Date: Friday, October 29, 2010
Time: 7:30 p.m. (Eastern)
TV: NBA League Pass (still free! Also free for the time being on League Pass Broadband!)
The Knicks have not been very good for the last several years, and Boston has had little trouble with them recently. New York plays the uptempo style that coach Mike D'Antoni ran with success in Phoenix, but he hasn't had the horses in the Big Apple that he had out in the desert.
During the offseason, however, the Knicks went out and got him one of those horses -- Amare Stoudemire -- from the Suns. They were hoping for LeBron James or Chris Bosh (actually, they were hoping for James and Bosh), but Stoudemire is a great consolation prize. Their other big move in free agency was to go out and get Charlotte's Raymond Felton to run the point. Felton is far from Stoudemire and D'Antoni's running mate in Phoenix, Steve Nash, but he's a significant upgrade over Chris Duhon and Toney Douglas at what is a very important position in the D'Antoni system.
The first look in the regular season at New York's new pieces was not terribly encouraging. The Knicks won, yes, and it was on the road, but it was against what is probably going to be a pretty bad Toronto team. And despite their frenetic pace, they scored just 98 points. Blame 43 percent shooting, including 7-for-24 from deep, for that. I didn't watch the game so I can't be sure, but last season, at least, the Raptors were not good defensively. So this may have just been a case of the Knicks missing shots.
Boston has not been a model of offensive efficiency in the early season, managing just 88 and 87 points in its first two games. The Knicks, however, will be a much easier team to unlock than the Heat and the Cavs were. Honestly, I think scoring against New York for a team like Boston comes down to things like mindset, energy, and effort. I'd like to think that after dropping that game to Cleveland, Boston will be hungry, particularly returning home. At the same, it is the third game in four nights at the very start of the season. We don't play again until Tuesday, however, so if it's necessary, Doc may play the starters a bit more than he normally would.
Defensively, Boston perhaps catches a break with Anthony Randolph's ankle injury keeping him out. Randolph, who came over from Golden State this offseason in the David Lee sign-and-trade, has only flashed potential in the early part of his career, but he's a skilled, mobile tall guy who would really put Boston in a tough spot if paired with Stoudemire up front. Instead of having to deal with Stoudemire while Kevin Garnett checks Randolph, Shaquille O'Neal will get the Russian rookie Timofey Mozgov, a banger who is more his style. (That's a great matchup for the Cs on both ends and I would expect to see us pound it to O'Neal in the post early.)
A quick note on the Celtics: As I was writing this, I got a flood of items to my RSS feed indicating that Delonte West punched Von Wafer after practice today. It's a developing story, and one you might hear about on tonight's broadcast if you watch the game. To be fair to Delonte, according to Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski, Delonte believes that Wafer was responsible for a comment, published by Alex Kennedy from an anonymous Celtic, that it was easy to tell when Delonte hadn't been taking his medication. (Delonte, if you don't remember, is bipolar.)
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