Tag: NBA

Knicks Sign Kenyon Martin to 10-Day Contract

Kenyon_Martin

The Knicks’ long-standing interest in Kenyon Martin has come to the fruition today with the two sides agreeing to a 10-day contract.

The Knicks appeared close to signing Martin during the off-season but were reluctant to offer a long-term deal, instead choosing to invest multi-year agreements with veterans Jason Kidd and Marcus Camby. With Camby and fellow big man Rasheed Wallace out indefinitely with injuries, the Knicks are hopeful Martin will have an immediate impact on the team’s problem areas of rebounding and defense.

Martin finds himself reunited with several teammates — Carmelo Anthony and JR Smith, with whom he made it to the 2009 Western Conference Finals with as a member of the Denver Nuggets, and the Jason Kidd, two vital parts in the back to back NBA Finals Nets teams of 2003 and 2004.

The 35-year-old Martin played 42 games for the Los Angeles Clippers last season, averaging 5 points and 4 rebounds in 22 minutes of play.

Martin will not be suiting up this Friday when the Knicks head to Toronto to face the Raptors.

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Solid move. No, it’s nothing spectacular, but Martin’s addition should provide welcome relief when it comes to rebounding and interior defending. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s quite familiar with three of our core players in Melo, JR and Kidd. And hopefully some of his goon mentality can toughen up the overall team mentality.

With that said, Knicks fans need to tempter expectations. I’ve noticed over the last year fans have become enamored with annoiting “saviors.” Last year it was Baron Davis and Jeremy Lin. This year it was Shump’s return, then Felton’s. There is no one player that will save this squad — team ball had us riding high atop the East, and it’ll be a team effort to get us back there.

The main concerns with this signing will be what type of shape Martin kept himself in and praying to the basketball gods that he can remain healthy. I can’t wait to see how he does over these next 10 days. Woodson better not be stingy with the playing time. Case in point, see the below impact Martin can have on a game on offense and defense.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkToMdLtIrA&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

Knicks Trade Ronnie Brewer to Thunder

Brewer

Knicks have completed a last-minute deadline trade that will send forward Ronnie Brewer to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for a future second round pick.

Brewer had a hot start for the Knicks in November and early December while a starter, recognized for being able to nail open three-pointers and force turnovers with his defense. However, Brewer’s production came to a grinding halt and Knicks Coach Mike Woodson benched him in favor of several lineups that have included the likes of Jason Kidd, Iman Shumpert, Marcus Camby and Rasheed Wallace.

Brewer has seen little playing time in recent weeks and is averaging 3.6 points and 2.2 rebounds for the season.

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This doesn’t seem like a major move on the surface, but as many fans have already pointed out it leaves an empty roster spot. Already the speculation has centered around possibly nabbing Kenyon Martin, who’s yet to play this season, for our sorely lacking areas of rebounding and interior defense. While I’m sure no one is completely ecstatic about recreating the Denver Nuggets core, it can’t be much worse than the play we’ve seen on the court recently. With bruising defensive minded teams like Chicago, Boston and Indiana looming in the playoffs, the Knicks have to find some toughness quick and Martin may just be the answer.

Carmelo Anthony Injures Right Arm, May Miss All-Star Game

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Carmelo Anthony may be forced to sit out the All-Star game after suffering a contusion to his right bicep in Wednesday night’s 92-88 loss to the Toronto Raptors.

The injury happened in the first quarter due to a collision with Raptors player DeMar DeRozan, resulting in Anthony’s shooting arm being completely numb the rest of the game.

“It was kind of like a dead arm out there,” Anthony confirmed.

He would have one his worst shooting performances this season, going 5-24 from the field (1-6 from downtown) and 1-4 at the free throw line.

Anthony will be overly careful in deciding whether to start for the East this Sunday in the All-Star game. Should he feel any pain, he vowed to sit out and rest.

I’m not going to force it, definitely not going to force it. As bad as I would want to play in the All-Star Game, participate, if I can’t go, I can’t go. Nothing I can do about that.

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Well, at least Anthony has an injury excuse for last night’s performance. Why was everyone else throwing up bricks?

No Execution, No Focus, No Win – Knicks Fall to Raptors 92-88

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Guess all that talk about a great practice on Tuesday means that’s where the Knicks left their game — this 92-88 Raptors loss was probably the worst they’ve played all year. That’s saying a lot considering the cluster of bad defeats NY has suffered this year to teams like Houston and Chicago. There was no ball movement, defense and worst of all no consistent energy nor effort. And no, we simply can’t look at this as an aberration from a team looking ahead to the All-Star Break. This was just another example of the inconsistent play (and coaching) plaguing this team.

