What We Know:
The Knicks can win basketball games. Staring off the season with a 3-8 record and a 6 game losing streak including losses to Philly, Golden State, and Minnesota might have been the best thing that happened to this team. With the exception of the 2003-04 season (when he was a sophomore) Amar’e Stoudemire has never been on a team with a loosing record, and he brought that swagger to New York, a city whose basketball team desperately needed some swag. Amar’e exerted his leadership potential and along with Derrick Rose has become a favorite for MVP. He proved that he was not simply a product of Steve Nash. The Kicks are now
a team with warriors. STAT, Felton, and Turiaf are guys who go to war every night. The play hard and expect to win every night. Gallo, Douglas, Fields, and Chandler are all under 24 years old and given the right environment can keep growing. The Thunder have formed a core of young talent that are growing together as a team. The Knicks don’t have the raw talent of the Thunder, but if they aren’t broken up they could become the East Coast Diet Thunder. They are more or less a lock for the 6th playoff spot in the Eastern Conference and with the shellacking they gave the best-record-having Spurs, they showed they are going to be a hard out for any team in June.
What We Think:
The Knicks might be better off not trading for Carmelo. Donnie Walsh has made a few missteps (whiffing on Brandon Jennings, giving up to much for T-Mac) but on the whole he has been a really terrific GM. He has stated multiple times that he isn’t going to gut the team for Melo, which seems to be the right move. The Knicks have no trouble scoring the ball, which is basically the only thing Melo can do. With an Amar’e-Melo frontcourt the Knicks are going to
have trouble stopping penetration for even the most rudimentary slash-and-kick guards. Defense wins championships and when your two best players are defensive sieves your team isn’t going very deep in the playoffs. Landry Fields and Wilson Chandler, the two players most likely to be shipped out in any Melo deal, are exactly the kinds of role players needed to win championships. This summer Kendrick Perkins, Marc Gasol, Tyson Chandler, Greg Oden, Joel Przybilla, and Samuel Dalembert are all going to be restricted or unrestricted free agents and any one of them would make a nice defensive frontcourt complement to Amar’e. Blowing all of the Knicks depth recruiting Melo when we can wait and build a team that makes championship sense isn’t smart. Which Core Would you rather have in the long run: A STAT, Melo, Gallo scoring trifecta or a STAT, Fields, Gallo, Gasol, CP3 staring 5?
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