Ready, set, go
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- August
- 6
Here we go, the regular season gets under way Oct. 29 at Madison Square Garden against the Miami Heat, which is going to be a pretty good test as long as Dwyane Wade is ready to go. Two nights later, the Knicks get a look at Elton Brand and the Philadelphia 76ers.
We can get a head start and panic about the 0-2 start now.
Larry Brown comes back for a visit on Nov. 5 with the Charlotte Bobcats, and I expect to see a lot of creative signage. It’ll be interesting to see whether two lousy years under Isiah Thomas has dampened the fans enthusiasm to have a little fun at the expense of a former coach.
Mike D’Antoni goes back to Pheonix for the first time on Dec. 15.
There’s a killer road trip in January against Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston and New Orleans.
All-Star weekend is Feb. 13-15 in Phoenix.
Kevin Garnett and the Celtics come into MSG on Jan. 4 and Feb. 6. Kobe Bryant and the Lakers visit Feb. 2.
It might take a miracle to get into the playoffs, especially with the April schedule. The Knicks start the month with a home-and-home against Toronto, and then visit Chicago, host Detroit, visit Orlando and Miami and finally close the regular season at home against the Nets.
And I did go through the TBS and ABC/ESPN releases and did not find a single mention of the Knicks. That’s quite a statement. I’m kind of suprised the Knicks don’t have at least one national appearance. This is still New York, afterall.
The Knicks will play each Eastern Conference team four times except Atlanta, Chicago and Indiana and Miami. There are 18 sets of back-to-backs and D’Antoni will have to go deep in order to contend with four games in five nights on three separate occasions.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 2:12 pm by Mike Dougherty.
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Hey Mike,
I hope you’re summer is going well.
I think it’s somewhat hard to make predictions about next year right now but I’ll try.
If the starting lineup is Marbury, Crawford, Curry, Randolph and Richardson, that’s a mid-lottery team. The only chance that has to change would be for us to see marked improvement in conditioning from Richardson, Randolph, Curry, and Marbury. This would need to be coupled with a willingness to move the basketball around on offense and a commitment to abolish the thirty plus point quarter on defense. Something tells me that’s not likely because, we’ve been waiting for that from this group for a number of seasons now. AND, AMAZINGLY, no one has said that won’t be the starting 5.
Now, probably Stephon goes or sits and we see Duhon. Also, it seems obvious that Wilson Chandler and Danillo Gallinari are going to take a lot of minutes from Quentin. Hopefully, we will see David Lee and Nate Robinson get starters minutes as well. This is a team that I feel I can root for more readily. As to how they’ll do, at least we haven’t seen evidence of this with our own eyes. This is still probably a lottery team but maybe we can start thinking about being an attainable player or two away rather than being totally screwed for the forsee-able future.
I, also, can’t help but think that we’re getting Carmello and they wouldn’t do that until after the olympics. I mean, the season is still pretty far away so there may be some hope that the roster gets reshaped if someone makes Donnie an offer he can’t refuse.
It is amazing. It seems like just yesterday that we had Patrick and would be looking to get out of the gate 5-0. Now, I really can’t see expecting to win any game. I guess that’s why ABC is leaving us alone.