Davis will apparently undergo surgery later this week and will be out of action for approximately 12 months.

Chandler received 311 points, including 45 first-place votes, from a panel of 121 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada. Oklahoma City’s Serge Ibaka finished second with 294 points and Orlando’s Dwight Howard, who had won the award each of the previous three seasons, finished third with 186 points. Players were awarded five points for each first-place vote, three points for each second-place vote and one point for each third-place vote received.

With Chandler anchoring the middle, New York’s defense improved markedly from the previous season in multiple categories. The Knicks ranked among the top half of the league in several key defensive categories, including opponent turnovers per game (17.0, 2nd), opponent field goal percentage (.442, 10th), and opponent scoring (94.7 ppg, 11th). Opposing teams averaged 22.5 more points and shot .520 from the field when Chandler was not in the lineup. Opponents shot .438 with Chandler in the lineup. In addition, Chandler grabbed 22.1 percent of his team’s defensive rebounds when he was on the floor.

If every team has an off night, the Knicks picked a heck of a time to go limp.

Carmelo Anthony was ice cold throughout the affair and Amare Stoudemire came out playing physical but got into foul trouble early. Tyson Chandler was far from the defensive titan than he normally is.

The victory was so overwhelming that the Heat often found themselves close to 40 point lead.

LeBron James had an eventful day with  32 points, four rebounds and three assists.

Be sure to check out other great articles at Players View.

Was the Cliff Claven-lookalike coach to blame for the Knicks recent slump? Is D’Antoni’s departure another example of player/agent power at work in the NBA? Did shadowy figures at MSG leak the ‘Melo: I’m out’ trade demand to grease the wheels of the coach’s exit?

It’s possible all three of the above scenarios are true. It’s also true that none of them really matter. Working out who is most to blame will not change the facts.

D’Antoni’s resignation was his admission that the Knicks roster, as a collective, did not buy in to his basketball philosophy.

The dawn of Linsanity had provided D’Antoni with the perfect alibi. His system relies on a point guard calling all the shots. In Jeremy Lin, suddenly, the Knicks had a point guard able to run the pick-and-roll. They had the oil to make D’Antoni’s offensive engine run.

Lin was outstanding against the league’s mediocre teams but his shortcomings were brutally highlighted against the elite squads of the NBA, Miami in particular. And all that is fine: Lin is effectively a rookie. He’s an intelligent player with good floor vision who will improve as he plays more games.

Lin is a great story and he’ll play in the league for some time. But he’s not a superstar. Should he have been taking more shots than alpha dogs Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire? The laws of the New York playground say ‘of course not’. The principles of D’Antoni’s offence scream ‘yes, yes, yes’.

Should Melo have tried harder to adapt his game to D’Antoni’s offensive principles? Yes, he should. And playing for Team USA in the 2008 Olympics he proved that he could. But it’s one thing deferring to Kobe Bryant and another to defer to a 23-year-old who was playing in the D-League at Christmas.

Should D’Antoni have crafted a system that could better exploit Melo’s talents? Yes, he should. But that was never, ever going to happen.

D’Antoni’s stubborn streak is well known. He walked away from the Phoenix Suns when then-GM Steve Kerr (a man with five championship rings to D’Antoni’s none) had the temerity to suggest the run-and-gun Suns should play some defence.

D’Antoni believes there is one way to play basketball and, therefore, the only players he wants are those that fit his philosophy. He used the emergence of Lin to justify his own principles at the expense of his best players.

Why else, in a season where games come so thick and fast, was Lin re-inserted to games that were complete lost causes other than to pad his stats and therefore back-up D’Antoni’s assertion that a point guard-orientated offence was the only way to go?

Forget about blaming Melo and (on this one occasion) James Dolan. Stop harking back to the pre-Melo Knicks that were so much more attuned to D’Antoni’s philosophy (that team would have been a six, seven or eight seed and been bounced in the first round of the 2011 playoffs too).

