Post by Admin on Nov 27, 2013 12:08:33 GMT -4
I am a Knicks, Yankees and Giants fan my teams haven't lived up to playing well this season as a matter of fact the NY teams are sucking like crazy. The Knicks camp are not playing together Melo and Stoudemire are not seeing eye 2 eye should I say they don't work well with others or each other. More news about my Knicks.....read and if your a fan don't be shy here share we look and take notes.
Yes Melo hold your head down in SHAME 
The N.B.A. season is still in its infancy, but it feels like ages ago when the Nets were celebrated for adding two potential Hall of Famers and the Knicks received at least a few pats on the back for acquiring a sweet-shooting 7-footer who was once a No. 1 overall pick.
During the course of 13 games, the conversation has shifted from which team is better to which team is worse. With the Knicks 3-10 and Nets 4-10, the preseason optimism seems to have been foolish. Kevin Garnett, one of the Nets’ acquisitions, looks old and limited. Andrea Bargnani, the most significant addition to the Knicks, is still incapable of playing defense or rebounding despite his size and pedigree. Both teams have had to deal with injuries to key players, and it is unclear when either team will be at full strength.
For the Nets, especially, this has to come as a shock. The team was perceived to be a potential threat to the Miami Heat after a trade for Garnett and Paul Pierce and other upgrades to the roster.
In town while his team was playing the Nets earlier this season, Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said the Nets would need time to learn to play together, as his team did after acquiring LeBron James and Chris Bosh in 2010.
“We all thought it would be easier and more seamless than it was,” Spoelstra said.
To put things in perspective, the Heat struggled to an 8-5 record through 13 games, which hardly puts them in the same category as the current Nets.
Regardless of the struggles, anyone writing off the Knicks or the Nets has not been paying attention to the Eastern Conference. In the past 10 seasons, nine teams have qualified for the playoffs despite having losing records. This season, with the conference more top-heavy than ever, five teams with losing records are in position for a chance at postseason participation.
As bad as it might seem for the Knicks, they are only two games behind Philadelphia for the No. 8 seed and only three games out of the No. 4 spot. The Nets are a half-game closer to each position.
In fact, all the Nets have to do is look to Pierce, a member of the 2003-4 Boston Celtics team, which made the playoffs despite going 36-46. The team’s .439 winning percentage was the lowest among the playoff teams of the past 10 seasons, but the playoff checks still cleared.
The recent history of the East makes it easy to poke fun at a league in which a little more than half the teams make the playoffs, but for professional basketball, that is actually an improvement on the early days.
The lowest winning percentage for a playoff team came in 1952-53, when the Baltimore Bullets (no relation to the later Bullets franchise that became the Washington Wizards) were 16-54 (. 229). In that season, only one team from each division was eliminated from the playoffs, and the Bullets beat out the Philadelphia Warriors, who were 12-57.
The 1947-48 Celtics benefited from a similar setup: six of eight teams in the Basketball Association of America (one of the two leagues that combined to form the N.B.A. in 1949) made the playoffs. Three seasons before Red Auerbach took over the franchise and made it a juggernaut, the 1948 Celtics made the playoffs with a 20-28 record.
Those teams are ancient history, but the 1967-68 Chicago Bulls aren’t, and they started the season 1-15, yet made it to the playoffs with a 29-53 record. Nearly two decades later, in 1985-86, the Bulls struggled in Michael Jordan’s long absence because of an injury and were 17-34 at the All-Star break. But they made the playoffs with a 30-52 record. The team lost in the first round, but Jordan scored 63 points in Game 2, an early sign of what was to come.
The Knicks, in their nearly 70-year existence, have made the postseason a half-dozen times with losing records. The worst mark was 36-45 in 1966-67. That team, which included Willis Reed, even took one game from the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.
The Nets? They, too, have sneaked into the postseason a half-dozen times with a losing record, including three occasions when they were in the American Basketball Association. In one instance, in 1972-73, they made the A.B.A. playoffs with an utterly embarrassing 30-54 record.
The Nets should do better than that this season. It is a long campaign, after all, and the Knicks and the Nets are within striking distance of respectability despite their bad starts. “The only way to improve was to experience all the ups and all the downs,” Spoelstra said of how his Miami team became a force.
The Nets and the Knicks have the downs covered. Now they just have to find the ups.
C
