Posts under ‘NYC Hoops’

It was rivalry night in the NEC, with round one of the Battle of Brooklyn between Long Island University and St. Francis and the final round in the Garden State Rivalry — Fairleigh Dickinson versus Monmouth — taking place. Fortunately for me, MSG televised both scraps so I got to take in both contests [...]

Inspired scheduling by NEC coaches should make this a pretty compelling opening weekend. The NEC site breaks it all down, but the three games I’m most interested in are tonight:

1. Defending NEC champs Mount St. Mary’s, who are ranked 22nd in the Mid-Major Top 25, visit Loyola (MD) in an intrastate clash. [...]

Shades of Frederic Weis anyone?

Not in these case since Gallinari bounced back so well that Couch, who admits to being skeptical about Danilo, wrote that “(he) looks like he could be a player.”

Obviously it’s going to take more than a decent second half in a Summer League game to convince Knicks fans that Gallinari could be a player but it’s a start.

Given the mess at MSG, even with Munster-looking Donnie Walsh and Mike D’Antoni on the job, it really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that the New York Knickerbockers shit the bed when it came to the NBA draft lottery. With a 137 out of a 1,000 chance of snaring the first pick, New York ended up the 6th overall pick, which wouldn’t be so bad but for the fact that the Knicks finished in the bottom four of the league last year and have pretty much nothing to show for it.

This is one of those NBA drafts where just about everybody agrees on who the top two players are, in this case it’s exhilarating point guard Derrick Rose and studly forward Michael Beasley, but the rest of the draft, while filled with talent and potential, is void of consensus.

So how’s about it, Coach? Let’s get your boys on a side in one of NYC’s many soccer rec leagues. Certainly, few teams in the NBA need to learn how to read a game and “let the ball do the work” for them as much as the Knicks.

I’m even willing to captain the side and suit and up play keeper behind this notoriously defensively disinterested group.

Let’s think about this. Under the clueless Zeke, who ran his point guard off the team last season, the Knicks finished a miserable 23-59. Good for dead last in the awful Atlantic Division; 14th in the pedestrian Eastern Conference; and tied for 27th in the NBA with the LA Clippers.

Given that “performance” and the fact just about everybody’s saying D’Antoni can’t do shit with this roster, what constitutes a successful 2008-09 season for the Knickerbockers in the eyes of their fans?

My guess is that it’d take about 10 more wins and the teams playing competitive, entertaining ball for the vast majority of the season. Is that doable? Even with guys like Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph around? Fuck yeah, it’s doable.

Unfortunately for Knicks fans, that’s not how at works at MSG so I think it’s going to be a long, long time — to toss some “Rocket Man” your way — before we see the Knicks paying anybody to function as a quantitative analyst.

After all, Dolan’s not spending his money. It’s just that of Cablevision shareholders and his enabling pop Chuck. Why would he care about minimizing risk?

Clearly he doesn’t, which is why the Knicks remain one of few teams without someone doing intense statistical analysis for them.

Somehow, someway, the Knicks and Nets engaged in a scrap so entertaining and suspenseful tonight that it was easy to forget that Zeke’s squad has been one of the worst in the NBA this season and J-Kidd and the Nets one of the league’s most inconsistent.

As surprising as these two immensely flawed sides making NBA hoops fun for fans in NYC and it’s environs tonight was the fact that the Knicks came from 16-down to beat the Nets 111-105 and claim their third dubbya in a row. Something they haven’t done since 2005.

The fan that only pays attention to the BCS leagues probably has a slight notion as to how unpredictable this college hoops season has become. Said fan probably knows Kentucky’s not doing that great with bachelor slob Billy Gillespie at the helm and other luminaries are faltering but that same fan is really missing [...]

Robert Morris Celebrates Good Times
And I’m not just talking about the Robert Morris Colonials, who played road warrior tonight, going into Chestnut Hill and beating Boston College 57-51 but while we’re on the topic, let’s stick with Robert Morris and their mammoth win tonight, by far the best non-league dubbya for the Northeast Conference.
Sparked [...]