Take a deep breath and consider the following questions.

Had D’Antoni stayed, would the team suddenly have started playing consistent defence? I think that’s a ‘no’. And Lin is just as culpable in the playing of poor defence as Melo and Amare.

Was D’Antoni’s system ever going to bring a championship to New York? Also a ‘no’. He had far superior players in Phoenix and the Suns never reached the promised land.

Does small ball, quick shots and no defence add up to a championship. History says a definitive ‘no’.

And D’Antoni’s mile-wide stubborn streak meant his philosophy was never going to change. Which, as Stephen A Smith has noted, meant $168m of talent would have continued taking a back seat to the emerging and still-learning (thanks, Clyde) Lin.

What happens now under Mike Woodson’s stewardship? Less jacked-up threes and more commitment of the defensive end, I hope.

Run the offence through Amare and Melo (as they expect) and let them justify their hefty contracts. Slow the pace so Tyson Chandler doesn’t have to do three other players’ jobs on defence. Let Lin develop at his own pace away from the glare of hype and superstardom – and make him accountable for his turnovers and weak ‘D’.

But I have some reservations. Under Woodson, I viewed the Atlanta Hawks as unwatchable; a stagnant team obsessed with isolation plays. But ultimately, I’m a one-eyed fan, so what do I know? If this is the way it goes, at least Melo will be happy. And the team will live or die on the performance of its stars, which was always supposed to be the point.

The Knicks were fortunate that Woodson’s first game in charge came against Portland, one of the few teams in the league as dysfunctional as them. The blowout win, aside from purging a few frustrations, doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.

The Knicks have six weeks to sort things out. It’s ludicrous to think that a team with Melo, Amare and Chandler that goes 10-men deep should be in danger of missing the playoffs.

Under D’Antoni, that humiliation was becoming more and more of a reality. The coach’s failure to even attempt to adapt his system and philosophy to the skills of his best players ultimately made his position untenable.

But that is just one part of the soap opera. Whether you side with D’Antoni or Melo doesn’t matter now.

Whether you curse James Dolan for ‘selling for farm’ for Melo and destroying the fine work Donnie Walsh had done in restoring respectability at MSG doesn’t matter either. Whether you think Phil Jackson is mad enough to come to New York is a moot point too.

I’m too disillusioned with the Knicks dysfunction to bother playing the blame game or speculate on hypothetical fixes. Right or wrong, D’Antoni is gone and this is what is left. If you love the team, you support the team, no matter what.

As superstar players, it’s on Melo and Amare to make things right.

“After speaking with Mike this morning, we mutually agreed that it would be best for the organization if he did not continue in his role as coach of the Knicks,” said Jim Dolan, executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Company. “Mike is a class act and true professional and we have appreciated his honesty, commitment and years of service to the organization.”

Over the past four seasons, D’Antoni, who had been hired on May 13, 2008, compiled a 121-167 (.420) record at the helm, including leading the team to the NBA Playoffs last season.

“We thank Mike for the hard work he and his staff had put towards making New York a destination for great players in our league as we went through our rebuilding process,” Grunwald said. “But now is the time to look forward to the remaining 24 games of the season. We have a lot of faith in Mike Woodson, who will focus all of his efforts to get this team back into the playoffs and make our final push.”

In six seasons as the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, Woodson compiled a 206-286 (.419) record, that included three consecutive playoff appearances ending an eight-year drought. He was named a Knicks assistant coach on Aug. 29, 2011.

Be sure to check out other great articles at AmericanizeSoccer.com.

Sometimes a team finds that missing link piece and goes next-level on us. And the Minnesota Timberwolves have found theirs in one Nikola Pekovic, the perfect complement to Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love.

