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Authored by Louis Roxin - 20th October, 2008 - 4:11 pm
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Merry Christmas, Raptors Fans
The Raptors might not be playing good basketball right now, but there are plenty of things for Toronto fans to be thankful for this holiday season.
A Melo Behind The Superstars
Carmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
A Melo Behind The Superstars
Carmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
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A few pre-season games mean nothing, but can tell you a lot. With a new regime in place at MSG, some interesting patterns are beginning to take shape for the Knicks.
The Good
- Mike D’Antoni’s push-the-ball tempo was supposed to run the flat-footed Zach Randolph out of the gym and onto the trading block. Instead, Randolph is showing signs that he can survive, maybe thrive in the new system. Randolph is a scoring and rebounding machine in his prime years (although somewhat overrated as a rebounder because his low-altitude jump means he has trouble grabbing boards in traffic). Finding your shot in seven seconds or less? Not the least bit of a problem for Zach. D’Antoni has even given Randolph the green light to start lofting up the three ball, and if he can shoot it at 33%, it is an effective defense-stretching shot for this team. Randolph also likes to cut to the middle and has a knack for scoring in traffic. This provides a nice complement to D’Antoni’s outside-in offensive scheme. And Randolph’s natural passing eye and instincts are surprising: He can find the open man in a free-wheeling game.
- Nate Robinson almost looks sharp enough to justify the chatter that he is the new Leandro Barbosa, springing off D’Antoni’s bench to deliver energy and shooting. Robinson should benefit from a faster pace, but the growth of his game is largely a continuation of his progress last season. Slowly but surely, Robinson has become a smarter player too, with fewer bad decisions and more point guard command on the floor each season. Robinson has a decent feel for that all-important fine line between when to dish and when to look for his own, shoots a good percentage from downtown, and loves to take the big shot. We all know about the freakish athletic gifts, but there are plenty of examples of Li’l Nate’s height catching up to him when he gets into the paint. Perhaps the D’Antoni system will create the few inches of more space Robinson needs to finish.
- David Lee continues to do nothing but improve his game and put up numbers. So far Lee is flashing a greatly improved mid-range jumpshot that will upgrade his value and marketability by leaps and bounds. Lee’s weakness is his defense on a roster where that shortcoming is impossible to hide. He and Robinson are eligible for rookie extensions before the season begins. This is a close call. The Knicks may opt to deal with each as a restricted free-agent next summer, maintaining flexibility and two of the organization’s better trade chips.
- Unless Danilo Gallinari can make up for crucial lost time early in his rookie season, Wilson Chandler is the Knick with the greatest potential to break through and get his first chance as a consistent member of the rotation. Chandler has the NBA frame and multiple tools needed to develop into a complete player, not to mention the intriguing athletic potential of a true 3 who possesses some of the shot-blocking of a 4 and the defense-stretching game of a 2. The biggest concern with Chandler may be an erratic jumpshot; there are nights where he hits at well over 50% and others where he can’t get his shot to go down. Chandler also needs to improve his full-court handle and bring down an occasionally high dribble.
- If Gallinari’s muscle-strengthening regimen is successful and his back stays relatively pain free, he may get on the court for 10-20 minutes per game toward the latter portion of the season. And in this new system, the Italian-born rookie with a knack for passing and shooting figures to be a fit. Before he catches up to speed of the NBA game, Gallinari may still be able to get some free looks which he should be expected to splash. His range already extends behind the NBA arc. In the coming seasons, how far the Knicks can go may depend largely on how much Gallinari develops.
The Bad
- On the RealGM Message Boards and elsewhere, the trade of Renaldo Balkman for a second-round pick is an unpopular move among Knicks’ fans. We’ve heard talk that D’Antoni likes Jared Jeffries, enough that he was considering the somewhat implausible idea of making Jeffries his starting center until a leg injury put him out of action. But it is difficult to see what Jeffries can add that Balkman could not. Balkman has an unlimited ceiling on the defensive end, is dynamic on the break, and is on his rookie contract. The two are a wash on their mutual lack of an outside shot and limited offensive skills. To the notion that Jeffries is the smarter player, he has shown poor defensive awareness in transition and an overall low basketball IQ during his brief but brutally bad career as a Knick. Having said that, it was not the current front office that locked Jeffries into a long-term contract. The thinking may have been that they simply do not have the minutes for both (especially if Chandler is playing 20+ minutes per game), and since nobody is taking Jeffries off their hands, there was no choice but to part with Balkman. Clearing clutter and defining roles is an extremely underappreciated part of righting the ship. And as poorly as Jeffries has played, he is one of the only current Knicks who has recently been an effective role player on a good team that ran a similar up-tempo game. In the meantime, Patrick Ewing Jr. is a superb athlete whom the Knicks can slowly develop.
