Photo from pratanti via Flickr
With the threat of a shortened or even cancelled season upon us, there is very little we can do to restore a shred of basketball into our lives. What we can do, though, is reminisce over other “lost†seasons. Seasons which saw players or teams achieve extraordinary things that go beyond titles or awards, only to fade back into the background one year later. Here we will bring the tale of these lost seasons, the ones that touched us on a personal level, the ones we will never forget, though history itself might.
Previously on The Lost Season: Boris Diaw, 05-06, Bobby Simmons, 04-05, Seattle Supersonics, 04-05, Spencer Haywood 69-70, and Tracy McGrady, 02-03.Â
This edition focuses on the short-lived version of the New York Knicks, that spanned from the summer of 2010 to the trade deadline of 2011.
In previous Lost Seasons, we had players or teams that rose above the expected and the known to the realms of the magnificent, shortly tantalizing our imaginations with potential for varying levels of greatness, only to regress back shortly thereafter.
This is going to be different.
This squad was not a great squad. It was arguably not even a good squad. It displayed no meteoric rise, because it had no past, and its demise saw no tragic fall, because its future was abruptly pulled out beneath it. This was a squad hastily put together and hastily disassembled, just another phase in a never ending building process. A squad held together by poorly fitting stopgaps and inadequate patchwork, with a long term plan centered around hoping for a long term plan, and a short term plan centered around just plain hoping.
And yet, for 54 games before the inevitable clearing of the cupboard, this unintentional mess of a team somehow did… something. Probably. What that was, exactly, will probably remain a footnote in the history of a powerhouse-turned-laughingstock-turned-hopeful-powerhouse. Nothing more, nothing less. After all, transitional periods rarely get their own nostalgic retrospectives.
This transitional period does.
Irregular Building
NBA all-stars stand out above their brethren in many respects. They are, by definition, the very best at their craft. Consequently, they are usually the most marketed and most generously compensated practitioners of their profession. When you are the best, and the people who pay you know you’re the best, you have quite a lot of leverage.
This is why all-stars rarely switch teams in free agency. The current NBA system – or rather, what was current until 2 months ago – was designed with handicaps to help teams keep their key players as opposed to just watching them leave. As such, staying put usually results in a financial boon that even the most well paid NBA players find hard to ignore. There are exceptions, of course – if a free agent asks to leave, sign-and-trades enabling them to get their max money and their old teams to get compensation are frequently agreed upon, and some are just plain content with taking a pay cut to get out of their current situations. But more often than not, an all-star will stay with the club whose jerseys he made marketable, and if he wants out, he’ll do so by demanding a trade and keeping his max money.
Or so said the logic before the Summer of 2010.
July of last year saw no less than 10 current NBA all-stars enter free agency. Many of them indeed stayed put – with Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce there was never really any doubt that this will be the case, while Ray Allen, Joe Johnson and Dwyane Wade did so after sagas of varying length. But no less than 5 players with all-star appearances to their name decided to change the city in which they work their craft (if you want to reduce this to 3 and exclude David Lee and Carlos Boozer, by all means, go ahead).
Teams generally aren’t built this way. It’s odd, it’s unnatural. Building blocks don’t just appear, they are drafted and nurtured and groomed. And so it was from the very get go that the 2010-2011New York Knicks were awkward. Bring in a franchise player via the seldom used route of free agency – especially if the player is one with injury concerns, has never been an all-star without the steady guiding hand of Steve Nash, and the franchise is the league’s marquee squad – and you’re bound to raise more than a few eyebrows.
But Amar’e Stoudemire was hardly the only part of New York that was abnormally assembled. After years of clearing cap space and shooting for Lebron, very few Knicks remained on the roster – of projected rotation players, only youngsters Toney Douglas, Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and Bill Walker were holdovers from previous years, as was the dead weight contract of Eddy Curry. The rest of the rotation came from wherever it could be scraped: Raymond Felton was the second “big†free agency acquisition, except he was only signed for two years, so he wouldn’t ruin the chances at yet another delusional free agency run in 2012; Landry Fields and Andy Rautins were brought in from the depths of anonymity via the second round of the draft; the star of the 09-10 horror show, the aforementioned Lee, chose the Bay Area as his new home, and the Knicks were compensated for his decision with the Energizer bunny that is Ronny Turiaf, the intriguingly disastrous Anthony Randolph, and an injured Kelenna Auzubuike; Timofey Mozgov was imported from Russia; the entire ordeal was a who’s who of “What? How?”.
