Can the Knicks Win without Lin

Posted By Dan Dragicevich.

The Knicks are inching closer to the playoffs but they will have to continue to do it without Lin.

The Knicks are inching closer to the playoffs but they will have to continue to do it without Lin. The New York Knicks have looked like a team that has been on a mission to end the season the right way, by making the postseason. Carmelo Anthony has stepped up big lately which is a good sign since his normal all-star stats have been missed dearly these past couple weeks. It seems as if Anthony is starting to take things a bit more personally and he is really picking his game up. In the Knicks last game against the Bulls, Anthony had 43 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block including the game tying shot at the end of regulation and then the game winning 3 pointer at the end of overtime.

Besides Anthony’s stellar play of late, the biggest headline that might be coming out of New York is still centered around Jeremy Lin. The one who is responsible for bringing Linsanity to the world has been sidelined for the past few games because of a knee injury. He even went as far as to say that he will not be able to able to participate in the first round of the playoffs if the Knicks happen to qualify for it. Is this a crushing blow for the Knicks now that their point guard is out? Or does it just mean that someone else will have to step in once again for this Knicks team?

Jeremy Lin is no doubt the savior of the New York Knicks this season but is his absence really a big deal for the Knicks? Since Lin’s massive eruption to the NBA, he is averaged below 15 points a game and his assist numbers have been reduced to a mere 5 a game. He is still their floor general on the floor but there is another young gun who has taken some of the pressure off of the starting point guard role. His name is Iman Shumpert and he has been producing numbers across the board.

Iman Shumpert is a rookie who has had limited minutes throughout the season where he has shown signs of emergence every now and again but has not stayed consistent. With the injury to Lin, Shumpert has been able to get quality minutes and has worked that to his advantage. He has gotten his numbers up around 10 points a game with 4 rebounds, 4 assists, and almost 3 steals a game. Now I know this may not seem like huge numbers, but the way he has worked his way back into the 8 man rotation has really provided a spark for this Knicks backcourt. As I said earlier, he is known to be inconsistent which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because for a back to back game stretch he erupted for 25 points.

The New York Knicks have found a solid two man rotation at the point guard spot but because of injuries there is a reason for Knicks fans to be weary. With the postseason approaching quickly and the Knicks only holding a half game lead for the 8th spot in the East, The Lin injury could be worse case scenario. If the Knicks hold onto their 8th spot in the East they will most likely be going up against the Chicago Bulls who have the league’s best point guard in Derrick Rose. Without a healthy Lin, the Knicks could find trouble slowing down Rose and the strong willed Bulls team. This means that Shumpert will have to take over and have to contain Rose to a reasonable amount of points. I have seen crazy things but you never know what can happen. That’s why they play the game, folks.

Network concedes to Linsanity

Posted by Jon Creem.

Jeremy Lin

If you don't live in the greater Manhattan area then you might not have known that even fans living in the Big Apple were not able to witness Harvard phenom, Jeremy Lin, inspire and ignite the Knicks to their winning ways. Time Warner, who provides the cable to the customers who watch games played on MSG, along with MSG themselves, have been in an ongoing dispute over carriage fees, or the amount of money MSG pays Time Warner to broadcast events.

Since Lin arose to the Knicks starting point guard, complaints from the New York faithful began to increase. As the outbreak of demand continued, pressure by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo drove talks from the companies to make a deal. MSG chairman, James Dolan, and Time Warner Cable chairmen, Glenn Britt, then met Monday, February 13th to finally end the dispute.

What's even more compelling is that even with the Rangers, being in first place and hockey fans fuming, it took Lin's rising celebrity status to get a deal to work. Unfortunately, no financial agreement has been made public, but according to the NY Post, after a deal was made and MSG was back on the air, the network posted a rating of 4.66 and drew 344,272 viewers. The rating was the highest since Carmelo Anthony's Knicks debut.

If your a Knicks (or Rangers) fan, add this to the thank you list for the front office to consider for next year, as contract talks will most certainly heat up as Lin continues to put the team on his back.

Knicks making moves

Posted by Dan Dragicevich.

The New York Knicks have been in the news for the last few weeks because of Jeremy Lin’s play. Can another Knick story actually take away from Linsanity?

Everyone by now has officially heard of Jeremy Lin and what he has done to the sports world. He has literally saved his career by performing at a record pace in just a few short games. The fact that Jeremy Lin is such an underdog story is something that everyone can relate to and because he is such a genuine guy, everyone loves to root for him. Jeremy Lin has put Knicks basketball back in the headlines and they are thankful for that, but has the Knicks front office now made a splash of their own?

