I am actually impressed with the Knicks so far. Both Portland and the Celtics are teams that have been together for multiple seasons, and we are a very new team that have not played together nearly as much. Down the stretch I liked the cohesiveness the Knicks displayed, the rotations on defense were great. On offense, we were definitely out of sorts. Felton and Amare tried to bring us back from the brink by themselves instead of trusting their (new) teammates. I hope these games serve as lessons that they need to play in the system and only take the shot if its open. On one of the last plays I saw Amare receive the ball near the top of the 3 point line and he tried to drive it into Portland's 1-2-2 zone... Clyde said it best... he needed to pass the ball. At that point I would have given Rautins some burn to try to punch through the zone.

Portland was crafty though, they didn't stay in the zone, they were switching back and forth near the end. We need to practice against defenses that switch from zone to man to man so that we can recognize what's going on better. The team is still young and they need to be smart about recognizing defenses better.

I like the fact that it isn't just one or two guys who are stepping up. Lots more weapons this year on offense. They have to work on making it easier on Amare by getting him the ball in motion. Not to mention like many others here have pointed out, working on the pick and roll with Felton. On defense, it feels like they've already exceeded their total blocks from the last 3 years. Still lots of work to do on both ends but considering this is almost an entirely new team, so far so good.