www.KnicksDefense.com

“On defense, you really try to make your opponent do what you want him to do — not what he wants you to do. I try to force him a certain way and that’s when I make a second slide. I try not to let him come at me.”

The Big Ben Collection will officially roll out in late October, but here is a sneak peak of the shoe for those that want to endure the long lines in Midtown Manhattan.

It turns out a lot of people had beef over his “nba’s most overpaid” article.

I’d like to specifically call out his bias towards fat shaq and the player he formally was. it is this kind of blind bias that enables a basically inactive at-the-time Shaq to make the NBA all-star team and keeps a superior player like Eddy Curry off the all star team.

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Shaq was brought up numerous times on the web and in my e-mails. He’s 35, he makes $20 million, he missed 66 games in two years and his team was swept in the first round of last year’s playoffs.

All true. The Heat did not get its money’s worth out of O’Neal last year. But he remains the league’s most intimidating inside force and his production, when healthy, was not terrible (17.3 points, 7.4 rebounds, 59.1 percent shooting).”

Okay, those are the “intimidating” numbers that got shaq on the all-star team. Let’s take a look at Eddy Curry’s numbers from the same season.

19.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 57.6 percent shooting. Most importantly, Eddy Curry played and started 81 regular games this season, shaq a mere 40. Now who is the true force in the league? Apparently Shaq, D Wade and Riley all think they can coast through the regular season, taking vacations while other teams are working hard to come back in may and vie for a title. I knew then as I know now, it doesn’t work that way. If you are going to beat the best, you have to put in the hard work in the regular season, and not just rely on your “dominant” history, expecting people to hand you a trophy in June.

Like the NBA slogan of a few years ago, “the truth be told,” and this year the truth will be told about the knicks. The truth is that right now, nobody is giving the Knicks a chance this year, let’s just see what happens once the ball goes up on November 1st.

presumably big ben’s shoe will debut this weekend when he personally appears at the manhattan mall near 32nd street.

I like the starbury shoes, obviously, and I’m probably going to try the big bens as well. I wear the starbury ones when I play basketball, and I’ve yet to run into any problems. I hope the big bens don’t just come in pistons colors though, orange and blue is my favorite combo for kicks.

brilliant marketing plan by the creators of starbury and big ben’s. low cost shoes, let the “stars” make personal appearances at the stores, let the press cover the event, reduce the price of marketing. simple and effective approach to pushing a product that doesn’t have to sell for $180. i admire this company for respecting the public enough to make shoes available for all people to wear.

Probably not the last one to come, either. There is a website called Bleacher Report where literally anyone can write a sports article and be published by them. It is actually a sweet deal for the owners of the site, grant these writers access to the site so they can get free content. They get the rights to the articles, make profit off the banners and even have final editing rights before publishing. Here is such an article, a preview article on the knicks by a guy named Harris Beringer. Already sounds like a fantasy league guy to me. Below is my response. Unfortunately, you have to register to post your reply, so this guy may never know just how off I find his article to be.

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I have to admit, this is absolutely the worst preview article I’ve ever read in my life.

there is no attempt to be unbiased, you could have effectively made the same case by editing down your article to “the knicks suck,” –i would have respected you more for it.

You dismiss Zach Randolph’s contributions to the team because of David Lee’s stats and what Randolph Morris did in summer league against rookie competition? Zach Randoph has been putting up 20 and 10 against the best power forwards in the league (previously found in the western conference) for years and Randolph Morris hasn’t even played 21 minutes in a single game yet, discussion over. David Lee still can’t shoot, Zach Randolph has incredible range for a big man, not to mention an array of moves in the paint. yes, 6′9″, 255lbs IS a big man. Karl Malone was a big man, Carlos Boozer is a big man, Zach Randolph is a big man. when you dominate all other power forwards in the league, you have earned the title big man.

Stephon Marbury’s game has statistically declined, which probably would matter to a fantasy basketball fan with no true concept of the game, but matters very little when the team is shifting it’s offense from the perimeter to the paint. you could have easily compared his numbers last year to the older Chauncey Billups, but instead focused strictly on the negative.

your synopsis of Crawford: “dump the ball to curry,” easier said than done pal. you make it sound like you could go out there and do it yourself. when the entire league knows you are trying to get the ball to one guy on the post, and a certain player has a knack for doing just that, you shouldn’t so easily dismiss the chemistry they have.

