Knick Picking: TIME OF KNICK

by Greg Olear

Some thoughts after the Knicks’ first game of the season, a triple-overtime victory over the Grizzlies in Memphis: 

A redundant team is a deep team.

What’s the advantage to having so many small guards with decent handles?  Well, when you go to triple overtime, and your starting backcourt fouls out, you can trot out Jamaal Crawford and Nate Robinson, a pretty decent combo.  The Knicks may not have any “A” players, but they have a preponderance of “B” players—unlike, say, Miami, which has one “A+” surrounded by “C”s and “D”s. 

Balkman can ball, man.

The rook impressed in his first NBA game, attacking the boards ferociously, D’ing up Rudy Gay like an old pro, and displaying a nice handle and motor.  There were rookie mistakes—deferring on a fast break when he should have just attacked the rim; getting hit with a flagrant foul when he really just bit too hard on Hakeem Warrick’s fake—but all-in-all, the guy’s really good.  Plus, I love his dreads and sleepy-eyed nonchalance.  Watch him clap on the bench—he looks like he’s stoned!  Already my favorite player on the team.

So can David Lee.

Nobody knew who this guy was when Isiah drafted him at the end of the first round last year.  We know now.  So many hustle plays, big boards in traffic, and game-changing D, I lost track.  During the Knicks’ lone good stretch last year—the 7-0 burst in January—Lee started at small forward.  Then The Overrated Larry Brown benched him, and the team went south.  He’s the guy the guy on the other team hates, pure and simple.

Channing Frye was horrible.

Let’s hope it was Opening Day jitters and not psychological damage wrought on him by The Overrated Larry Brown.  I say this as a Knicks fan, and as a guy who has Frye on my fantasy team.

Steve Francis was even worse.

The guy’s been in the league, what, ten years, and his game hasn’t improved a lick.  Kyle Lowry, an unheralded rookie playing his first professional game for Memphis, is better than Francis right now.  Stop dribbling and pass the ball, Stevie!  If he wasn’t on the roster, the Knicks would have won the game in regulation.  No joke.  He was atrocious.  Anybody who equates Francis with Marbury, a far superior player in every facet of the game—Starbury has the glow about him, love him or hate him—hasn’t watched them play.

Eddy’s hungry, and not just for post-game burgers.

Isiah wants to play him 40 minutes a night, which isn’t feasible—he doesn’t have the gas, or the ability to stay out of foul trouble (memo to announcer Gus Johnson: if a center has three fouls at the end of the first half, he IS in foul trouble; don’t herald a guy for “only” having three fouls at the half).  And again, it’s only the first game—the jury’s out till he plays at Toronto in February—but Isiah seems to have motivated him as much as Curry can be motivated.  And when the guy’s on, he’s a beast.  He rebounded and blocked shots last night (he also got whistled for two goaltends, but why split hairs), something he’s been remiss at in the past.  And it’s no accident that Memphis’s 19-point comeback began when Curry was relegated—to purloin Walt Clyde Frazier’s word—to the bench after picking up his fifth foul at the end of the third quarter.

Q no longer stands for quiet.

No one benefited more from Larry Brown’s departure than Quentin Richardson, who shot unconsciously from three, played great D on Mike Miller after a lackluster first quarter, and won the game in the third overtime with—let’s use another Clyde phrase—timely hoops.  So what if he’s gained about 75 pounds since his divorce from Brandy?  He’s contributing, hallelujah.  And he made the play of the game—lobbying for what would have been Curry’s sixth foul to be on him instead, which allowed the big man to remain in the game through the first two OT periods.

The new theme music is unlistenable.

It’s some sort of really putrid hip hop thing that made my infant daughter cry.  They pay Jalen Rose $16 million not to play—how about ponying up for an actual musician to record some decent music?

Isiah coached the game well.

Good substitution patterns, well-placed use of Balkman, great confidence-building move drawing up a play for Francis at the end of the first OT, even though Steve never did make a field goal…even the use of end-of-bench guys like Kelvin Cato and Mardy Collins was inspired.  The only mistake he made was not sitting Curry after his second foul, but that wound up working out OK, as it gave the center a big rest before the overtimes. 

Will any of it last?  Who knows.  But right now, the Knicks are 1-0—the victory on the road against a West playoff team, no less—and have all the makings of a playoff team.  A first-round casualty, no doubt, but a playoff team nonetheless.  About time.

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