While watching the latest Knicks debacle — a 107-97 spanking at the hands of a Sacramento squad missing it’s top four players and stumbling into the Garden on a four-game skid, who’s starting center Brad Miller said “(the Kings) will take any win” following the game— I couldn’t help but feel some sense of, well, [...]

There’s no making sense of the Northeast Conference’s two Brooklyn sides so far this season. Heading into the season, most folks semi-familiar with the NEC picked Long Island University to finish somewhere near, or in, the cellar of that league while St. Francis was considered to be a potential dark horse. Wouldn’t you [...]

In their first game after being called “a league-wide joke” by former nemesis Reggie Miller, Zeke’s Knicks did everything they could and more to prove him right, getting absolutely lambasted by the Celtics 104-59 in a game, and I use that term loosely, that was even as close as the 45-point margin of victory would [...]

Apparently nobody because they’re giving them away!
Got my weekly Travelzoo Top 20 email today and wouldn’t you know one of the Top 20 deals was for $10 tix —75% off! — to see the Knicks play one of seven home games, beginning with tonight’s debacle, a brutal 108-82 shellacking at the hands of [...]

Funny how much and just how quickly things change in a week.
Just last week I was marveling at the 2007-08 edition of the New York Knicks. About their intensity. About their exciting uptempo style. About how they just might win me over by playing more games like last Tuesday’s 119-112 win [...]

While exchanging email with GGW about just how great the Knicks 119-112 win over the Nuggets last night was and what a change it was to watch a Knicks squad — especially the bigs Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry — play like they cared, Channing Frye came up when GGW observed that “he might be [...]

Renaldo Balkman’s a big reason why the 2007-08 New York Knicks are an NBA team I like
I might be falling for the 2007-08 New York Knicks.
Sure, they’ve only played three games this season and I’ve only watched one from start to finish but the one I watched —- Tuesday’s gripping 119-112 win over [...]

Mostly because I was on my summer soccer vacay, I don’t have the posts to prove it but I never felt that the Eddy Curry-Zach Randolph tandem was going to present problems for the Knicks on offense. Randolph has always had a deceptively smooth J for a guy that’s his size, a beefy 6-9, [...]

Just wanted watching the final episode of Top Chef season three — and the thrilling US Open Cup Final between the New England Revolution and FC Dallas, won 3-2 by the Revs — and the chef I thought should win and voted for on Bravo, Hung Huynh, emerged triumphant to be the first non-white male [...]

Sadly, that means watching the Knicks on MSG.
With college hoops season finished and the NHL playoffs and MLS season yet to start, I was forced to watched the Knicks game tonight; a very winnable scrap with a horrible Philly squad that Isiah Thomas’s team somehow gave away 92-90. And they lost this one despite [...]

Seeing that St. Francis of Brooklyn (7-11, 9-21) overcame 42-29 and 43-34 deficits to defeat Monmouth 72-69 and claim the final spot in the Northeast Conference tourney, I’m reminded of something the manager of the Republic of Ireland’s soccer team Mick McCarthy said following his side’s 1-1 draw with Germany in the first round of [...]

I’ve been watching the wrong Long Island University basketball team. While James Williams & Co. have been buried near the bottom of the standings in the Northeast Conference — again! — the women’s squad is atop the NEC with a 15-3 mark in NEC play (22-7 overall). Their success, along with a roster [...]

Does Reggie deserve to keep his job and everything else you ever wanted to, and didn’t care to know, about University of Buffalo basketball will be discussed on tonight’s edition of the MAC Report by your’s truly.
If you’re not listening to the MAC Report every Wednesday or on podcast on Thursday then, well, how can [...]

I PATH’d it on over to Jersey City this past Friday to watch what I expected would be a display of Niagara’s offensive firepower as the streaking Purple Eagles were to square off with the seemingly hapless St. Peter’s Peacocks, losers of 15 in a row, I got a pleasant surprise: a scrappy St. Peter’s [...]

What a difference a month makes.
In the first volley of the 2006-07 Battle of Brooklyn, played on January 8th at the virtually deserted Long Island University Wellness and Activities Center, the Blackbirds got run out of their own gym by BK rivals St. Francis 69-52 in a ragged and sloppy affair. Today’s encounter, which [...]