On Q getting hurt this season: well, you may have a point there, but I’ve never heard of any writer saying, “well, he’ll probably get hurt and miss a lot of time,” something is wrong with the way you phrase that. people may think it, but it is usually less negatively said.

eddy curry: again, you focused on the negative. you didn’t mention that his offensive game on the low block was unstoppable, which is true. it is also true that he can’t play a lick of defense, but if you are going to talk about the coin, why not present both sides of the matter?

“Rookies Wilson Chandler and Demetris Nichols may be assigned to the NBDL.” Shows how little you know about the knicks. they never share their players with the D league. I’d bet the farm they never play D league for one minute as knicks property.

Mardy Collins never punched a player in his life, that was Carmelo Anthony. You have the facts mixed up. Is that all you know about Mardy Collins? He did average 14p 6r 6a 2st per game over the last month of the regular season, in case you didn’t know.

“If you’re a Knicks fan or someone who follows the team closely (be it by choice or for a living)”

Alan, how many would you say, between your newspaper, the daily news, the post and the ny times–all of the ny sports media covering the knicks–are in fact knicks fans. I think that may be the problem here. all of the media who are covering the knicks consider their job to be just that, a job. but the people reading their work are real fans, fans that want to see their team succeed. when I read a certain reporter spin any knick story (and I’m not talking about this trial mind you) for the worse, it is an insult to me, because I am a knicks fan. i am not paid to follow the team. i want to follow the team of my own volition. if you are not a knicks fan, try to imagine whatever team you do like (hockey or basketball) try to imagine that team being constantly beat up by the press. it boils our blood.

that is not to say that there have not been mistakes in the organization, or that these mistakes should not be fully chronicled, but this media market leaves the fans who wish to read something positive no choice. it was my hope that your paper would provide knicks fans an alternative to the Vesceys, Isolas, and Bermans. the guys who obviously want the paycheck but aren’t going to do their job they way they should. it was never in your job description to piss us all off to no end. you should be mindful of your audience when you write, no?

look at fox news, they do a great job of telling us what we want to hear. they conceal the atrocities of the iraq war and all the other hidden ugliness around the world and report what they think america should know. that is what i’m looking for in my knicks newspaper. if it can’t be fair and balanced, spin it the other way so that it reads positive. tell us what we want to hear. we may not be a first place team. but most of us believe this team has playoffs written all over it. no one has wrote that story yet, nor will they until two months into the season.

i’m not telling you how to do your job. this is just my opinion on how at least one newspaper in town could do business. because if you pick up any one of those other papers, they’ll all read the same.

why will no paper be a fan’s paper in this town? i don’t care if your are the atlanta hawks, there should be a paper in every nba town that assumes you actually “like” the knicks are are not being “paid” to follow them.

is Alan Houston to Cleavland a done deal? isn’t he just working out at this point?

Hey, if they want to take on his knee caps at his age, fine. If Cleavland doesn’t take him, I hope Boston does. Boston should sign Jerome James after we cut him as well!

Even if Allan Houston wanted to come back to play for the knicks for the league minimum, I don’t think Zeke would have it. Just too much bad history there. Ice cold style, Zeke was like “he should retire,” when Houston was still trying to play.

Zeke has made an infinite amount of enemies in the league. It must make potential trade discussions a bit uncomfortable with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird GM’s, not to mention Larry Brown advising the sixers and Popavich basically having creative control of the spurs. That 4 less teams to talk to and consequently 60 less possibilities of acquiring new players.

His only friend are Dumars and Laimbeer, and last I heard Laimbeer was coaching in the WNBA, he’s no help to Zeke from there.

Don’t think friendship matters in terms of GM’s? How’d KG end up in Boston? You all know that one.

It’s going to be exciting to play Boston this season, when is the last time we said that?

It is precisely the fact that Isiah drafted two additional, very competent small forwards (Chandler, Nichols) that makes me think the Knicks have some reservations about Q’s back surgery recovery. It can be said that Isiah likes roster redundancy, but this is absurd–how many SF’s on one squad could possibly be needed? Again, I hope Q is 100% recovered and ready for a big season in NYC.