Yes it is true; the Knicks are back atop the headlines not because of Lin, but because of a free agent signing that they recently made. The Knicks’ front office picked up J.R. Smith from overseas who was playing in China. Smith, who before leaving to go play in China, was a part of the Denver Nuggets organization. He and fellow teammate Wilson Chandler left the NBA because they were afraid of the NBA going into a lockout and were offered a high salary by the Chinese league.

J.R. Smith

This is a big signing for the Knicks because not only do they have the emergence of Lin, a true point guard by definition, but they also have some depth at the shooting guard position now. This will now give the Knicks more options for scoring and will also relieve some pressure from Carmelo Anthony who has struggled at times shooting the ball this season.

While J.R. Smith was a part of the Nuggets, most would say he was an above average player. He has great range, he is a high flyer who can swing the momentum of games, and he has a decent handle on the ball. For his career, Smith averaged 12.5 points a game, 2.8 rebounds a game, 2.0 assists a game, .9 steals a game and shot at an average of .428 from the field. Based on those numbers Smith had a pretty nice NBA career. A few knocks people would say about Smith is that while he can be a tremendous scorer, he can also be very inconsistent. Smith is a very streaky player and when he is hot he can be one of the best scorers in the league but when he is shooting poorly, he is almost invisible out there. The Knicks are obviously willing to take that with a grain of salt and realize that if they want to compete in the postseason with the likes of Chicago and Miami then they need to have all the scoring power they can. The Knicks aren’t worried too much about the other things Smith can do because they are bringing him in for one reason and one reason only, to put the ball in the hoop. They are also hoping that Smith has a bit of confidence in his play coming out of China because while he was there he managed to average an astounding 32.5 points per game. Of course the level of play overseas has diminished, but that’s still very impressive and hopefully can turn into positive play.

The Knicks are doing everything they can to make themselves contenders and the races are heating up. The next few months should be very interesting, starting with all-star weekend.

Mayweather tweets on Linsanity

Posted by Dan Dragicevich.

Floyd Mayweather chimes in on Jeremy Lin and his renewed success with the New York Knicks.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. tweeted yesterday that he believes the majority of the reason why Jeremy Lin is getting publicity is because he is Asian. His exact tweet was “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black palayers do what he does every night and don't get the same praise.” The argument that was being discussed on ESPN’s First Take was whether or not Mayweather’s tweet was fair or foul. After hearing the conversation, the consensus was that Mayweather’s tweet was mostly foul but it did have a bit of truth to it.

First of all, the tweet was a bit out of line because the media doesn’t want to hone in on a story just because of race as that is not morally right and the media doesn’t want to get any negative publicity about the stories they are covering. Also, the analyst’s on First Take discussed how race has nothing to do with it because even though he is an Asian player and they don’t get much publicity, there are so many more story lines that are capturing the eyes of the world.

Lin, who is the first American-born player of Taiwanese or Chinese descent to play in the NBA has broken many records in his first 6 official starts. Dating back to when the NBA merged with the ABA back in the 1976 season, Lin has become the record holder of total points scored in a players first four starts with 109 points. This wasn’t even done by some of the all-time greats including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaq. Another record Lin broke was that he is the first player to score more than 20 points and have more than 7 assists in each of his first four starts.

Much more than the statistics Lin has been posting, the real story here is the fact that this kid was cut by two different teams at one time and was about a week away from being cut again by the New York Knicks. He has bounced around the league a bit since he was picked up and has even been demoted to the D-league which is the NBA’s developmental league and another way of saying that you’re not good enough to play with the big boys. Lin proved that statistic wrong and is the sensation of America…. Or should I say LINsation.

Getting back to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s tweet about Lin’s race causing the majority of why he is being publicized is a conversation I would like to flip around. Let’s say hypothetically Lin was actually African-American, would he really be getting as much publicity? Of course we don’t want to think that the media is biased to a certain race and that is not what this is about. But the fact that the NBA has mostly African-American players in it makes other races a minority to the sport and the odds of having an Asian player with as interesting of a story as Lin has is about a million-to-one shot. But does that mean he should be getting more recognition than other players? I don’t think so because the truth of the matter is that if an African-American player was doing the same thing than yes he would be praised just as much as Lin has been. The fact that there are so few Asian players in the league makes it all the more interesting of a story and I think that is where the confusion lies.

What Mayweather tweeted about does have some truth behind it but the way he went about saying it and expressing himself did him no justice. This story isn’t about how the media doesn’t praise Black athletes for their hard work because we all know that they do; this story is just about how much of a fairytale ride Lin has had and if it will ever come to a stop. So even if Lin was African-American there is no doubt that he would be getting national recognition, it is the fact that he is Asian which makes it all the more interesting.