Amare Stoudemire

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Knick fans: Don’t despair..at least not yet..

Posted by fantasyfurnace on May 22, 2013
Posted in: NBA. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

So the ‘season of hope’ is over. The Knickerbockers gave it a ride didn’t they? Look, at the beginning of the year I really thought that the Knicks were going to be playing “wheelchair basketball” with all the AARP members on board!

Kurt Thomas, Marcus Camby, Rasheed Wallace and Jason Kidd have already begun to fill out their applications for Medicare! If you would have told me before the season started that this bunch, which by the way included an injured Amare Stoudemire and an Iman Shumpert coming off of major knee surgery, that they were going to win 54 regular season games and finish first in their division, I would have signed up for that in a heartbeat.

The signings of Jason Kidd & Kurt Thomas along with Marcus Camby & Rasheed Wallace, turned the Knicks into the NBA's oldest team last season. Photo: ROBERT SABO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The signings of Jason Kidd & Kurt Thomas along with Marcus Camby & Rasheed Wallace, turned the Knicks into the NBA’s oldest team last season.
Photo: ROBERT SABO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

And while the majority of Knick fans are frustrated, upset, or depressed, they’re missing the bigger picture. Besides 1st place in the East, they also garnered the 2nd seed and made it through game six of the second round of the playoffs with some of their players going up and down the court in walkers and casts!

I don’t recall reading before the season began, that this Knicks team was the favorite to win the NBA Finals Championship…do you? Should they have beaten the Pacers? In the words of Sarah Palin, “You Betcha!” ‘Sheed and Kidd were instrumental in the Knicks opening the season at 18-6 but Wallace took himself out of basketball and Kidd just ran out of gas, needing a GPS to find the basket.

Stoudemire, who was averaging 17 points and 8 rebounds in March before his other knee gave out, didn’t have enough stamina in the post season and was limited in minutes on the floor. Tyson Chandler, who lost 12 pounds from a severe strep throat at the end of the season was just a shell of the defensive player he was last year and couldn’t keep up with the superb play of Roy Hibbert.

We know all the reasons why they couldn’t finish off the Pacers but in the opinion of many, the tide and momentum of the playoffs changed right after J.R. Smith’s ejection after stupidly elbowing Jason Terry. The Celtics probably get swept and the energy would have carried over into the series with Indiana if Smith had kept his cool.

#8 J.R. Smith's shooting woes began when he returned from his one game suspension for elbowing Jason Terry. Photo ; COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

#8 J.R. Smith’s shooting woes began when he returned from his one game suspension for elbowing Jason Terry. Photo : COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The Pacers you’ll recall never ‘blew out’ the Knicks unless you consider losing by 7 to 11 points a ‘blowout’. If J.R. doesn’t introduce his elbow to Terry’s chin, we would have more than likely seen a different result in that 2nd round.

The point is this team, as constituted today, should be a competitive bunch in the 2013-2014 season. However there will be some tweaks made to this roster before next year begins; a year in our opinion that will be the last before its key players are purged and a rebuilding process gets underway…yet again.

With the 24th pick in the first round of the next NBA draft, and perhaps through trades, the Knicks need to find a backup point guard to replace Pablo Prigioni who will take his family back to Spain to finish out his career. Hopefully he’ll be a quick guard who will bring some speed to the second unit. Kidd is NOT that guard.

They also need another big body to play the 5 off the bench so that Amare doesn’t have to. You can’t say enough about the excellent job that K-Mart did for this team but the club needs a taller, younger, and more agile player than Kenyon especially at this stage of his career.

Because of the new CBA, the odds are that the Knicks will not keep both J.R. and Copeland. And to all those that are calling for Smith’s head, that’s all well and good as long as you can find another player that could put up the kind of numbers he did off the bench. The problem in the series with the Pacers is that J.R. who admittedly still hadn’t found his shot, played way too many minutes as Woodson forgot that there was a Chris Copeland on the bench…

Many feel that #14 Small Forward Chris Copeland spent too much time on the bench in the Pacer series and not enough on the floor. Photo: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

Many feel that #14 Small Forward Chris Copeland spent too much time on the bench in the Pacer series and not enough on the floor. Photo: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

We say ‘Don’t despair’ because there still is one more run, we believe, in the majority of this group. It is not a great team! It can’t be when you only have one future Hall of Famer playing major minutes. And at 40 years of age we’re not counting Jason Kidd who will be a lock for the Hall but clearly is not a major contributor anymore. How many do you have on other teams who made it into the 2nd round of the playoffs? Well, there are at least three in Miami and the same in San Antonio alone!

So Knick fans, come back off the ledge! It was a nice run but it was with a team that simply overachieved in the regular season. Be hopeful that Glen Grunwald will make that 24th pick a meaningful one. Pray that he’ll find a player who can finally know how to take a charge. Someone like Anderson Varejao for example. And let’s all hope that there is at least one more ride for the Knicks and their fans…

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Our Mid-Season “State Of The Knicks” Address

Posted by fantasyfurnace on February 13, 2013
Posted in: NBA. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

So what is the state of the Knicks as we get ready for All-Star weekend? Well, clearly it’s a lot different than it was during the first month of the season. Their dynamic has changed and sometimes change is not always for the good…New_York_Knicks_Logo9

For openers, and because the trade deadline (Feb. 21st) is rapidly approaching, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if somehow the Knicks can pull off a trade.  What they need is a a guard. The faster PG’s in the league have run circles around their tandem of Felton, Prigioni, and Kidd. Felton has already missed a dozen games this season and is prone to injuries given the way in which he plays.