 

WHO WAS THE TEAM COMING OFF A BACK TO BACK?: Coming into last night, the Raptors were less than 24 hours removed from a grueling one-point road win against the Nuggets. Their fatigue showed early with them settling for long, contested jumpers. The Raptors shot an atrocious 4/19 in the quarter and scored just 14 points.

That would have been good for the Knicks, but their ineptitude was nearly as bad. The Knicks, coming off two full days of rest, could only manage 7/21 from the field for 18 points. Raymond Felton was aggressive at least, but outside of that it was bricked jumper after bricked jumper.

 

NOVAK THE EXPLOITER…AND THE EXPLOITED: Steve Novak came into the game early in the second and Toronto promptly reeled off six straight points on him. Guys like Rudy Gay and Alan Anderson drove right by Novak in embarrassing fashion. But to his credit, Novak contributed on the offensive end to the tune of three treys to help the Knicks get out to a 35-27 lead.

Suprisingly, the one game where Novak appears to be hot from downtown, Coach Woodson sits him for most of the second half when we were in desperate need for offense.

 

3RD QUARTER WOES: Even with the lazy all-around effort, the Knicks held a 42-37 lead at halftime. That was promptly erased in a third quarter where the Raptors outscored the Knicks 28-18. Melo couldn’t hit anything (including three straight missed free throws) and neither could any other Knick. Even the ejection of Kyle Lowry couldn’t help as John Lucas III and Alan Anderson continued destroying our Knicks backcourt.

 

MELO HURT AND NO ONE STEPS UP: As everyone has probably heard, Melo suffered a deep contusion to his right arm in the first quarter after a collision with DeMar DeRozan. His arm went numb and it affected his shooting the rest of the night. That didn’t stop Melo from shooting (to the tune of a horrid 5/24), but it’s not like he had much help elsewhere. Although JR Smith had 26 points, a lot of those points came with the game already decided. When the momentum hung in the balance, he missed key free throws and defensive close outs on the Raptors.

 

LOWER-LEVEL PLAYERS FEAST IN MSG ONCE AGAIN: This was the most distressing thing about the game. It’s becoming tradition for bench and role players to have career games at the Garden because of our bad perimeter defense. Alan Anderson was 6/8 from downtown (many of them wide open) and finished with 26 points. John Lucas promptly came in for the ejected Lowry and hit a three to set the tone. Late in the fourth, he iced the game with a fadeaway jumper.

 

TIME FOR ANOTHER LINEUP CHANGE: Jason Kidd is still a valuable piece to this team, but it isn’t as a starter. At 40 he does not have the foot speed to keep up with opposing guards and it’s one of the main reasons we have a lot of bad defensive switches and end up with mismatches. To make matters worse, he’s in one of the worst shooting slumps of his career — last night he had 0 points on 0/3 shooting.

What this team needs is a balance of offense and defense. The first experiment I’d go with is putting Iman Shumpert at shooting guard, moving Melo back to his natural position of small forward and Stoudemire back to starting at the 4. And giving Ronnie Brewer another shot at the rotation (Lord knows his defense is needed).

 

The good news is that even with losing 3 of their last 4 games, the Knicks still hold the #2 spot in the East. But I hope everyone on the team takes this break to do some soul-searching, get healthy, and gear up for a second half of the season that will require them at their best.

[youtube http://youtu.be/0eyLH7_c1yc]

[Video] Knicks 2/12/12 Practice Roundup: Chandler Banged Up, Energy and Focus High

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Coming off a very disappointing performance against the Clippers on Sunday, word is the Knicks had a great practice yesterday in preparation for tonight’s game against the Raptors. Tyson Chandler was apparently pulled early from practice because of soreness (it sounds in the below video that Woodson says it’s his ankle), but he’ll be playing tonight.

The Knicks are currently three games behind Miami for the #1 seed.

WOODSON

[youtube http://youtu.be/pUasKEB45r8]

STAT

[youtube http://youtu.be/avSo01SdW-c]

MELO TALKS WHITE AND NOVAK AT THE ALL-STAR GAME

[youtube http://youtu.be/zvlH59ZUjN8]

PRACTICE FOOTAGE

[youtube http://youtu.be/VwHR_8tO2JU]

[Video] Carmelo Anthony Talks Knicks Resurgence on Jimmy Fallon

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Last night, Carmelo Anthony appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to speak on the Knicks returning to the elite of the Eastern Conference, the All-Star break, and his number being retired by Syracuse University. Melo will be starting for the East during this weekend’s All-Star game.

