Welcome! Come one, come all, to the main event! It's season preview time, and Upside and Motor is ready to rock your world. The previews will be both concrete and lyrical in this magical world, both by numbers and by prose. To take a look at all the previews, click here.
Straight Up
Straight Up features all the stuff you actually want to see in your team previews: who are the new kids on the block, who skipped town, and where the team stands for the upcoming season. Along with my projection and standing for the upcoming season, it'll also feature three individual awards: Team MVP (let's not get into the debate over exactly what that means), the Most Important Reserve, and the Most Unheralded Asset.
Projected Record: 26-56 (5th in the Atlantic Division, 15th in the Eastern Conference)
Off-season Acquisitions: Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Ewing Jr., Chris Duhon, Anthony Roberson, Allan Houston, Dan Grunfeld
Notable Losses: Renaldo Balkman, Randolph Morris, ...Isiah Thomas
2008-2009 Team MVP: Jamal Crawford - He's always been a great scorer, the question was if his game chock full of contest pull-up jumpers and fadeaways would ever fly for a winning squad. D'Antoni will help teach Crawford when to shoot and when to pass (better late than never), and his percentages will be a bit prettier as a result. Look for Crawford to be the leader of this team...or maybe I've just been drinking a bit too much of the Crawford blog Kool-aid.
Most Important Reserve: Non-starting Small Forwards - Whether Quentin Richardson, Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, or Jared Jeffries end up playing the bulk of minutes at the 3, the remaining small forwards will need to find ways to contribute. Chandler and Jeffries seem the most likely to be able to contribute on command coming off the pine, but who knows what the final rotation is going to look like. How this position shakes up could make a huge difference for the Knicks in terms of how they evaluate the 2008-2009 season.
Most Unheralded Asset: Quentin Richardson - He knows the system. He can shoot from deep. he can handle the ball. He can post up. But more importantly, at this point he should be sincerely trying to prove to the NBA that he's worth a damn. D'Antoni's system made him and the Knicks broke him down, but Q may be in line for a mini-renaissance of his own.
Poetry in Motion
Photo from Getty Images.
Poetry in Motion will feature my feeble attempts at mimicking the sonnets of one William Shakespeare, complete with a weak, liberal interpretation of iambic pentameter and an identical rhyme scheme. As they say, the NBA imitates art...I mean poetry...err, life imitates the NBA...or I imitate poetry while writing about the NBA. Something like that. Either way, each preview will contain two sonnets: one focusing on a wider, team outlook and another focusing on the roles and futures of individual players. Revel! Criticize! Enjoy!
The end of an era, but not so fast,
Patience is a virtue, so embrace it,
Before you take first, you have to be last,
You can’t build
Not all melancholy in NYC,
Biggest off-season acquisition: hope!
There’s a new groove with D’antones as emcee,
A vision, a plan, and a wider scope.
‘Tis more than a test of who stays, who goes,
For a coach’s legacy is at stake,
Will seven seconds or less be exposed?
Or will the scheme’s art prove ball for ball’s sake?
Note that a change of the guard is one thing,
But ‘til that guard departs, they shan’t be kings.
Curry starts slow, comes in out of shape,
Seems immovable, in every sense,
Steph still grows an orchard of sour grapes,
And neither helps the team’s woeful defense.
Zach Randolph is still a 20-10 rock,
Just one that erodes all its surroundings,
With Lee and Danilo playing time locks,
How is the rotation not confounding?
Nate Robinson shoulders more than you’d think,
And
Duhon stands on irrelevancy’s brink,
Is Allan Houston there to play or teach?
Crawford and Q need to bring more than threes,
If the Knicks are to earn their pedigree.Player Preview Spotlight: Nate Robinson
The Player Spotlight feature highlights just one of the many cogs that make up the team. They may not be the best player on the team and they may not be the most recognizable (or who knows, they may be both), but I can guarantee that they're interesting. Their game, their on-court persona, their role within the greater scope of the team. Something about the player in the spotlight deserves your attention, and as usual, I'm more than willing to point it out to you.
I'm undecided as to whether or not Nate Robinson will ever be a starting caliber PG in the league. He's quick as hell, can shoot the lights out when he's open, and calling him explosive when he's going to the rim may not be as accurate as calling him nuclear. And surprisingly, despite the occasional boneheaded maneuver, he's a pretty decent passer. But like so many of his peers among the point guard ranks, he suffers from being turnover prone and having poor shot selection. Oh, and there's the whole height thing. Being abnormally tall for your position makes you Magic Johnson or Yao Ming (...or Shawn Bradley, I guess). But being 5'9'' in the NBA doesn't exactly mean you're poised for success. It makes you a freak. It's not fair, and it really, really sucks.
Earl Boykins knew about this long before Nate (and obviously Spud before him) but if you're that short and playing professional basketball, you're no longer a point guard. You're probably not even a professional basketball player anymore. You're "that little guy." "Go get 'im, tiger!" "Look at that little guy go!" And let me tell you, it's not something you want to be in your profession. As cute as it is to be the underdog, everyone gets tired of it; the attention is nice but the constant acknowledgement that you don't deserve to win/play/be there is enough to drive any normal human being to the point of insanity. It could also give you a Napoleon Boykinsaparte-esque superiority complex, shooting their team out of a game in some effort to prove their worth to the league, the world, and probably themselves.
So as we enter into the 2008-2009 season, keep that in mind. Maybe in the back somewhere, safely tucked away. Then, in the front of your mind, keep the knowledge that Nate Robinson could be a pretty awesome player. He's got a world of talent and, at 24, he still has a long time to prove himself. Whether or not he can put the pieces of this ridiculously complicated jigsaw puzzle together is another question entirely but nonetheless one I will sincerely enjoy finding out the answer to. Saying that SSoL should facilitate Nate's game is easy. I mean that. A good shooting, quick point man who can explode to the rim might benefit from a fast break attack? Really, now? But the important thing is that it may not just facilitate Nate's game. It might transform it entirely. That's something much more exciting. I wish I could say that something within Nate would be triggered into some ridiculous metamorphosis. But more realistically, Robinson may be made into a real point guard (as opposed to a fake, scoring point, or a sideshow attraction of a short guy) out of sheer necessity. Marbury flew over the cuckoo's nest long ago and Chris Duhon is hardly more than a stop-loss (although, one might ask, how can you lose what you never had?). With the Knicks hopefully poised to make a run at a big-time free agent in 2010, will they have anything left to nab a decent starting point? No. Well, probably not. Thus, the grooming begins now. A system tailor-made for his strengths, an open-minded coach loyal to his point guard, and no real, visible competition. So here's to you, Mr. Robinson (now that's too easy), along with some sincere hope that when your chance to win that starting job once and for all lands in your lap, you'll be skilled, ready, and deserving.
Y'know, more deserving than when you stole the slam dunk title from Iggy. BURNNNN.
Season Previews, F'real
For those poor, conservative souls trapped in normativity, I'll make sure to send you to a few places where you can read through more conventional, in-depth season previews. Most of these links will be from team bloggers whose trade is knowing what there is to know about their respective teams, so tell your ears to perk up; it's time to listen.
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