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Michael Redd and Bucks GM Larry Harris are both on the radar for Knicks President Donnie Walsh as the 2008 NBA Draft draws closer.

It all depends on his NBA workouts the next few days.  But do you think the young man would be sent over by his dad, should Mike D’Antoni and the Knicks draft him at 6 or later through trade?

Just flipped on the tv and first thing i see is KG catching an alley on the break.

This is going to be a great series.

So many of the best players in the league are on these teams.

And you have one coach, a former New York Knick point guard during the Ewing days of the 90’s, preaching “Ubuntu” to his team during time outs and at halftime.

Ubuntu is something that transcends the game of basketball and I am happy to hear anyone say it aloud–even a Celtic.

I guess I care more about the outcome of this series than I thought.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of all the re-aired Lakers-Celtics finals of yesteryear, you knew they’d be playing those non-stop once the script became clear during the 2008 NBA playoffs.

Before they get it started tonight, though, anyone remember this quote from last week?

“Just to put things in perspective, they were worse than the Knicks last year. I mean, that’s how bad it was.”

–ESPN’s Sportscenter, on Boston’s previous season, immediately following their elimination of the Pistons in the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals on ESPN.

That was an unneeded Knicks cheap shot along the lines of Mike Dunleavy, Reggie Miller or even David Stern. I guess under Dolan and Isiah’s watch, the Knicks have become the barometer for poor performance league-wide.

In any case, regardless of who you’re rooting for tonight (we know Clyde Frazier and our Orange and Blue are NOT rooting for the Celtics), this should be a good match, the best we’ve had in many years. No matter how they got there, these were the two best teams in the league and congrats to both of them for reaching the top of the mountain both during the regular season and during the playoffs.

I only hope the refs don’t get in the way of what should be a fierce battle that could easily go the seven game distance.

Any one want to be so bold as to predict a score?

So who will be the X-factor tonight? There are so many interesting matchups here I don’t know where to begin.

The future of the New York Knicks hinges on reversing this trend of getting one dimensional players and instead starting a new trend of getting solid all-around basketball players, so that a sense of team identity and trust can finally be developed between the players.

Often times during the past four years, the Knicks have stock piled prolific scorers who are downright lousy defenders and/or passers, or work-in-project athletes who are devoid of fundamental team basketball skills, or good defenders who everyone knows can’t hit the broad side of a barn no matter how open a shot they are given. We don’t have to name names here.

This phenomenon needs to change now. It all starts with the #6 pick next month, but that’s only the beginning. The Eddy Currys, the Randolphs the Crawfords, the Nate Robinsons, those guys are pretty good at certain things and utterly atrocious at others, so instead of being pluses for the Knicks on both ends of the floor, they’re giving it away on the other end, and it is just that much more difficult to win basketball games for the Knicks, because they never can close out the game by the time 48 minutes have rolled around.

Any time you’re trying to come up with a starting five while trying to compensate for certain players inabilities in said starting five, it makes it too difficult to go out there and do what a competitive team should do: be in a position to win.

Some of it has to do with where you’re picking in the draft the past four years. When you’re picking at #23 every other year, there is a chance your talent is going to have some weaknesses and you only hope they can overcome them on the fly.

Yet there are going to be some guys that aren’t going to improve and it’s on them. Considering “it is not your aptitude that determines your altitude but your attitude,” if, for example, Eddy Curry doesn’t want to play defense, there is a very real chance he never will, at least until his current contract nears its expiration date.

You might think having a well-rounded team like I’ve described above is too ideal and impossible in reality, but how many Knicks currently fit the bill? Jamal Crawford, you say? Not close. Wilson Chandler? Chandler was nice at the very end, but so was Mardy Collins two years ago, and what has happened to him since his injury? We waited all season long to see Chandler get burn, and for what, to see a hobbled Quentin Richardson fail four four months of the season?

We need to start to get guys who can do all the fundamentals of basketball, not just one of them. Quentin could have been one of those guys but his back problems have prevented him from contributing at 100%.

Off topic: It will be really interesting to watch Lakers vs Celtics, if it comes to that. Imagine, the two teams that were involved in two infamously lopsided trades, and they make it all the way to the finals. Shame on you David Stern, for not doing something for the Knicks, but looking the other way when those two Enron deals went down, and then hooking up Chicago with the #1 pick this summer to top it off.

