ruruland: Let’s remember this: in the 24 regular season games the Knicks played with Amar’e and Melo in ’11, they had a 114.8 offensive rating!

Thank you for pointing this out. I can’t for the life of me figure out why all of the experts are so sure that Amare and Melo can’t play together on offense. After the trade, their problem was not offense, it was defense.

ruruland: I’ll be here.

You’ll be here to make the excuses. Er, no: “explanations.”

BigBlueAL: I dunno, 50 wins has always been considered a pretty good regular season. The Knicks in their franchise history have only won 50 games in a season 12 times. 6 of those 12 times came in the 90s. So winning 50 games would make this one of the better regular season Knick teams in franchise history.

It would be just that, pretty good. However, in the last 10 82-game seasons, only 5 0f 20 ECF teams had 50 wins or less (three in 2002 and 2003, when the EC was truly turrible), making it 2 out of the last 16. If the goal is to get to the ECFs this year, 50 wins almost certainly will not be enough. We have toseparate ourselves from Boston, Indiana and Chicago (who will have Rose back come playoff time.)

jon abbey:
ruru, I’d like to congratulate you, as somehow you have me, a lifelong Knicks fan, partly rooting for them to go 34-48 while staying totally healthy and Melo to shoot like 12 percent, just to see what you’d say.

I’ll be here.

I’m certainly not arguing that the Knicks will post a 115 PTs per 100 possessions and lead the league in efficiency. And it’s true that Billups, Wiiliams, Fields and Douglas were mighty efficient. But Novak and Smith are capable of combining to put up the numbers that foursome did, better actually. Also, that team did not have a center anywhere near efficient as Chandler. Thirdly, Felton should have a nice positive effect on Amare, who wasn’t amazing with Melo in “11.

I said after the roster was finalized that the Knicks will finish top 5 in defense and top 7 offense. A 48 win projection would have them droppIng on either offense or defense, which is really hard to figure, injuries notwithstanding.

@ruru,

the success on offense that the Knicks had post-trade was impressive. The big difference though was Amar’e was still playing a lot of minutes at center. Also of note, we had Fields and Douglas both playing WELL then, and we had Billups, who whatever his flaws as a PnR point, is the best PG the Knicks have had since… Marbury’s second year here?

ruruland: right, it’s a 2-3 year plan and you rebuild at that point.

There’s a long discussion here but the Knicks will have plenty of flexibility when this is over. I’m not sure that model is all that different than the one everyone seems to love, but takes an extraordinary amount of luck and foresight to achieve.

LeBron could be a FA in the summer of 2015!!

BigBlueAL: At least its just for 3 years unlike the Nets who are stuck with their current roster for the next 4-5 years.

right, it’s a 2-3 year plan and you rebuild at that point.

There’s a long discussion here but the Knicks will have plenty of flexibility when this is over. I’m not sure that model is all that different than the one everyone seems to love, but takes an extraordinary amount of luck and foresight to achieve.