A Season on the Brink: The 2010-11 New York Knicks

Team Name: New York Knicks
Last Year's Record: 29-53
Key Losses: David Lee, Al Harrington
Cherished Additions by Subtraction: Chris Duhon
Key Additions: Amare Stoudemire, Raymond Felton, Anthony Randolph, Kelenna Azubuike, Timofey Mozgov, Roger Mason, Ronny Turiaf
Weird Draft Picks: Andy Rautins, Landry Fields
Perpetually Looming Reacquisitions: Isiah Thomas, basketball executive

1) What significant moves were made during the off-season?
New York started the summer by drafting shooter Andy Rautins, who was awful in the Summer League, making nothing, and more-athletic-than-he-appears-but-less-athletic-than-that-would-imply Landry Fields, who spent Summer League running, jumping, and trying harder than most everyone else. I hope he finds minutes in the rotation against other teams' backups. He'll get rebounds. And den...the Knicks signed Amare Stoudemire to a maximum contract. Aaannd dennn...the Brickers signed David Lee and traded him to Golden State for Randolph, Azubuike, and Turiaf. Aaaaaannnd deeeennn...they signed Raymond Felton to a two-year deal. Aaaaaannnnnnd deeeeeeennnnnnn...there was a lot of noise about people named Jerome Jordan, Earl Barron, Timofey Mozgov, and other assorted tall people of either meager athleticism, limited skill, or extreme mystery. Mozgov emerged as the Knicks' best chance at a real, not-fat, not-crazy, not-heart-conditioned center. Aaaaaaaannnnnnnddd deeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnn...the guy who made a notable handful of critical jump shots for the Spurs but who never really made anyone believe he was reliable or terribly good ended up on the team once the frothing over free agents had ended. His name's Roger Mason; he gets buckets. (Kind of.)

No assessment of the Knicks at this point in the space-time continuum would be sufficiently fulsome were it to neglect the mid-summer dalliance with Isiah Lord Thomas. For a time, it appeared as though Isiah would return to the team in some kind of consulting role, and it likely would be the case had the NBA not had the temerity to remind the Knicks and Isiah that he purports to be the full-time men's basketball coach at Florida International University. No topic sends a Knicks fan into a hysterical tailspin like Zeke. Witness. So I'll stop here and lie down for a few minutes.

2) What are the team's biggest strengths?
Apositional players neither qualified to play point guard nor big enough to guard opposing centers. Raymond Felton is a point guard. So is Sergio Rodriguez, I guess. (Doesn't matter what he is; he's in Spain.) Mozgov is a center. Eddy Curry is an expiring contract in a center's body. That's it. The rest of the roster is unintentionally participating in the much-heralded Positional Revolution. No one else on the team is a classic anything. Some don't have the bodies for what they do. Others don't have the skills for their bodies. And then some more are uniquely situated. Amare, for example, can block shots like a center, rebound like a power forward, and shoot that pick-and-pop jumper like a small forward. Similarly, Toney Douglas has the size of a point but the game of a shooter and is sort of just a guard. The roster is composed of these players almost indiscriminately: starters like Danilo Gallinari and reserves like Bill Walker will be deployed across multiple lineups. On offense, this will be a boon for the Knicks, as the roster appears versatile enough to threaten nearly any defense. This is the kind of flexible outfit with which Mike D'Antoni has had success in the past. These Knicks will far exceed the recent predecessors in their scoring potential, offensive execution, and aesthetic appeal.

3) What are the team's biggest weaknesses?
Defense and rebounding, with no player a better microcosm for the team than Amare. For all of his shot-blocking and rebounding ability, Stoudemire has not consistently applied himself in dedicated service of those ends. He is a below-average defender whose blocks belie his general defensive indifference, and he is a surprisingly mediocre rebounder. This is true for many of the Knicks, though some of the other players' inadequacies are logically aligned with their limited physical talents and player dispositions. Gallinari will never be particularly fleet or rugged; Randolph still may not weigh 200 pounds or know how to play basketball; and so forth.

