TRIANGLE!

Written by Nicholas McGowan

The Knicks headed into last night’s game against the Jazz with a 2-7 record, came out of the game with a 2-8 record. While it looked as though we would have chance to win the game with Melo’s tying bank in three 3 with 3 seconds left, it was just not to be as Trey Burke sealed the deal for the Jazz on a 19 foot baseline jumper over J.R. Smith. Now of course this record is not what we as fans envisioned but there is nothing we can do about it. We started off with a blowout loss to Chicago yet were somehow able to bounce back and beat the Cavs in LeBron’s homecoming. After that, after our hopes for the season skyrocketed, some of us had this feeling that maybe this season might turn out better than we thought, that maybe we will finish with a somewhat high seed in the eastern conference. At least that’s what I though, yet I was dead wrong as the Knicks went 1-6 over our next 7 games dashing all hopes. The playoffs look ever bleaker due to the fact that we suffered back to losses to Hawks, and also had losses to Pistons, Nets, and Magic. (All of those teams besides the Pistons could be competing for a playoff spot.)

Now the triangle so far has looked as expected, there are times when the Knicks have faded back into isolation basketball yet there are times when the triangle allows for open uncontested jumpers and layups. One problem that has still plagued the Knicks is the lack of the ability to make smart basketball decisions. Such as J.R. Smith and that final shot he took against the Magic, or the fact that with 4 minutes left in the third quarter J.R. had to take a seat on the bench because he had 4 fouls last night. On a night where Amar’e is out, and where Shumpert gets injured 58 seconds into the game, J.R. has to realize that he becomes the second scoring option; he cannot be taking bad fouls. The amount of 24 second shot clock violations also appear to be very high, I do not have an exact stat but its bad when the game is on the line and you appear to commit a 24 second violation. Now we were saved by replay, but the Knicks have to understand the situation better.
Continue reading →