Hornets 89, Knicks 85: "This loss was a team effort."

No one should blame Melo or Smith for ruining the streak so it could be good for the long run and avoid any stupid overreaction once Melo and Smith play.

Turnovers, turnovers, 21 turnovers. Ugly. Didn’t help that they shot 17% 3s and hit only 65% of their free throws. Not much defense either in the first half.

This won’t be the last time teams pack the paint against the Knicks. Gotta hit your shots, run your PnRs closer in, find the backdoor lanes, etc.

We can’t expect a team to magically change into championship form overnight. They’re learning. It was pretty amazing, really, that it was still close at the end.

You can’t get good without learning from being bad. This could be one of those ‘necessary’ losses.

melo said he’d be able to play on friday…bastard took the day off.

he seems to slip an awful lot.

I mean they just looked flat in first half.

but hopefully this game will deflate the media linsanity a little bit so that he can start focusing more on the game instead doing interviews every other minute

but I do hope the movement without the ball remains a team constant… lanes get clogged, passing lanes don’t form and turnovers increase. tonight there was less moving without the ball.

the thing about moving without the ball is it’s not a glamorous skill… it’s a winning attribute that not everyone is willing to do. it expends energy with no guarantee of being involved or getting the bucket.

melo and amare will hopefully buy into the constant motion part, not just the waiting for the ball part.

They run pretty much the same offense. I’m trying to see what he does differently. He tends to move wider when turning the corner on the p n r- more space away from the defenders. He also tends to pass or shoot at the free throw line area, where he isn’t surrounded by defenders who could strip the ball.

It wasn’t a particularly great game for the Knicks, but I also think, oddly so, that the Hornets, even without Gordon, are a tough matchup for the Knicks. They’ve got bigger guards in Vazquez (Greivis Vazquez is fairly similar to Lin … watching him at MD all those years and he made some frustrating drives and turnovers there at times, but at other times, made beautiful plays and hit his shots, I swear his shooting motion looks similar to Lin as well) and Jack, guys that, on paper, could frustrate Lin at times while also aggressively attacking him. Good shooters on the wings when the PnR, capable bigs that can pop and shoot it. Kaman’s shooting ability (and the fact that he connected) opened up the lanes a bit, as it forced a big out. Add in a wing that was red hot, and even without Gordon, this, in retrospect, was a tough matchup. Even with some guys out, they still have enough bodies to throw out there.

Knicks biggest issue right now is the lack of a consistent outside threat for this style of game. With Novak off tonight, it really bunched the lane up. When the shooters are on, Lin can attack and make some of his crazy moves/passes look good, but when they aren’t, the opponents can sag a bit more and a lot more hands are attacking Lin. They needed Melo tonight, another scorer that can create.

That said, all things come to an end, and winning often masks flaws, whereas losing may help increase focus on the things they need to do better. Lin had a really solid 2nd half (I half thought he should’ve come in earlier in the 4th, but the team was playing well and in rhythm). The first half was bad, but he at least knows what he has to do.

Great to see Amar’e play well though. We just needed some guys to hit some open 3’s and we’d have won. On to the next one…hopefully this time with that initials for name guy

when jared hit that shot in the fourth to cut it to three and the crowd went wild, mike breen said “jeffries has been making that jumper every once in a while now.” i truly enjoyed that commentating moment.

I remember watching a few games when we had Duhon, and when Jeffries was on the court he always impacted the game. No, he’s never been the most awe inspiring offensive force, but he’s always been a player who made an impact on a game

Thought Amare played VERY well (w/ exception of back door play he got beat on late in the game), not an L to sound the alarms over, especially with the cavalry on the way…I believe Stat & TC are the only ones who made half their shots, and I almost don’t wanna count Tyson b/c of the 200 free throws he missed. Not the end of the world, & all of the sudden it sure seems nice that JR Smith & Melo are coming to help put the ball in the hoop.

and use melo and jr for the rest of the season

“We just didn’t make enough shots. You know, we played solid defense out there…..”

Uhh…SOME Knicks played very good defense, esp. in the 2nd half. But Amare was not one of them.

At this late stage in his career, it’s hard to imagine Stat every turning into a good defender. Against certain high-scoring 4s, team should consider reducing Amare’s minutes. Of course, his presence could make any man he’s supposed to cover score a lot of points. Problem. (JR could be another one like that.) Truth is, they’ve been winning with their D, not their O. And it was pretty porous for most of last night.

I know a lot of folks after this gaming are ‘thankful’ that Carmelo is coming back, but honestly, with how lousy the Knicks were playing particularly in the 1st and 3rd, ANYONE could have been an improvement. You could have subbed in a high school kid for a few stretches and have had the same 50% ft shooting, <30% field goal percentage and 10% 3 point shooting.

Not to knock Carmelo, but it’s not like we needed a guy like him – we just needed ANYONE to step it up. At least we do have a few options that just all seemed to fail at once.

I’m also concerned about JLin’s TOs. I fortunately think it is indeed partly newness to the starting position, as he clearly can manage the ball well even in crunch time – it was those horrid 1st quarter TOs that really killed him.

I also do think it’s tough for a penetrating, scoring PG like Lin (sounds weird to say that, but yes, he’s definitely a SCORING PG – forget focusing on assists for this guy) to work his magic when all the outside shooters are shooting 15% from 3-land all game. Teams will just stack the paint and make him look ugly on drives.

I think if anything, this game highlighted how important it is for Novak and others to at least shoot a reasonable 3 percentage. Unfortunately as well, the Knicks aren’t known for their 3-point FG prowess, and this is definitely an exploit teams should use until they fix it in the future. Shut down the 3, and you shut down a lot of Lin.

are you kidding me? somthings gotta give. A pointguard cant keep doing that every night.

after a time out with about 7 minutes to go he left shumpert in as pg, who promptly maggette-ed the ball to the hornets and got called for an and-one on the layup. only then did he angrily signal to lin to come into the game. what was he waiting for? lin had enough rest. it made no sense to not insert him coming out of the time out.