[youtube http://youtu.be/-h0miQI2iR4]

[Video] A Bench Massarce: Clippers’ Second Unit Runs the Knicks Out of MSG

NBA: Los Angeles Clippers at New York Knicks

It was not a pleasant Sunday for the Knicks yesterday as a fourth quarter hammering (outscored 31-18) at the hands of the talented Los Angeles Clippers resulted in a bad 102-88 loss at home. The Knicks were never completely in sync throughout the game but had a slim lead to start the fourth before everything simply collapsed. Want to know what went wrong? Let’s start with what else but the perimeter defense…

 

CP3 FEASTS ON SHUMPERT: We’ve been begging for Shumpert to get moved off guarding small fowards to the guards that have been killing us in recent games. Well, Shumpert had no easier time stopping Paul, who drained several three-pointers off picks and got by Shumpert at will in the first quarter. Coach Woodson said Shumpert’s timing and lateral movement are still slowly coming back since his ACL tear, so we just had to live with CP3 going off, unfortunately.

 

USELESS DOUBLE-TEAMS AND SWITCHING: We’ve seen it every game. Our Knicks players end up switching defenders way too easily and we end up with a gross mismatch in someone like Tyson Chandler trying to guard Paul (that happened a few times yesterday). Or we double-team players that aren’t that big of a threat leading to open threes when we can’t rotate back soon enough. The most blatant example yesterday of a useless double was on players like Lamar Odom, who haven’t warranted that type of attention since 2010.

Still, a lot of this stems from the fact our guards can’t stay in front of their man.

 

CRAWFORD ON FIRE, SMITH ICE-COLD: The battle of best bench players in the NBA was definitively won by Crawford, who dropped 27 points on an array of long treys and circus shots in the paint. JR Smith was a woeful 1-9. And it wasn’t like it was the Clippers defense that kept JR in check — he bricked plenty wide open shots. We’ve come to expect these type of games from JR, but it’s a death sentence when he plays this bad and we also don’t get big contributions from Amar’e.

 

STAT STRUGGLES: Amar’e Stoudemire had his worst game since early January with 9 points and 6 rebounds. The Knicks had problems getting the ball to him in the second half. And defensively Stat missed a few assignments.

 

NOVAK EXPLOITED: Novak had another scoreless game and his defensive liabilities swung the momentum in the Clippers favor early in the fourth. The Knicks had a 73-71 lead and the Clippers went straight at Novak to kick off a 7-0 run. At times like this, it would have been better to go with Ronnie Brewer. It would have done nothing for the offense, but at least our defense would have vastly improved.

 

MELO’S 42 AND FELTON’S 20 WASTED: Melo and Felton were the only two that had energy and really seemed to want this game. Melo had an amazing first three quarters where he dropped 38 points. That worried me because he was carrying nearly all the offense (including an 18 point 3rd). We saw in the last game against Brooklyn he had nothing left in the fourth. While Grant Hill did a good job guarding him in the last quarter, I feel the real reason he only had 4 points was due to fatigue.

Felton suffered whiplash but toughed it out and did his best to try and contain Paul, who dropped back to back buckets (one of them a three-point play), to seal the game in the fourth 96-86 with just a few minutes remaining.

 

HORRID REBOUNDING:  The Knicks gave up way too many offensive boards but this isn’t on Chandler, who have 11 rebounds and several tip-outs. Melo even contributed 8 rebounds. With Camby and Wallace out, other players have to crash the boards. In recent games, we’ve seen Shumpert and SMith do this. Yesterday, they only had 4 rebounds combined. The Clippers nabbed 13 offensive rebounds and won the board battle 43-35.

 

BENCH SLAUGHTER: How badly did the Clippers bench outplay the Knicks’s second unit? How about a scoring edge of 48-15. Only one Clippers bench player, Ryan Hollins, failed to score. Our bench had no scoring outside of Stat and JR, who combined for 15 points.

JR Smith went on Twitter yesterday and called Wednesday’s home game against the Raptors a must-win. Let’s pray the whole team brings that mentality to the Garden.

[youtube http://youtu.be/V_sDjUWHDp8]

Melo and Woodson Shoot Down Shumpert Trade Rumors

Iman_Shumpert

With the All-Star Break and trade deadline looming, Knicks coach Mike Woodson and team captain Carmelo Anthony spoke out against the rumors that guard Iman Shumpert will be traded.