- It is, of cours,e very early, but it’s legitimate to question whether Jamal Crawford is the ideal cog in the D’Antoni machine that many predicted. Besides poor defense and a reluctance to take physical contact, Crawford may simply be a player who needs to control the ball and tempo to maximize his talents. He is not as comfortable spotting up, preferring to take his shots off the dribble from the top. Halfcourt sets and one-on-one play are just not the stuff of which D’Antoni’s offense is made.
- The Knicks are collectively and individually unwilling or unable to make any kind of stand on the defensive end, and they’re even worse than that when they need a key stop. D’Antoni’s plan (or hope) may be to run and gun enough to force turnovers and cover for his team’s poor defensive fundamentals.
- Quentin Richardson, Malik Rose, and Jerome James ought not still be in the NBA.
The Ugly
- Eddy Curry is coming off a bad year and is off to a worse start. As Newsday’s Alan Hahn points out in his Knicks Fix blog, even a serious bacterial infection should not have knocked Curry this far back had his off-season conditioning been up the minimum level expected of a professional athlete. Curry’s place on the club is in limbo, and it is far from certain that a post-up center who does not defend will see enough court time to be a positive contributor.
Footnote: An ideal roster move for the Knicks would be to find a team that needs a scoring big man and a wing threat (who happen to have good court chemistry together) and deal both Crawford and Curry before the February 2009 trade deadline. If Randolph stays, dumping these two big contracts would be a salary cap godsend for the Knicks and their hopes of landing a major free-agent in a year and a half from now. It would be the biggest coup Donnie Walsh and his esteemed front office can hope to pull off before the summer of 2010. The talent coming back would be beside the point, but if they can get anything in return, an inside defensive presence is a clear priority.
(The Irrelevant)
- Like his place on the team, Stephon Marbury is in no man’s land, somewhere between The Bad and The Ugly. Just a few days after pronouncing that he was ready to accept whatever role the coach gives him (evidently some kind of compromise gesture he should be thanked for,) Marbury said he was a “starter, period.” Not as long as Chris Duhon is around and healthy enough to execute D’Antoni’s instructions and maybe not even if he wasn’t. Marbury could be an adequate 1-2 combo coming off the bench in New York, but it is beyond doubt that if not for the giant sum owed him on the final year of his deal, Marbury would already be gone. And his presence may only delay the progress of Mardy Collins who has impressed with the speed, size and, smarts that could make him a valuable (and until now overlooked) piece in the Knicks’ new gameplan. Collins’ ceiling is quite a bit higher than most realize. For these reasons and more, it is difficult to imagine Marbury as an active and contributing member of the Knicks by season’s end.
This leads to a final point:
On a pure basketball level, signing Duhon to replace Marbury shows that Walsh and D’Antoni know that a ball-moving point guard who can occasionally knock down the three will win more games than raw talent at the point. Larry Brown was more petulant than astute during his brief stay in New York, but Brown’s career strongly suggests that he understands what it takes to make a successful team. Duhon could provide the “head” on the court that the Knicks have not had since Isiah Thomas and Marbury were running the Knicks.
Beyond the Marbury and Curry trades, the greatest failing of the Isiah Thomas legacy may be that he never assigned clear roles to get everybody on the same page. Perhaps the best sign for the Knicks now is that Walsh and D’Antoni understand the direct relationship between making tough decisions and establishing a true identity for their team. Both the Duhon signing and the Balkman-Jeffries' decision are early examples of this philosophy in action. The new regime not only has a firm sense of what style this Knick team will play, their management decisions will all be geared toward building a strong foundation and bringing a winning culture back to the Garden. |