This random collection of NBA players was as problematic as it was peculiar. The shooting guard position was in such dire straits that I actually predicted Bill Walker would take over it, and meant it said when I said it. The center position was manned only by the energetic yet limited Turiaf and the unknown Mozgov. Stoudemire had no experience as the only focal point of a team made mostly of role players. Worse, he had questionable knees and no backup to speak of. And the team as a whole had nothing resembling a good defender. Behind the angry headlines reserved for the Miami project that was being assembled at the same time, the summer’s main headlines spoke of New York being back – but back to where, nobody really knew.
Amidst the Uncertainty
Coach Mike D’Antoni, starting the 3rd year of his New York tenure but only the first year that mattered, was spared a major headache when Landry Fields burst onto the scene in summer league, and maintained his strong play in training camp. The unknown rookie who drew boos from Knick fans at the draft (is there any other sort of rookie?) provided surprisingly stellar play, new NBA 3-point range, and a knack for rebounding that proved indispensable on a team of such limited size and defensive ability, pretty much sealing the hole that was the shooting guard position.
But despite Fields’ rapid ascension from potential rookie sleeper to token starter to legitimate NBA player, the Knicks struggled out of the gate. Amar’e seemed to wilt without Steve Nash, recording a whopping 25 turnovers in his first 4 games as a Knicks, struggling to hit shots anywhere near his normal efficiency. Gallinari’s shot came and went as it pleased, as he alternated between all-around offensive weapon and a downright liability. The lack of a starting caliber center proved even worse than imagined – though he was named starter on opening night, Mozgov proved to be completely incapable of adjusting to NBA speed, fouling whenever possible, giving nothing of the supposed offensive polish he brought with him. Sadly, beyond the 25-ish minutes a night that Turiaf was capable of providing, there were no alternatives. D’Antoni was forced to yank Mozgov from the rotation entirely, find out he needs him, bring him back in, find out he can’t produce, and repeat the whole ordeal again and again.
But more than anything, the D’Antoni show relies on point guard play. While Raymond Felton was clearly an upgrade in every which way after years of various Duhons and Houses and Nate Robinsons, he was also being asked to play a different role than those long-gone Knickerbockers – that of a team’s second best player. And Felton, finally free of the reigns of Larry Brown, couldn’t seem to figure out if the freedom he had been given was good or bad. He found open teammates at an alarming rate, scored the ball better than ever, and showed that the improved shooting touch from his final Bobcat season wasn’t a fluke; but at the same time, the constant green light sent him into rushed shots and crowded areas of the floor. The pick and roll, specifically – a D’Antoni staple, a Larry Brown non-entity – baffled Felton, as he constantly missed a rolling Stoudemire or an available crease for a drive. After starting the season 3-2, the Knicks quickly lost 6 straight, and tensions in the Big Apple were once again abound.
Luckily, 11 games was exactly the amount of time needed before the Knicks got an important boost from what is, every single season, an underrated X factor for all 30 teams – the schedule.
The Lottery Feast
Between November 17th and December 12th, the Knicks played 14 games. In 13 of them, they managed to score more points than the other teams. While only 3 of those games saw the Knicks play opponents approaching respectability, the effect was profound. The team developed confidence, no longer a disjointed group that came together by happenstance. Beating lottery teams may not be championship material, but the Knicks were never supposed to be that. The first step was always creating a winning environment from the ashes of Gardens past, and beating up on the likes of the Kings and the Bobcats and the Raptors did just that.
The media, as is often the case with the Knicks, went crazy. The fact that the 13-1 stretch happened to coincide with major winning streaks for both the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, the East’s two presumed powerhouses, served as extra fuel. Suddenly, the East had three big teams – because, in case you haven’t heard yet, the Knicks are back!!! Rational observers continuously pointed out how the Knicks’ near unbeatable run was more the result of good luck and scheduling quirks than a cosmic power deciding to redirect the spotlight New York’s way, and were subsequently ignored. The Garden’s menacing glow was restored to the once tired venue. Basketball’s Mecca? Perhaps that was going a bit far, but after years of being basketball’s De Moines, everything was a welcome development.
Stoudemire, who in a very short time developed such a comfort with being the first, second and third options on his team that he was now thriving instead of faltering, started hearing M-V-P chants from the Garden faithful. Similar voices from media members followed shortly. While the entire premise of Stoudemire as an MVP was off base at best – his numbers were more or less identical to his Suns’ days except for the higher usage rate, and he showed no improvement defensively on a team that desperately needed him to – his play was nonetheless impressive.
