"Final Tape" | Knicks vs. Blazers (L, 90-105)

[spree#8]

After two games in which the Knicks looked as dead to everyone as the NYKFP did for Nazr last night -

Hey, where yall at? Don't tell me you guys are all too scared to watch. Idk whatll happen but right now the Knicks playing well. And Copeland aking Woodson look good and stupid at the same time for not getting any burn up until recently. At this point he should be our first SF off the bench. ...

- the Knicks showed some life. Until three minutes to go in the first half everything was OK. Actually more than OK. The Knicks started out with guns blazing we didn't know they had: When Marcus Camby converted on another pick-and-roll with Pablo Prigioni roughly four minutes into the second quarter he and Kenyon Martin had combined for 16 points leading the Knicks to a 41-28 advantage.

The next few minutes the Blazers tried to comeback, but until a Terry Stotts timeout with 3:43 left in the half, the Knicks found answers. The biggest until that point was this exclamation point by JR, which helped the team to hold on to a ten point lead:
[youtube]a7rDbKrSaxg[/youtube]

Even the fanpage came to life shortly, in part due to BigJs rescue effort:

You're posting in the Nuggets game thread, nazr............tonight's game is the Blazers

Then the nightmare trip, which began one game after Amare's newest injury announcement and saw our two All-Stars go down, continued in its usual way: over the next 15 minutes the Knicks got outscored by 26 points.

How did it happen? Instrumental in the Blazers comeback was J.J. Hickson. After all was said and done, he had grabbed six offensive rebounds, none more import than the two he pulled down during the neck breaking 13-0 Blazers run in the final three minutes of the first half. Those helped the Blazers to score on six consecutive possessions to bring their house on fire. Hickson with a hookshot after an offensive board (48:40), Matthews on a fast break after a turnover (48:42), Aldridge jump shot (48:44), Hickson with an and-one after an offensive rebound that would've made Rebisman Balkman proud (48:47), an Aldrigde layup (48:49) and a Lillard drive (48:51) later the game was turned by 180 degrees.

After half time, the Knicks hang in a little, but showed no effort so the Blazers kept slowly pulling away until they had a 16 point lead by the end of the third quarter. J.R. Smith made it a game again with 11 quick points at the start of the fourth to bring the Knicks within four, but two turnovers out of pick-and-rolls between Prigioni and Chris Copeland stopped the short Knicks rally and the game was lost as quick as the team had come back.


- Without Stoudemire, Anthony and Chandler the question was, who would step up? The expectation was J.R. Smith and J.R. backed his words after questioning the team's heart these days by not giving up.
- The forgotten bigmen: Kurt Thomas, Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby looked especially in the first half like players. Players who can contribute and should be in the rotation, especially until our injured guys come back this season. Together with J.R. those three combined for a 24-40 shooting night (.60).
- The ball movement at the start: at one point the Knicks had 11 assists and no turnovers on their way to a 36-26 lead. They spread the ball around - nine players contributed to that 41-28 lead a short time later - and were on pace for their best first half shooting-percentage wise, if not for those damn 3:43 without a single point before the half.
- Shumpert looked for a short period on defense like he looked in his rookie campaign.



- The rest of the Knicks shot a combined 12-42 (.29).
- No energy coming out in the second half.
- Another strange rotation by Woodson, going ten deep with four guys out and benching in White a starter of the last eight games. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with benching White which Woody should have done long ago. The problem lies somewhere else: We get close to the playoffs. Teams start to shorten their rotation and scratch for every win (Portland for example played only eight guys trying to stay in the playoff hunt in the more competitive West), while we still use every guy on the roster in search of combinations that might work as if we were still in training camp. We see line-ups of Felton-Kidd-Shumpert-Martin-Thomas during the deciding Blazers 13-0 run out there and ask ourselves "where should the scoring come from"? Or simply:

Where the hell is Cope?

- That being said: when it counted and Cope was on the court he was part of the deciding two turnovers due to Prigioni's bad decision making when the ball should've instead went into J.R.'s hot hands ...


The life sign was nice, but after that huge turnaround many questions remain the same: Anthony's and Chandler's health at the forefront, Shumpert's and Kidd's shooting, Woodson's line-up shuffles, ...

Conversations like this:

Novak's still useless

Maybe he'll hit a shot tonight.

At this point my biggest question is: does Woodson know his personnel? Will we at some point see a functioning eight or nine men rotation?

The answer to that might lie in a personnel move after the West Coast trip to give Woody one more player he trusts enough to play him 20plus minutes.

