t precisely measure what happens when that player draws help and kicks to a spot-up shooter, and when that spot-up shooter then drives, draws more help, and kicks to an even more open shooter who knocks down a 3.
The Raptors are doing that, and they’ve found isolations in that larger sense are quite efficient — at least for teams with the right personnel. “They’re fabulous for us,” Rucker says.”
If they’re right, and obviously nobody has seen the data they’re working with, that’s a pretty strong piece of evidence for the pro-Melo camp on these boards. The idea that while Melo’s individual efficiency may not be great, the shots generated out of his iso’s are quite efficient is something Ruru and others have been harping on repeatedly for the last god knows how long. If it’s true for Toronto (whose main iso players are Derozan and Gay) you’d have to assume it’s true for the Knicks with Melo.
in other breaking news, people need oxygen to live.
Other than we are Knick fans….. why?
Since their 18-5 start where they shot a completely unsustainable 41% from 3, they have been 21-21 and most of that with both chandler and melo. The only thing in their favor is they may hold the 2 seed and the rest of the conference is beatable. The Knicks could make it to the conference finals or they could easily go out in the first round, but with their God awful backcourt play and no 4′s on the roster, the out look isn’t very good.
also, since I have been so negative on this team for the last month or so, I’d like to say that I really love Kenyon Martin and his contributions thus far, probably only behind Shump on my favorite Knick list currently, and it’s a lot harder to love Shump 2013 than it was Shump 2011/2012.
I don’t think anyone argues the efficiency of the Isolation play as part of an offense. I think the issue with it is when isolation becomes the offense.
At least, to me, that’s what drives me mad about Melo, when he goes into a predetermined iso mindset instead of it being a result of an offensive workflow.
I’m amending what I just wrote above. Of course, some players are better at Iso than others. Their efficiency makes it a solid option to run at a certain time.
As a part of an offense, with the right player, it makes sense.
Yeah, we have entered the brave world of proprietary analytics, where results are reported but the process is completely opaque.
I am all for it. But anything the Raptors do has to be taken with a grain of salt at this point.
Well they did trade for Gay, so when it comes to isolations they basically put their money where their mouth is.