With the masterful Nash replaced by the improving yet flawed Felton, expectations dictated a much harder time for Amar’e scoring. The effect would be especially prevalent in the pick and roll, where Nash was seemingly omniscient as to whether Amar’e was diving to the basket or popping outside for midrange jumpers. And indeed, Stoudemire’s offense became much more isolation oriented – and while his efficiency saw dropped accordingly (his TS% more than a slight one – 61.5% in his final season in Phoenix, while he never climbed above 59.3% in a single month as a Knick), the effect wasn’t nearly as severe as one would expect.
Synergy numbers include the games Amar’e played alongside Carmelo Anthony, so they are far from perfect as a descriptive tool, but just to get a grip on things – in Phoenix, 19.2% of Amar’e’s possessions were post-ups, 17.8% as the roll man in pick and rolls, and only 14.8% in isolations. In New York, those numbers were 12%, 9.6%, and a frightening 32.3%, respectively. The pick and roll devil was still among the best at the craft, but it was no longer his primary source of scoring.
Most Improved Ensemble
While Stoudemire got the headlines and the bright lights, his rise was hardly the most impressive on the team, mostly since it was more of a stagnation under harder terms. The major leaps in production came from other Knicks, each more joyous than the other.
Fields’ emergence, already extensively covered on this very cyberspace, was the draft equivalent of a godsend. He made threes for an offense that was hypothetically built around shooters it didn’t have. He was the team’s second best rebounder on a per game basis, and its best defender. His +/- numbers were off the charts. For the first two months of the season, he was widely regarded as the 3rd best rookie in the league behind Blake Griffin and John Wall. Unlike Stoudemire’s MVP “campaignâ€, this was not a result of the market he played in, but of plain old, down-to-earth fantastic basketball.
If the shooting guard spot was a concern that was eased, the small forward position went from a strength to an even greater strength. Gallo’s shooting was still far too inconsistent for a player billed first and foremost as a sniper, but he developed a mean streak getting to the foul line, averaging 6 freebies a night on 89% shooting, including nights of 16 for 17 and 13 for 13. Meanwhile, he continued to display a solid passing game for a forward, and his inconsistency behind the arc did nothing to alleviate opponents’ concerns about leaving him there. As a scorer, as a decoy, as the passer, and as the guy who ruins the defense’s rotations, Gallo made the offense run smoothly like his hair gel did to his locks.
If Gallo improved a single facet of his offensive game to complement existing attributes, Wilson Chandler took the entire ensemble and upped it one notch. The former tweener flipped the script on his unusual 6’8â€, 220 frame, using it for versatile play on both ends of the floor. Chandler filled in everywhere from the 2 to the 4 while doing a good job defensively on a wide array of opponents. Furthermore, he started making baskets at an alarming rate, from all around the court. He shot around 80% at the rim, flaunted a newly developed 3 point shot, and destroyed JaVale McGee, violently throwing himself into Most Improved Player discussions.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnAdWDvwHEk]
But the biggest story, by far, was at point guard, where Raymond Felton was finally getting it. After a first month in which Felton seemed uneasy with how little his coach was meddling with his game, the entire ordeal came together, and it was magnificent. Suddenly, Raymond Felton was everything a point guard needed to be. He would get the ball off a rebound, and start a run down the court that combined the joy of a frolicking deer and the force of a boulder chasing Indiana Jones. The seemingly bulky frame did nothing to hinder the agility and purposiveness with which New York fast breaks were now run. Felton would get to the rim, stop for PUJITs, find teammates either cutting to the basket or spotting up in the corner. It was Raymond unleashed, finally in his true form, after years of potential being held back by a Charlotte Bobcats uniform. Felton became a legitimate all-star candidate – after all, who among East guards could compete with 18 and 9 a night with decent if unspectacular shooting numbers? Wade, Rondo, and? Exactly.
Rivalry Renewed
It was December 15th, in the Garden, on the heels of this 14 game stretch that the Knicks met the Boston Celtics. While the presentation of the match as the return of a long-dormant rivalry may have been overblown, it was impossible to overhype the actual game. Stoudemire was a beast, going off for 39 and 10 on one of the best frontcourt defenders ever. Felton flanked him with 26 and 14. Gallinari threw in 20, Chandler 18 and 12. But though New York were ahead most of the game, the mighty Celtics would not relent. Rajon Rondo controlled every aspect of the half court offense with 14 assists of his own, Ray Allen did his Ray-Allen-doesn’t-miss-shots routine, and above all, there was Paul Pierce.