Teams working with lower-quality raw materials have produced better defense and more consistent presence on the boards, however. A primary source of the Knicks' problems is the coach. Though celebrated for his offensive enlightenment, his acerbic humor, and his enthusiasm for the basketball lifestyle, D'Antoni can't coach defense for shit. His teams never play it, despite annually renewed rhetoric protesting otherwise. The passivity and malaise extends to rebounding. While there may be no data to support this conjecture, it is easy to imagine that improved rebounding, which would elevate the defense to some extent, might be encouraged by an overarching philosophy that espoused defense and rebounding as substantive ends unto themselves, not merely pleasant but voluntary vehicles for more frequent offense. Sadly, New York will remain inferior on both accounts until D'Antoni changes who he is or ceases to direct the Knicks.

4) What are the goals for this team?
You play to win the game. Get busy living or get busy dying. Pick your slogan. The goal for any sports team is winning a championship, and that's why Straight Bangin' is so consistently in uproar over the Knicks. For a decade, the Brickers made decisions that were hostile to such a sentiment, routinely mortgaging the future, and the steady path to a title, in service of the present, and usually an imperfect one at that. Thus, the goal for this team remains a championship, although nothing short of an apocalyptic miracle would be required for this roster to reach the promised land. A secondary goal, then, is to finish with a winning record and make the playoffs. The Knicks haven't done that in years, and it would represent progress. Fleeting progress, perhaps, as no team so inadequate on defense can harbor realistic title aspirations, but finishing in the East's top eight would be a nice change.

More practically, the team's goals also must include exchanging Eddy Curry's expiring contract for an additional star, and preferably one more suited for crunch-time leadership than Stoudemire is. Whether that missing player arrives in exchange for Curry, alone, or as part of some package is irrelevant. New York cannot accomplish its primary goal without such a player. And speaking of that...

5) So, how was The Summer?
The Summer kind of sucked, to be honest. New York's two-year self-immolation yielded scorched earth, and no realistic championship hope can grow on the terrain left behind. LeBron and Dwyane went to Miami. Signing one of them--if not both--was the explicit raison d'etre for the franchise since Donnie Walsh arrived. Instead, the Knicks now have Stoudemire's maximum contract, a number of players who are good but likely cast one role too high on the marquee, a glaring need for first-round draft picks, and a deceptive salary structure. New York does not have enough money or assets required to assemble the elite talent that can challenge Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, or the coming threat in Oklahoma City. Worse, other teams have responded to New York hubris--real or imagined--by making big-boy moves of their own. While the Knicks are an improved team, they are not improved enough for the price they've paid.

Do not mistake this honest assessment of the Brickers for a results-based critique of the team's personnel strategy. New York desperately needed to get under the salary cap and to meaningfully shed the bad weight it was carrying. It did that. Further, the Knicks accomplished that goal as the unique Summer of 2010 arrived. With league cornerstones James and Wade on the market, along with foundational material like Bosh and Stoudemire also available, clearing cap space and pursuing elite players made sense. Miami, having not yet even played a game, is a devastating testament to this reasoning's efficacy. The Knicks only lost their way after the team failed to sign James or Wade. Then, in its haste and desperation to sell tickets and rehabilitate its image, New York abandoned the ruthless efficiency it had championed until this past July. New York's errors are tactical, not strategic. This is a critical distinction as revisionist historians like Bill Simmons now line up to wrongly perpetuate the recent narrative about the Knicks. A team that was mismanaged and incompetent for a long time finally got its mind right for a brief period of time, and it took an acceptable risk with clarity of purpose and conscience. Should Houston acquire Carmelo Anthony in exchange for draft picks that once belonged to the Knicks, that won't mean the trade for TMac last February was ill-begotten or poorly reasoned. It will mean only that New York was unfortunate and tactically inferior when juxtaposed with Miami. But clearing the cap space was never the wrong idea, and to suggest otherwise now, or that New York should not have pursued James and Wade as it did, is to tell a self-serving lie.

Over tactics, we can quibble, though. I continue to espouse an approach to team building that accepts temporary losing as a reasonable cost for high-value draft picks, roster flexibility, and reserve cap space needed to maintain a nucleus and fill in on the margins. It's the Oklahoma City model. When James or Wade failed to walk through that door, New York would have been better served to abandon its free-agency fetish. It didn't, and that's a poor tactical choice.

Predicted Record: 42-40. The Knicks will finally be able to outscore enough teams while playing that phantom D'Antoni defense respectably enough to win more games than they lose.

For additional Knicks previews, read Posting and Toasting, Bandwagon Knick, KnickerBlogger.net, and the SBN Recap.

You can read all NBA team previews in this series here. As always, props to Jeff Clark.