Kidd, turning 40 soon, has had chronic back issues and cannot keep up with the Westbrooks and the Walls when he IS on the floor. Prigioni, the 35 year old rookie, made his bones in Europe where they’re really not sure what defense even means.

The stout defense that the Knicks paraded around courts throughout the league during their first 15 to 20 games has become a distant memory. Rasheed Wallace who has missed 26 games since going down with a sore left foot injury back on December 17th, hasn’t helped. He played a huge part on the defensive end in the beginning of the season and has been sorely missed.

Marcus Camby hasn’t played much as well, and Iman Shumpert who recently returned after recovering from knee surgery, has not been the same defensive juggernaut that endeared him to the team and the fans alike last year. Amare Stoudemire has been coming along nicely on offense but has never been known for his defensive ability.

So that just leaves Tyson Chandler, last year’s defensive player of the year. He is simply not enough to keep opposing players from driving the lane. Yes, he can rebound as well as any center in the league, but he doesn’t intimidate like he did last season. On offense, he doesn’t create at all and rarely puts the ball on the floor to post up. He, instead, makes his living off of pick and rolls and alley-oops from Raymond Felton.

#^ Tyson Chandler needs to be more of a defensive threat and be able to score down low for the Knicks to improve. (Photo: Brad Penner, USA TODAY Sports)

#6 Tyson Chandler needs to be more of a defensive threat and be able to score down low for the Knicks to improve. (Photo: Brad Penner, USA TODAY Sports)

And finally, there’s the recently self-proclaimed MVP of the league, Carmelo Anthony. As fans, it’s okay that he takes a lot of shots; he currently takes more per game than any other player in the NBA…yes, including Kobe Bryant! However all these ISO’s coupled with the fact that J.R. Smith, the second leading scorer on the team who is more inconsistent than Melo, begs the question, “Where does the offense come from when Melo isn’t connecting or on the floor? ”

#& Carmelo Anthony, although one of the league's purest scorers, still needs help on offense & maybe a few less ISO's. Photo: Rich Barnes/US Presswire

#7 Carmelo Anthony, although one of the league’s purest scorers, still needs help on offense & maybe a few less ISO’s. Photo: Rich Barnes/US Presswire

The Knicks, which the league has now caught up with, is essentially a perimeter shooting team that lives and dies with the three-pointer. Any team that can defend the perimeter takes away the majority of the Knicks game. And of course, any team that can slow down or stop Carmelo,(look at the Clippers game over the weekend and what Grant Hill did), make the Knicks vulnerbale especially if J.R. is not “on”.

So what do the Knicks have to do in order to have their best opportunity to get past at least the first round in this year’s playoffs? Besides, “all of the above”, they were doing one other thing in the beginning of the year that they have gotten away from… Ball movement! It was crisp passing and making the ‘extra pass’ that helped spur them to the fast start this season. Lately it seems that all too often the ball ends up in Carmelo’s hands while four other guys just stand around and watch him create shots.

Change is not always good, but good coaches and good teams find a way to make adjustments if what they are doing needs tweaking. Mike Woodson and the Knicks need to do just that in the second half of the season if they would like this to be a successful one, and given the ages of a lot of the team’s players, there aren’t a heck of a lot of seasons left in which to do so.

For the Knicks: What a difference a Ray makes…

Posted by fantasyfurnace on January 23, 2013
Posted in: NBA. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 7 Comments

The Knicks have been in the doldrums for a while now and although they have had their share of injuries so far this season, there has been none greater (except for Melo’s absences) than their PG Raymond Felton. And if all goes as planned and he returns on Saturday to face the 76ers, then it will be Knick fans saying “Everyone loves Raymond!”

The extra floor-time that 40 year old Jason Kidd has had to endure seems to be taking a toll on him and his performance. 29.3 minutes per game is not what he signed up for when coming to N.Y. and it has shown. In his 3-point shooting alone, for example, he was draining them at an amazing 52.5% clip prior to mid December. In the last month that percentage has dropped to a more pedestrian 36.1%.

#5 Jason Kidd is looking forward to getting some much needed rest once #2 Raymond Felton returns to action. Photo: newsday.com

#5 Jason Kidd is looking forward to getting some much needed rest once #2 Raymond Felton returns to action. Photo: newsday.com

There is an old expression that goes, “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” How very true since Felton went down with a broken right pinkie in the game vs the Lakers. Before that injury, the Knicks were rolling with a 20-8 record. Since Felton got hurt they are just under .500 at 5-6.

The player that probably has been the most adversly affected by Felton’s absence is Amare Stoudemire who returned to the floor on New Year’s Day only to find that his old pick-and-roll buddy from the 2010 season was on the bench. It will be interesting to see if once Felton is back up to speed if those two can return to the success they enjoyed two seasons ago.

No one is more happy with Raymond Felton's impending return than Amare Stoudemire. Photo: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images North America

No one is more happy about Raymond Felton’s impending return than Amare Stoudemire. Photo: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images North America

In the meantime the speedy point guard, who had an underwhelming season with Portland last year, and the Knicks players cannot wait for his return. “I’ve talked to Melo, Amare, Tyson, J-Kidd”, Felton said. “They’re like, ‘We can’t wait to get you back.’ I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to get back!'”

We’ll find out soon enough why “Everyone DOES love Raymond!”