Stephon and Jamal, Knicks backcourt
September 6, 2007 – 12:16 amSteph’s D certainly did improved last year. And he became more of a distributor, despite loosing a few assists per game. I’d say his game evolved from the point guard perspective. He ran the offense the way Isiah asked him to run it. I think many of these people write things from the fantasy league perspective (Kamla, Hollinger) –they just look at numbers and write a player off without observing the game.
when you look at stephon when he first came to new york, and the player that we had at halfway through last season, that’s almost an entirely different player.
i still think stephon defers to crawford at the end of the game, but that is not a bad thing when you have a clutch performer like Jamal. I was at the game where stephon layed it in at the buzzer in overtime against Okur and the Jazz, and I was at the game against the heat when Jamal got hurt. both were great wins. Nobody knew Jamal would be out “for the season” that game because he and stephon stepped it up in the fourth quarter and carried the team to victory. crawford did not come out of that game after getting hurt. during the train ride home, all the knicks fans sporting orange and blue were talking about how jamal and stephon scored basically all the points in the fourth quarter. nobody knew that victory would basically cost us a playoff berth because crawford would be out for so long.
