I root not to lose at this point. After seeing every promising team at best flame out and at worst crash and burn, I lose optimism at the first sign of trouble, and hope that when my teams do fail, they have the courtesy to do so when a liquor store is still open. So, when my predictions are wrong (especially midseason predictions) it usually means I'm happy. Really, my last prediction was more of a foregone conclusion: the Knicks season was going to go in the tank with the starting lineup of Tyson Chandler, JV-level jump shooter Jared Jeffries, Billy Walker's gross looking dreads, 2012 Landry Fields, and Jeremy Lin.
Well, Jeffries has apparently channeled the dark arts in order to start knocking down shots, Bill Walker has been replaced by ridiculous sharp shooter Steve Novak, Landry Fields has turned the clock back...a year, and Jeremy Lin may very well be the adopted child of John Stockton and Steve Nash. I'm an idiot, and the world is wonderful. So since giving up on my teams hasn't worked out well, I'll take a page out of the Costanza playbook. This Knicks team is finally ready to fulfill its preseason promise. A rejuvenated Amar'e is going to average 20-25 the rest of the way, Carmelo will pull a full Clark Kent, take off the hipster glasses, and go back to being one of the best clutch shooters in the NBA, and Jeremy Lin will be the master key to this offense. The Knicks will not only make the playoffs, but will win at least their first round series and maybe more. Just a few minor changes...
There needs to be more time standing up than sitting down for Novak
At the beginning of this year, I said that the best benches are those that compliment the coach's philosophy. Well, if this is going to be a textbook D'Antoni offense the rest of the way, Steve Novak fits as the type of sharpshooter that can keep defenses from clogging the lane, or at least give them pause before they do it. He is a career 42% 3 point shooter, so although he's knocking them down at a coin flip rate right now, the regression to the mean won't be too drastic. The Knicks have one of the better inside tandems in the league with Chandler and the soon to be revived Stoudemire, and a player that usually demands a double team in Carmelo Anthony. The strategy against the Knicks should be to pack the paint and make inside buckets difficult to come by. The fact that Novak will knock down open shots in his sleep, and his off the radar range (he nailed one from nearly halfcourt against Minnesota) will make teams think twice about collapsing into the paint or doubling Carmelo.
Split up Amare and Carmelo
At this point, it's relatively obvious that Amar'e and Carmelo don't fit very well together on a basketball court. The best way to deal with this (without having to trade one of them) is using them on different units as much as possible. Carmelo showed last year that he can not only function, but thrive on a team full of scrubs against Boston in Game 2. He doesn't need a point guard or a complimentary scorer, and sometimes he he's at his best without either of the two. Let him wreak havoc on the second unit with Shumpert, Walker, Jeffries, and Chandler. With Lin's effective grasp of the P&R, Tuesday should be the beginning of a return to all-star form for STAT. Those two along with Novak, Fields, and possibly Walker once Baron Davis returns should form an undersized team, but one capable of putting the ball in the basket in a number of different ways. D'Antoni needs to take a cue from Michael Mann: just because you have two stars doesn't mean you need to push them together all the time, as long as the work as a whole speaks for itself.
The next few games are only in need of frosting (at Toronto, vs. Sacramento, vs. New Orleans), and with only three tough games left until the All Star Break, the Knicks should be looking down at .500 by the halfway point this season. Just for once, let me be right.
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