News broke last week that the Knicks were interested in Suns player Jared Dudley and would consider dealing Shumpert for him. Anthony, who called the current Knicks team “the most talented” squad he’s ever played with, told the New York Post that the Knicks organization should not entertain any trades.

He [Shumpert] shouldn’t be worried about that. The Knicks shouldn’t even be in trade talks right now.

Coach Woodson echoed those sentiments, but stopped short of making a guarantee that Shumpert would definitely be staying.

I don’t think you can ever tell a player he’s not, that’s kind of out of my hands. If te owners came to me and said we have to do a deal, then you do the deal. I sat him and told him. He knows how I feel about him. We show him love and he’s a big part of what we’re doing. Those are just trade rumors.

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I wonder how much traction these rumors would be having if Shumpert did get torched by Chris Paul yesterday afternoon. Dudley would be a nice player to have, but he does nothing to fix our current biggest woe, which is perimeter defense. Shumpert is around 11 games back from an ACL tear; I’m fully confident that he’ll be close to the pesky defender he was in 2012 by the end of this season.

[Video] Didn’t Need to be This Hard: Melo’s 36 Points Help Knicks Escape Wolves 100-94

Melo_Wolves

 

 

This was way harder then it needed to be. With a little less than seven minutes in the game, the Knicks were down 11 points (76-87) to the lowly Timberwolves. Their guards, whether it was Luke Ridnour or Ricky Rubio, were looking like superstars blowing by Knick defenders. The prospect of back to back losses to sub. 500 teams had most Knick fans on Twitter going irate. Thankfully, the Knickstape woke up and did what they should have done all game in executing defensive stops.

 

MELO CARRIES THE LOAD: With the team dead in the water on offense and defense, Carmelo Anthony had to work through his shooting struggles to create something. Although he would take 26 shots, Melo found fire in the 4th to the tune of 12 points, including a game-sealing 20 foot jumper in the final minute. Melo was also strong on the boards with nine rebounds.

 

MORE STAT PLEASE: Amar’e Stoudemire went 5-7 from the field for 11 points. The Wolves tried to play him physical and got a few turnovers, but we would’ve have been wise to go into the post more, especially that atrocious third quarter that saw us get outscored 18-31. However, we have to remember that Coach Woodson is big on defense and the lapses made by Stat at times did him no favors. Not to mention, Stat got a stupid technical for ref complaining at the beginning of the fourth. Stat had another nice block (he’s been getting at least one per game), but Woody and the rest of the coaching staff have to realize playing Stat and Novak together creates too many defensive liabilities when our guards keep getting beat.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n9P52d4kvU&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

 

WHERE ART THOU PERIMETER DEFENSE?: This is the biggest problem with our defense and frankly I don’t know for sure what’s the solution. We had better defense with Ronnie Brewer starting, but suffered on offense and constantly had to fight out of deficits after the first quarter. With Kidd starting, we get better offense (sometimes), but can’t keep the other guards out the paint. Felton has been back for 8 games and Iman Shumpert 11, so in theory we should still be giving them some slack about getting back into the swing of things (especially Shumpert coming off ACL surgery). But with February being very favorable schedule-wise, we cannot afford to be dropping games to trash teams. Leave that nonsense to the Nets (ha!).

One lineup we haven’t seen recently is Felton and Shumpert in the backcourt, Brewer at the 3, Melo at power forward and Chandler at the 5. But even this is problematic as Shumpert and Brewer struggle to finish at the rim and Shump’s 3 in not a consistent threat at this point. *Sigh* When are Marcus Camby and Rasheed Wallace coming back again?

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2aQdA7Yecs&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

Steve Novak and James “Flight” White Headed to All-Star Weekend

Novak

The New York Knicks will be well-represented on All-Star Weekend with the announcement of Steve Novak and James “Flight” White being named to the Three-Point Shootout and Slam Dunk Contest.

Novak is shooting 44.4% (third in the league) from downtown this year. White has vowed to deliver a “classic” dunk performance that will be the best since Vince Carter’s memorable 2000 win.

Novak and White will mark four Knicks participating in All-Star Weekend, with team captains Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler playing in the All-Star game.

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Maybe I’m a tad bias, but I’m predicting Novak takes the three-point contest easy. Unless he gets a severe case of nerves, the three-point contest pretty much mirrors his warm-up routine. And White’s dunk acumen needs no introduction. All we need now is Melo to show out in the main game.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi0zrzQxwnU&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpNNhbGm0VM&feature=youtube_gdata_player]