Nate Robinson.....How Do You Feel?

but i don’t miss him now he’s gone. thats pretty much where i’m coming from. he’s got a fun act but nate hits the point of diminishing returns almost immediately.

as unique as his talent is, as much as he might want to compete, it doesn’t matter. if you want to win regularly, you can’t play nate regularly.

the fact that Nate had been rotting on the bench, even at the end of the regular season. He hadn’t shown much in a while. I doubt very much Orlando had any worries or gameplanning for Nate. Nate’s a prolific scorer when he wants to be, but never maintained any focus beyond his offensive fireworks. I like Nate as much as the next guy. He makes the game fun to watch when he is fun to watch, but we also received the obligatory, “Hey, did you see what I just did?! Whoa, wait, are we s’posed to run down there and play defense too?” You can’t blame Pringles for getting agitated at that. Nate is a great guy, a nice guy. But he does lack that certain situational awareness beyond playing offense. It tended to take away from team play. You could say the same thing for Al Harrington, but in his case, it wasn’t for a lack of trying – kind of like a mind is willing but the flesh is weak type of thing where he believed he could do things, but his skillset just didn’t accomodate. Nate in the end is a bench player and a great weapon in the right situation. Bill Walker makes it a worthwhile trade to me, and am happier with the return (or potential for returns with what he may give us this coming year) as opposed to what we gave away. Even Giddens give us at the least the off the bench defense Nate couldn’t provide. I miss Nate’s fire and scoring, but think we’ll be just fine with what we got in return. In a perfect world, Walker get’s into 80 game conditioning, and delivers the reliable SG we’ve been missing, he doesn’t have to be everyday perfect, but if he delivers as a solid above average team player along with whatever the rest of our team – whatever that may be – we’re gonna suddenly start winning games and the team will believe in itself. Can Boston be any more of a good example right now? And the guy who should get all the credit is the Doc himself. Dude got them to beleive in team ball to the point he’s been able to plug and play his role players and they’ve delivered just enuff at the right times to make good things happen. Phoenix has done almost the same thing to make their series at least competitive. In a nutshell, I love Nate, but love what we got in return even more.

not every player/coach combo is right.

Nate had shown flashes, but he also showed stretches of bad basketball. Trading him at the time the knicks did was trading a player at the peak of their value. It was a great basketball decision.

I agreed with the sentiment above that I wish he got a little bit more look as a starting PG. But I have major doubts that he could run an offense.

Why do you

think the Knicks did him dirty.

a) the knicks dominated while he was gone. It was by far their best stretch of the season. May be a coincidence and I dont think him being gone was the only factor… but still… hard to ignore.

b) he was benched for exacitally one month. There was a reason for that. Maybe he mouthed off to the coach in a meeting. Maybe he said or did something really bad to another player. Who knows. What I do know is he never came out publicly and ripped the coach for it. Also – his working his butt off during his benching showed major character and prob increased his trade value more then his being on the court would have.

Nate will always be loved here in NYC. He was a good role player and was def a high point over this bad stretch. He will be signed for more money then he is really worth and will prob have a solid career. However, the knicks did him no wrong. (they even traded him to the team he wanted to go to and put him in a chance to win a ring!)