Useless Thoughts on the Knicks
I don’t watch the Knicks much, but I hear a lot about them. Any opinion I might have about their play is ignorant and uninformed. However, given my distance, here is what I do know and why it might be relevant:
In a compacted season with little or no training camp or practice time, teams with depth and consistency benefit. If your squad already knows each other and the system, the practice time isn’t needed. If they’re deep they are better able to weather the sudden start and brutal schedule.
The Knicks were neither deep, nor consistent to begin the season.
Without a point guard, they had to ask Carmelo Anthony to become their primary play maker, a role he has never had to play before, and he had no time to adapt to it. Without depth, they had to rely on he and Amar’e heavily. With the brutal schedule, that took it’s toll. Even if both players were 100% healthy this would likely catch up to them.
The result was a bad start and, eventually, both stars missing time. What happened then was a complete black swan event. Jeremy Lin’s ascendance likely saved their coach’s job and possibly their season.
However, even as it was happening we all knew that the team that was winning was a completely different squad than the one playing a few weeks earlier. Everybody knew there would be questions when the stars came back, but I’m not sure we appreciated the extent of the shift.
When Amar’e came back Lin and the team were able to adjust. He was 1 guy being added back who was fairly easy to incorporate into the new system. Immediately after he came back, though, the team also added Carmelo Anthony, Baron Davis and J.R. Smith. Of the 240 minutes you have to allocate in an NBA game, that’s 73 minutes overturned. No training camp. No practice.
Where you had been asking Carmelo to become a different player than ever before, now you’re suddenly asking him to play yet a different role. While recovering from injury. Jeremy Lin, who has had 3 weeks to define himself as an NBA rotation player by heavy usage and scoring responsibility suddenly has to adapt to incorporate ~40 shots per game to the 4 new guys, all established veterans used to 20+% usage%s. J.R. Smith is used to living in China. Baron Davis is used to Williamsburg vintage clothing stores.
The Knicks are entering their third completely distinct identity of the season, a grueling season without practice time. They may finally have depth, but are the complete opposite of consistent personnel or system-wise.
None of this is to excuse them if they lose. It doesn’t excuse Carmelo’s shot selection, Lin’s turnovers or Baron’s leopard-skin glasses. Nor can I reasonably speak to those since, as I said, I don’t actually see this team play. However, if i was pressed to make a rational guess as to how they would react to the situation they are in, I would predict them to struggle with their internal changes as their schedule becomes more difficult.
When that happens- when they lose to the Miami freaking Heat, a presumptive title favorite in the midst of their own win streak- maybe we don’t need to call the coroner for too deep of an examination. Maybe this turn of events is the perfectly reasonable, expected outcome.
I don’t begrudge anybody the right to talk about it or analyze it since that’s what we enjoy doing, I just think we should all be cautious reading anything too conclusive from the upcoming streak.
That’s all.
