Saturday, November 30, 2013

Not the Savior..

The New York Knicks are 3-12 and dead last in their division looking up at the Toronto Raptors and I've heard on more than one occasion that the Knicks should look to trade away Carmelo Anthony the greatest offensive talent the Knicks have had since Bernard King. Carmelo is averaging 26.5 points per game, 2.5 assists per game, and 9.9 rebounds per game as solid as those numbers are Carmelo's player efficiency rating is 22.16 which middle of the pack for the type of player Carmelo is. The problem with the 3-12 Knicks is that they have looked either lost or completely incompetent on the defensive side of the ball (Carmelo included).

Blaming Carmelo is not the way to go. Blaming the decision-makers of the team is the way to go. The lone real defensive players on the Knicks is Center Tyson Chandler and Guard Iman Shumpert and with Chandler being hurt at the moment that makes the glaring weaknesses on defense even worse. Even though Iman Shumpert and Amare Stoudemire have expressed issues with "ball movement" (which really means that Carmelo Anthony and JR Smith don't pass the ball enough and chuck up and too many shots) on offense they haven't been enough of a force when they do have the ball to demand the ball anyways. This issue goes back to the decision makers once again when the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was signed each team was able to amnesty (an option to get rid of a player by paying the player the rest of his contract without having his contract counting against the salary cap) one player and the Knicks decided to amnesty Chauncy Billups instead the albatross contract of Amare Stoudemire who hasn't even thought of living up to his contract. A trio of Chauncy, Carmelo, and Chandler would've had given the Knicks the right veteran leadership that they need to control the often out of control Iman Shumpert and JR Smith. So don't blame or trade number 7...blame Knicks owner James Dolan.

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