Off topic: You telling me Derek Fisher didn’t foul Brent Barry behind the three point line at the end of the game tonight? Shame on you David Stern, for corrupting the league with your Joey Crawfords and your Tim Donagheys puppets. Obviously you’re very desperate for Lakers-Celtics so you can reminiscence about the glory days of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but to what shady ends are you willing to go to get it? They said after the game, “he didn’t sell the foul.” A foul is a foul. Especially when you call sissy flop fouls all season long, for the past five years. So now you gotta have a certain look on your face for a foul to be called? Get these shitty refs out of here. Magic and Bird aside, some basketball fans merely reminiscence to a time when NBA referees didn’t effect the outcome of the game with such blatant bias. You might as well have Nike signing their paychecks instead of the NBA treasury.

Kobe vs KG, here we come! Thank you Mr. Stern!

We’ve still got a full month to wait before we learn who the Knicks end up taking in the 2008 NBA draft.

Unless we trade for another pick, the pre-draft camp in Orlando isn’t going to be of much weight in the decision making process for the Knicks, because the projected lottery picks often only agree to do private workouts. The guys like David Lee and Renaldo Balkman, projected second rounders at the time they were taken, those are they guys that show up and play hard during the pre-draft workouts down in Orlando.

The last poll we did was very specifically which player to take, but perhaps a more general question will help us narrow down the selection process: which position do you fill?

For me, it seems like there are several good individual players on the Knicks, but there isn’t very much chemistry as a team. If the chemistry can be improved by adding –or subtracting– just a few elements, we’d be well on our way towards getting back into the playoffs and finally being competitive after years of residing at the bottom of the Atlantic Divsion.

That said, I think this draft would be well spent on either a fundamental point guard, or a defensive big man. The way last season went, the Knicks have neither in my eyes.

Sixth isn’t too bad. Obviously first or second would have been instant gratification for our Knicks, but the odds were best that we would get the sixth, and that’s what we ended up getting.

A lot can happen leading up to the sixth draft pick a month from now. We could trade up or down, players’ stock may rise or fall during the Orlando Pre-draft workouts, so we’ll see what Mr. Walsh and Mr. D’Antoni come up with when the time comes.

Tonight we find out where exactly the New York Knicks will pick in the 2008 NBA draft lottery this June. Again, we’ll be somewhere from 1-3 or 5-8, depending on the luck of the draw.

Let’s go Knicks!

Time to bring back some basketball magic to Madison Square Garden.

Didn’t think I’d make it to the Earl “The Perl” Monroe signing this past weekend at J&R, but I did have some time free up at the last minute, so I hopped on a train downtown at the buzzer so to speak. By the time I got there, they were getting ready to leave and there was basically no line to see one of the guys responsible for last bringing the city of New York “the shiny stuff.” Never met the guy before, it was an honor to meet Knick royalty and he was down to earth and friendly.

I got to chat with him a bit too–should have recorded it so it could have been an interview for Knicksdefense, but then again there was a grumpy looking PR guy sitting right next to him that probably would have prohibited any type of audio/video recording.

First thing I said was good job with the sudden MSG commentating at the end of the season. He said thanks and that it was his first time calling Knick games and enjoyed it. I told him that the Knicks seemed to play better while he was there and he agreed (Pearl’s time as an MSG announcer basically paralleled Wilson Chandler’s emergence towards the end of the season). He does not know if MSG is going to ask him back to call more games next season as of yet. I can see a vacancy opening up, especially if Kenny Smith somehow becomes GM somewhere…

But then I asked Pearl if he thought Mike D and Donnie Walsh will be able to turn it around, and he said “they have to.” I kind of made a remark that anyone could do a better job than Isiah, and then, knowing this guy just got some paychecks from MSG, tried to cover my ass by saying, “well, it wasn’t all Isiah’s fault because they were also a mess when he got here,” but this is all he had to say about the Knicks’ recent failures under Isiah:

“Yeah, but those were all his guys.”

So it turns out I have something in common with Pearl, and from the other Knicks blogs I’ve read throughout the years, Clyde doesn’t think Isiah’s made the right moves in New York either.

I love J&R. I ended up buying a laptop a few minutes later. If it was a marketing ploy to get customers in the door it worked. I should have had him sign the laptop, but then I couldn’t return it in case I end up not liking it for some reason…

Over the past four years, it was my understanding that Isiah Thomas does not think too highly of European basketball players, so why did they recently put him on a plane to go over there and scout them?