I expected this years Knicks team to be better, and maybe even slip into the playoffs as a number 7-8 team. But after the 1st 4 games, the Knicks are not for real, and they have some major issues.

#1 (biggest issue) the team cannot play defense! Defense is half the game and if you dont play it, how can you expect to win only playing a 50% effort at best? The Knicks dont have 1 guy on this team that can play defense. They say Jefferies can, well guess what? He;s injured, and when he comes back he wont be guarding all 5 guys on the court, so he wont make a big enough difference.

#2) their front court is wayyyyyy to soft. Eddy Curry is the biggest softy, and is not the dominating presence he could be under the basket, and channing Frye is completely lost right now. He is not aggressive at all, he rely's too much on taking jump shots, which seem to be out of his range. He's not playing like a 6'11 PF that he is. Curry and Frye are too soft, and having them both in the front court will be a problem.

#3) Steve Francis isn't a SG! He's outsized at the position, and he can't defend other SG's.

#4) No one on the team is clutch. No 1 can hit the big shot, and guys like Eddy curry and Channing Frye completely dissapear crunch time. and on top of that the Knicks can't get any stops on defense in a close game.
#5) They turn the ball over way too much and are extremely sloppy at times.
#6) Apparently they still have an act for blowing big leads as we saw on the season opener. The Knicks have been doing this 1 for ages, even when they were a playoff team.
#7) Stephon Marbury isn't a team leader.
#8) Team has no heart. The Knicks of the late 90's had heart, this team has none, they dont even have any reliable role players or a swing man.

What the Knicks need to do, is get rid of either Marbury or Francis, can't have both, and it isn't worth having both and 1 come off the bench. Get rid of 1, my pick would be get rid of Marbury.
Start Francis at the point, Crawford at SG for now, and Quentin at the SF, get Frye out of the starting lineup, and have Nate Robinson be the back up PG.

When Jeffries comes back, start him at SF, move Q-rich to SG, crawford back to 6th man, and Continue having Frye come off the bench.

But this Knicks team has way too many problems to overcome.. and whats this Isaiah saying that the Knicks "Could fall as many as 6 games under .500 after November"?. Good teams dont say that.

This Knicks team is going no where this season, they have way too many woes to overcome. This Knicks team maybe looks pretty good on paper or on a video game roster, but in reality this team is no where near good enough and is one of the weaker teams in the NBA. And this is coming from a disgusted Knicks fan.

[Edited by - mjtuf1 on 11-07-2006 11:36 AM]