With the game tied at 116, the ball naturally in Pierce’s hands, the same hands that had already scored 30 points in the match, Kevin Garnett came to set a screen. Pierce saw that the Knicks decided to switch, took Amar’e into the hoop. Amar’e lost balance just long enough to enable Pierce’s trademark step back, and the wide open jumper went in. Down went the Knicks’ winning streak. Down went Nate Robinson.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIoi31IqcII]
As if to tease, within the 0.4 seconds that remained, Amar’e made a three pointer to win the game, but replays clearly showed he released the ball after time expired. But while the Knicks lost the match, they won the PR war. The Garden rocked so hard that night, and the Knicks played so well against such stiff competition, that nothing else was needed. The team of miscreants somehow connected with the city, with the fans, with the media, and with everybody else at home.
The Boston game ended the concept of large Knicks win streaks for good – they would no longer win more than 3 straight games before this core would eventually be broken up – and as January crept by, slowly but surely, the main cast of the New York resurgence started regressing to the mean. Stoudemire and Felton collapsed under the heavy minutes they were playing, their shooting percentages plummeting seemingly by the game, respective MVP and all-star talk going down the drain. Chandler’s extraterrestrial field goal percentage at the rim went back down to human-range numbers, as did his improved 3 point stroke. Ronny Turiaf’s bouncy brand of energy continued to be hilarious, but inadequate as a full-time center.
But even as the steady stream of wins stopped flowing and the Knicks were relegated to keeping their heads 2-3 games above .500, the team never lost its charm. Be it the random yet all-encompassing power of Toney Douglas going for 30in a November win against Chicago, or the shame in handing an overtime loss to Cleveland in December, the Knicks were fast, they were explosive, and they were naïve in allowing almost every opponent to match those very qualities. The defensive ineptitude was too strong a hindrance to allow true dominance, and true dominance wasn’t available on the roster anyway. But the attempted reincarnation of those D’Antoni Suns team with a team so inherently flawed created a rare vibe, one that was strong enough to resonate despite the best efforts of the sickening overhyping from every corner and the hoards of bandwagon Knick fans who described themselves as lifers but couldn’t recognize Jamal Crawford on the street.
Melo and Out
While the Knicks were more or less losing one game for every win in delightful fashion, the franchise was involved in a very different kind of match: one behind the scenes, against the Denver Nuggets and New Jersey Nets, for Carmelo Anthony. New York had already long before won Melo’s heart and signature, now they just needed a third side to play ball with. As the weeks drew on and the team’s bottom line win total failed match the sheer fun that was watching the team play basketball, upper management became more and more impatient. Eventually, the methodical, calculated hand of general manager Donnie Walsh couldn’t match the rash impulse of owner James Dolan. Melo had finally arrived, but at very grave a cost.
Three of New York’s most important players – Felton, Gallinari, and Chandler – together with the lovably useless Mozgov were sent to Denver, who packaged veteran point guard Chauncey Billups together with the high scoring Anthony. More minor parts were swerved around, but aside for admitting their own mistake with Randolph (who was now Minnesota bound), they were inconsequential to the Knicks from start to finish. As Melo took to the MSG parquet as a home player for the first time, the speakers loudly proclaiming “I’m coming homeâ€, a new era for the Knicks had begun, sealing forever the fate of the team that tantalized fans for almost 4 months without actually being much above average.
Only time will tell if New York made the right move. Maybe Chris Paul or Deron Williams will join in 2012, as promised. Maybe Melo and Amar’e will learn to co-exist, and to play defense. After all, if you get the best player in the trade, you do the trade – and Melo is far better than Felton, Gallinari and Chandler, no matter how you twist the picture. But even though the Knicks might be better off, we were robbed. Because this was a team that should have grown together, should have learned actual basketball while under the same roof, and shouldn’t have dissipated behind the caprices of this owner or that superstar. This was a team that brought back basketball to New York City. The city kindly said thank you, and asked for more.
Perhaps its for the best. I doubt that having Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire on the same team will create disappointment entertainment-wise, and though the Felton-Chandler-Gallo-Amar’e core only existed for 54 games, it may have already ran its course after that 14 week run in December. We can never truly know in sports. Sometimes there is a future, sometimes its best to bail out early, conserving the memories. After all, regardless of how far the new-new-Knicks go, those will always remain.