Circa 2010:

“This (signing Nikola Pekovic 3-years/$13 mil) was my favorite Wolves move of the past year. They took Pekovic with the first pick of the second round in 2008 — one of the few things McHale did right in recent drafts — and locked him up as soon as his contract expired overseas. Pekovic is a paint-area beast who somewhat overlaps with Love as a productive scorer around the basket and who will have some defensive limitations; nonetheless, this was too great a value to pass up. If the Wolves can get over their Milicic fantasies, Pekovic could end up starting…”

-John Hollinger

C’mon, I wanna show you show you something.

What we see is the 290-pound 6’11″ Pek has some really nice bulk he couples with  smarts, soft hands, and stellar feet to take advantage of an array of offensive maneuvers he punishes defenses with. This is no “soft Euro.”

Derek James of 612Sports notes that “Pekovic has become that player that we were told he would be. Not only has he thrived under Rick Adelman and next to Ricky Rubio, but he has managed to move Darko to his natural position: the bench. As a result, the Wolves are finally capable of running a legitimate pick n’ roll – er, “Pek n’ Roll”. Aside from not having the point guards in the past, running an offense through Darko didn’t work because it was too inefficient and running any offense that relied on Anthony Randolph setting a pick usually ended in disaster. Pekovic solves both of these problems.”

For more on what caught scouts’ eyes when it came to bringing Pek stateside I recommend this excellent (now retrospective) look inside his game from Sebastian Pruiti.

As the scouting reports on him circulate he may become less effective as a primary offensive option, even with his ample bag of tricks, but with Kevin Love keeping defenses honest from the perimeter and Rubio penetrating and using his otherworldly court vision, the game will remain open for Pevovic to do damage to opposition nearly as often as he cares to exploit ‘em.

Heads up: This is a clear candidate for Most Improved Player now that he’s been released from Kurt Rambis’ Phantom Zone with the nice balance of weapons available to new head coach Rick Adelman.

Utah Jazz set to make a move?

A week or so ago I went on WERW Syracuse, New York radio to talk Utah Jazz on Tucker Warner‘s show The Sidelines. One of the questions was “Do you think the Jazz will make a move before the trade deadline?”

Y’know how most fans can burn hours on the trade machine, even when things are going better than expected, but especially after a couple losses? Well, that’s never been me. Most years I’m pretty content to be patient with the core and see where they go. However, this Jazz team is simply dreadful from range. I mean, really bad. Like dead last bad. Like throwing a paper airplane into Raja Bell’s locker from the upper deck bad.

Bell is the Jazz’s best 3-threat, and he’s only the 62nd-best player in the NBA there, among qualified players, at .365. With no perimeter threat, neutralizing Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap has been a breeze for opposing teams. They simply pack the paint and dare Utah to beat ‘em from range, which of course they can’t. I warned that this could happen a few weeks back, when the Jazz acquired a large trade exception for moving Mehmet Okur to the New Jersey Nets, noting that it’s not even as important that you make the shot as to simply have the threat to open up the offense.

The Jazz typically carry only 13 players on the roster (15 is the limit), but just signed recently waived 6’8″ tweener DeMarre Carroll — not a perimeter threat, before you wonder — pushing it to 14. It’s very much in the realm of possibility that this is in preparation for a maneuver to bring in a shooter to reopen the O. Jefferson and Millsap see double, and even triple-teams regularly now, and despite efforts by head coach Ty Corbin to switch it up between Jefferson and Millsap, opposing teams have keyed in on ‘em, with Millsap particularly struggling of late as a primary offensive option with attention fully on him.

In fact, any other reasoning makes little sense. Why pay to bring in a 41% field goal guy that will rarely see the light of day otherwise?

It won’t be popular, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Paul Millsap, a player whose value may never be higher, and CJ Miles, an attractive little expiring contract, get tickets to ride for a sharp shooter. We’ve heard murmurs from Boston that Ainge is willing to break up the Big 3, and they need more than a poor man’s Millsap in Brandon Bass backing up an aged Kevin Garnett, while that would free up minutes to start budding phenom Derrick Favors in Salt Lake City.

