Knicks finally get chance to work on things
New York Knicks Carmelo Anthony reacts during the fourth quarter against the Miami Heat. (Feb. 23, 2012) Credit: AP
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Does practice make perfect? The Knicks finally will get a chance to find out this week.
With only one game in the first six days after the All-Star break, the Knicks will reconvene Monday afternoon with an opportunity to practice five times. With the way the post-lockout schedule has squeezed NBA games into every nook and cranny of the calendar, court time without fans in the stands has been rare.
The Knicks, who host Cleveland on Wednesday, will not have another chance like this to heal, bond and drill the rest of the season. The final eight weeks, beginning Sunday in Boston, will be a madcap sprint to the end of the regular season, with no breaks of more than two days.
"We're going to have five, six days that we can really go after it in practice and really focus in," said Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks' lone representative in Sunday night's All-Star Game. "I'm looking forward to it."
The Knicks (17-18) begin the second half of the 66-game season in possession of the seventh playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Since the season opener Christmas Day, they have a new point guard, Jeremy Lin, and new bench players J.R. Smith and Baron Davis.
They also have struggled to incorporate Anthony into the offense with Lin and without much practice time. Anthony has been injured much of the first half; the Knicks are 1-2 since he returned from a groin injury last Monday.
"We haven't had any time to get the details down," Anthony said. "Every week, somebody's injured, we're bringing somebody in or we're bringing guys back. So these next two weeks are very important, for us to get our chemistry down pat, to talk about what we need to talk about. Put everything out there on the table and go from there.
"I think we have to figure out our identity as a team, what kind of team we want to be. I think before Jeremy stepped up to the plate, we were a different team. When he stepped up to the plate, we definitely became a different team. And now, having different guys and different situations, we have to identify ourselves, really figure out what's our identity. And once we do that, everything will fall into place."
The starting five is stable: Lin and pal Landry Fields in the backcourt, Anthony, Amar'e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler up front.
It will be Mike D'Antoni's task to figure out how to get that potentially explosive unit to function as one, and who among the key subs gets time. In that group, including Smith and Davis, are Steve Novak, who has emerged as a shooter during the Lin Era; rookie Iman Shumpert, who brings defense and energy, and gritty Jared Jeffries.
That's 10 guys and doesn't include Toney Douglas, who started the season at point guard, or Bill Walker, Mike Bibby and injured rookie Josh Harrellson, all of whom started at least one game in the first half.
"I love the team that we have right now," Anthony said. "We have a lot of weapons that we can utilize. We're a very deep team, but it's going to take some time for us to come together. Believe it or not, our time comes in the basketball games. A lot of the times we're learning a lot of different things and the chemistry is coming in the basketball games, not even in practice. So I think these next couple weeks will be big for us."