The brutal trip continues with another national televised game on Sunday against the Clippers at Staples Center (3:30 CET). Here is hope that at least Chandler will be ready then, though the odds to win seem nonetheless slim.

[thewatcher]

nice job Spree!

[StevoStarks]

Haha, yeah, love it Spree. Nice touch incorporating in game thread posts. I like the change in creative direction.

And spoiler alert, NoSack DID NOT hit a shot last night. He's 2-15 in his last 3 games. Worthless....

[nazrmohamed]

Lol, I guess Ill never live that down. Hey, it was a late game. It could happen to the best of us.

Anyway. I liked the lineup and the amount of people we used. The substitution patterns were still off but I liked the fact that we played big and used all three available big men instead of going early and often to our SFs to cover a big man spot. Of course teams shorten rotations and refrain from basically running a tryout, but in this case it really is a tryout. Camby never plays, Kurt goes from never playing to starting anytime Woodson wants to get cute. Copeland is getting time and in reality 3/9ths of that playoff rotation you speak of are injured. Woodson needs to see, and yes way to late, who can help us in the playoffs and who cant.

And I really hope this loss doesn't prove to him that we cant win playing big, i hope it only proves we cant play big without our big guns in the lineup. Hopefully we'll see more big lineups because while whats usually talked about is our ball movement without Melo, what I saw is that when we don't play Melo we put a big man in his place. That extra big man, especially the bruiser type, creates better rebounding as a team, enforces our interior better and helps create ball movement by setting more screens both on and off the ball. Many times Felton had two choices on the pick and roll and was more aggressive driving. And yeah it faded as the game went on but to me thats because we isoed JR too much. And off the ball guys flew around screens due to great separation.

This team needs to stay big. Its whats natural for a team with our talents. Always been. Perhaps not at the beginning with few healthy bigs but now more than ever. Then you add Melo right in where Copleland started the game with Copeland behind him and to me it isn't that hard to see us playing totally different than we ever had but in a lot of ways better than we ever have.

Whats Woodson scared of exactly. He wants defense, he wants toughness, and he wants basketball IQ. This small ball/ iso is just stupid.

[Minkaveli]

[quote="StevoStarks"]Haha, yeah, love it Spree. Nice touch incorporating in game thread posts. I like the change in creative direction.

And spoiler alert, NoSack DID NOT hit a shot last night. He's 2-15 in his last 3 games. Worthless....[/quote]

lol @ NoSack. That's a new one.

[big_j_NY]

LOL...........I applaud you for including me in your Final Tape review, spree. Well done

[spree#8]

Nazr, I hear you. I was on the big line-up bandwagon from the start.

What I meant with shorten the rotation even now is, that you shouldn't go down to your 15th man and expect wonders. There is just no sense in playing White 5 minutes at the beginning of halves and then not again. Or yesterday Cope for six or so in the first half and then not again until the start of the 2nd half. If you are not comfortable with playing guys - starters that is - 20 to 30 minutes, don't play them at all. Yesterday for example was no need for Novak because ...

Haha, yeah, love it Spree. Nice touch incorporating in game thread posts. I like the change in creative direction.

And spoiler alert, NoSack DID NOT hit a shot last night. He's 2-15 in his last 3 games. Worthless....

When you start Cope as one of three players available (Felton and Smith the others) who scores more than 15 points per 36 minutes, why don't you play him 30 minutes? I mean we had a minute distribution out there that if you go by per minute stats would on average score around 80 points given yesterdays minutes. Of course that is deflated because of the touches Anthony and STAT and Chandler normally get, still it is an indicator that people have to step up bigtime to get to 95-100 points. JR stepped up and Martin and Camby scored more points per minute than usual, everyone else did score exactly how you would expect or in case of Novak (going for zero) of course less. Kidd going 1-8 also didn't help...

So all I'm saying is: grow some balls and decide whom you want to play and then stick to it for that night. We could've easily played just eight or nine deep and probably gotten players in a better groove. Players need minutes to perform. You can't win in this league with minutes spread out to the end of your bench.

[spree#8]

Thanks everyone! Glad that you enjoyed the reading!

[StevoStarks]

Novak and Kidd were abysmal last night.

[cragganmor]

great read, spree! :thumbsup

i loved the point in the game, early in the 2nd, where we had kidd, thomas, camby and pablo; a 39, 40, 40 and 35 y.o player on the floor together and they were spanking the blazers.

[nbafreak724]

nazrmohamed talking to himself in the day-old game thread reminded me of a senile old man lol. Funny stuff