And it wouldn’t be the first time the Jazz brought in a player who’s historically torched ‘em. Hell, they do it all the time, actually. It’s like a rule, or a tradition or something.

Hello, New York. Welcome to Linsanity

The Madison Square Garden faithful clung to this belief more in hope than in expectation until two nights of Linsanity breathed genuine life into the world’s most famous arena for the first time in this truncated season.

When Jeremy Lin came off the bench against the Nets to make a game-winning 25-point contribution, the Garden crowd erupted for a career performance most thought would be an aberration.

But three nights later, making his first NBA start, Lin did it again with a 28-point, eight assist performance that prompted “MVP” chants as a severely depleted Knicks line-up put the Utah Jazz to the sword.

It turns out Mike D’Antoni was right after all. All he needed was a competent point guard, a facilitator, a provider for his much-vaunted offence to regain its flow. But it was the athletic, intelligent and daring Lin, not Davis, who made the Knicks look like a basketball team again.

Pick and roll

There’s a little Steve Nash in Jeremy Lin, particularly the mazy dribbles into the lane and the ludicrous but effective scoop shots. In terms of shooting, court vision and passing, Lin isn’t in the same league of course. But he’s quick and plays better defence than everyone’s favourite Canadian.

But the crucial thing is this: Lin is the only active member of this Knicks roster able to execute a competent pick and roll. And execute it he did. And lo and behold, the D’Antoni offence – where everything starts with the pick and roll – started to click.

Even better, with Lin attacking the hoop and the Jazz defence collapsing, kick out passes found open shooters. Shooters set to take proper three-point shots, the absolute antithesis of Melo jacking it up from downtown while his teammates stand around watching.

Suddenly, even the depths of the Knicks bench started to make sense. Who else would you prefer to have waiting in the corner to drain an open three than dead-eyed long range marksman Steve Novak? OK, Ray Allen would be better but you get the point.

Team ball beats superstar ball

What do we make of the fact that the Knicks best performance of the season came with Amare Stoudemire absent and Carmelo Anthony limping off the court after five minutes of the game?

First up, no one in their right mind could seriously suggest the Knicks are better without their two biggest stars. But what the Jazz performance does do is challenge both players. If Lin, Tyson Chandler, Novak, Fields, Iman Shumpert and Billy Walker can make this offence work, why would you not buy into it?

In fairness to Amare, you’d guess he’d been crying out for the emergence of a point guard to get his game back on track. But for Melo, the Lin-powered defeat of the Jazz is far more important. It screams at him: “Look how much better we are when the ball actually moves, teamball beats heroball, join us”.

Seriously, how refreshing was it to watch a Knicks game where the words ‘stagnant’ and ‘futile’ weren’t used by Clyde and Mike Breen?

Jared Jeffries

If you’ve read my musings on the Knicks before, you’ll know I am something of a Jeffries apologist. At times, his limitations are so obvious that he makes you feel genuine pity.

But he always plays with heart. He somehow ignores 15,000 people groaning ‘Oh no’ when he raises up for a jump shot. He’s never slow to put his body on the line. He’s the garbageman’s garbageman. For my sins, I can’t help but like the guy.

The key to liking Jeffries is accepting his limitations. He already has, so why can’t you? Once you’ve managed to do that, it becomes easier to like him. Against the Jazz, he not only hustled, played defence and took five – count ‘em – charges, he made some jumpers and hooked up on some nice plays with Fields.

But above all, on a night where two all stars were missing and Chandler was glued to the bench with foul trouble, he provided genuine leadership. The sight of JJ leading a huddle with the inexperienced Lin, Fields, Shump and Novak was funny at first until you realised he was helping to galvanise this team.

Jeffries performance was nothing short of heroic against the Jazz – playing through injury and taking responsibility for the hard yards that helped the Knicks claim the win. He fully deserved every high five he got from the New York Giants players at courtside.