I know what I saw last year, and I stand by Jared Jeffries as a true knick warrior that I like on this team. maybe if we make the playoffs this year he’ll change your mind. whatever.
…And this first taste of pre-pre-season haterade is brought to you from an unlikely source–the usually neutral New York Times’ Howard Beck.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/sports/basketball/07marbury.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1189138690-dCUIGCbeFSqbF847wPNqXw

An article about Stephon that implies that something is mentally wrong with Stephon. Highlights from Stephon’s popular summer interviews are cited in support of this theory. Sure, Beck mentions Stephon’s recent good deeds, to show you that he’s “fair and balanced,” but I didn’t care for the overall tone of the piece, which was your average everyday Isola hater. I’d expect a little more than that from the New York Times, but I know how lazy some of the Knicks beat writers have become lately. This article is basically yesterday’s news–if not last month’s.

I don’t know, I don’t really respect these guys any more. They just seem like old scrubs. You can’t convince me that all of these writers know much more about the knicks than some of the fantastic bloggers online–yourselves included. I for one would prefer to read the words of someone who regards my team in the same light as I do. I’m not blind, I know the knicks have problems, but they aren’t the worst team in the league, as they would have you believe. They may be hopefully over the cap but how often is a major market team under the cap?

When it comes to the Knicks, the Times is usually about as opinionated as college algebra textbook, so I guess I’m asking too much for them to report on knick affairs as if there were local Knicks fans buying their newspaper.

Alan, thus far, I think you and Ken Berger do a fantastic job of covering the Knicks with fresh style and class. Marbury messed up again, and you broke the story. That’s fine, he said what he said. I knew it would be a fiasco. I know you may not appreciate me talking smack about your colleagues (they are, incidentally the competition as well), but I’m glad we have Newsday, because I simply refuse to buy their newspapers anymore. I don’t think they’re doing a good job, quite frankly. I’m pretty sick of the toxic negativity they engulf the team with. It probably does stem from Dolan, but what can we do about it? We certainly don’t want to read about it on a daily basis, as is the case at the Daily News. Berman, the grill, Isola, now Beck. If you’ve read one of them, you’ve read them all.

I have lived in other NBA towns with worse teams that were more loved by their local writers (Namely Orlando, but I’m certain there’s more love in some of those other towns). Its a shame, the last blog I frequented before bailing, there was a guy who’s handle was Anti-NY-Sports-Media, so you know there are readers out there that feel the same way.

I guess these writers just feel there is no market for these readers.

too bad youtube doesn’t have the msg version, which was better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd0pDgNKwNU

in my opinion, this was the game that broke NY’s spirit. they were in the playoff hunt, and on the road coming into dallas, probably the best team in the league at that point. they played as best they could, and were winning the game at times. they gave it their everything, and couldn’t come away with the win. New York didn’t recover. If they would have won that game it would have carried over into a playoff berth IMO.

the Dallas game was one of my favorites. loved the dunk by balkman on harris.

Another name you could have easily kicked around in comparison to Steph is Chauncey Billups. I don’t know what his salary is, but here are his stats side-by-side with stephon’s from last season.

Chauncey Billups
17p 7a 1.2 st 2to 42.7%fg 34.5%3pt 88%ft

Stephon Marbury
16.4p 5.4a 1.0st 2.4to 41.5%fg 35.7%3pt 77%ft

Chauncey gets all the credit in the world for being a winner (NBA title in ‘04, current PG for olympic team) where as Stephon gets the reputation of being a career looser with high stats and even higher salary.

I’m just not buying it. These players don’t make up the contracts on their own, GMs do that. Much of this perception stuff is circumstantial. Billups had a great team that year they won it. that team was filled with role players, and they had just the right combination of chemistry and experience playing together. If Stephon is a looser by the media’s standards, then so is AI, so is KG, so is Paul Pierce, there are many that are paid tons of money and have not won anything. Jason Kidd hasn’t won anything and his reputation is worlds better than stephon’s. Vice Carter ring a bell?

If people still think Nash has an opportunity to win, which everybody does–including those bogus predictions by formula–then I suggest Stephon has that same opportunity currently, especially since he three full years younger than nash and a year younger than Billups.

By the way I’m glad the knicks got rid of Larry Brown. he’s a media-obsessed snake in the grass–nobody in the nba is even thinking of employing him at this moment. 23 wins. What a disgrace to the franchise and to the city of new york.

and if the knicks don’t do some damage this post-season, then there should be some more changes made. Chicago rebuilt in a shorter period of time than it is taking NY, and that is unacceptable.