All Lin the game

Despite Jeffries understated heroics and, when he eventually was able to stay off the bench for more than a couple of minutes, Chandler’s defensive plays that helped secure the win in the fourth quarter, there’s no doubt the real story is the emergence of Lin.
Can it continue? Until Davis is healthy enough to play, there’s no reason why not. Lin’s game is perfectly suited to the offence D’Antoni wants the Knicks to run. For reasons only Knicks personnel managers will know, there are no other healthy guards able to run pick and roll. So Lin’s mistakes and turnovers will be tolerated.

As Chandler noted after the win, Lin’s presence on court puts everyone else in their correct positions. With Lin on the court, none of the other players are being asked to do things they aren’t accustomed to doing.

Best of all, Lin’s two performances have made the Garden the raucous, amplified and intimidating arena that it’s supposed to be. The toxic environment, created by the turgid offensive displays that were becoming depressingly standard, is gone.

In Jeremy Lin, Mike D’Antoni may just have found the oil the makes the engine run.

And Mike D’Antoni, once the NBA’s anointed modern-day Guru of Go thanks to the Steve Nash-powered ‘Seven Seconds or Less’ product he oversaw in Phoenix, is left to reflect on what must be some of the most turgid, stagnant displays of offence for which he has ever been responsible.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Knicks fans haven’t seen 30+ three-pointers jacked up before. That’s been a staple of the Knicks offence since D’Antoni took charge.

The difference now is that the ball has stopped moving.

The Knicks rank 25th in the league in assists per game with a meagre 18.33.

D’Antoni, whose stubborn streak and resistance to change are well known, must be dying inside as he witnesses game after game of his players standing around witnessing Carmelo Anthony’s brand of hero-ball (admittedly the main reason the Knicks have eked out the majority of their six wins to date) and Toney Douglas jacking three ball after ill-advised three ball.

The fact that the Knicks have struggled isn’t surprising. D’Antoni’s offence requires a point guard – and the Knicks don’t have one. Douglas, the at-times impressive Iman Shumpert and the corpse of Mike Bibby have platooned at the point to date. Melo has run the offence at times.

None of them are able consistently move the ball and feed Amare Stoudemire and, less frequently, Tyson Chandler in the style to which they are accustomed. STAT has failed to make an impact in many games, his shooting percentage is in the gutter and he looks utterly bereft of belief and confidence.

The addition of Chandler and his imposing presence at the rim has contributed to the Knicks giving up 12 fewer points per game than last season. Unfortunately, loading the frontcourt (and amnestying floor general Chauncey Billups to do so) means the Knicks now score 12 fewer points per game too.

So the net gain is nothing. And watching the offence is now frequently as much fun as repeatedly hitting yourself in the face with a brick.

You’ve got to love the Knicks front office. Historical personnel decisions caused salary cap hell that meant D’Antoni, in terms of talent, worked with scraps for his first two seasons in charge. Now the roster has been overhauled, he’s left with better players completely unsuitable for the offence he wants to run.

A lot of the time the offence looks eerily similar to the unwatchable one-on-one ball perpetrated by new Knicks defensive coach Mike Woodson when he was head coach in Atlanta. This style will let you beat the league’s bad teams and tired squads at the end of back-to-back-to-backs. It will fail miserably against the +500 teams, especially on the road.

The departure of Billups to make room for Chandler has also left a gargantuan void in terms of leadership. With no veteran vocal presence on the floor, it seems the Knicks are ultra-aware of when they are beaten.

They threw the towel in halfway through the second quarter in Oklahoma last night. They arguably gave up even earlier in Memphis last Thursday on national TV.

All of the above places enormous pressure on Baron Davis when he is finally healthy to play. If the inspired Golden State-era B Diddy shows up, he’ll be the antidote to many of the Knicks’ ills. But, given Baron’s history of up-and-down effort, it’s far from a guarantee.
Unless and in-shape and inspired Davis shows up the end of the month, this short season is going to feel like a very long one.