The Rebel wrote:2008 was one of the worst eastern conferences the league has ever seen, you see the eastern conference teams all have to play each other 52 or so games a year, making almost impossible that the eastern conference is near as bad as the hype. Hell right now boston is already at 10 wins, so is your argument that Boston cannot win 27 games out of the next 58, but that the Knicks can win 50% of their games through the end of the year?
You are making these odds seem tougher than they are, they are 2.5 games behind with 61 to play.
I have to wonder have you even watched any Knicks games? You can bring up how good Melo is, but 1 player cannot do it alone, that is a roster full of bad streaky jumpshooters and injury prone bigs with limited skill sets. I have watched as many Carmelo Anthony games as anybody, and I can tell you he is not the guy to carry a roster like that, and in fact that is one reason you are hearing all about his stats and him wanting out. You ask who is better then the Knicks are in their division, it is an easy argument that all of those teams has been so far and all of them have the potential to get even better.
I'm not saying the roster is great by any means but in following a mediocre team for years you notice down the stretch of the regular season which teams really want losses more. You'll see teams trot out D-League lineups and make deliberate tank moves down the stretch of games. The Knicks have zero incentive to do this and have a really good player, a player who has never been on a losing team before in his NBA career in Melo and those two factors alone will likely keep this team out of the top (bottom) 5.
Let's go through the teams shall we? Boston, traded 2 overpaid well into their decline players for picks, they are missing by far their best player who is due back soon from a knee injury, yet you seem to think they will not win 2 more games then their pace indicates now? The Raptors just traded a very ineffecient chucker who has shown to be a net negative for his team, and got back 3 decent role players, yet they are going to get considerably worse (there are arguments that the deal made them better). The Nets have been missing their best player and 6th man since the start of the season, plus their starting SF, yet they are not going to get better if they get healthy? The one team I will give you is the 76ers, but the Knicks are already out losing them as well. The Knicks on the other hand still have Chandler out, but outside of him have been relatively healthy this season (considering Melo usually misses 15 game per year, Amare is playing this week, and Kmart is healthier then he has ever been), personally i do not get why so many are convinced that they turn the team around.
I don't have faith in any of those teams more than I do the Knicks. I'm not saying New York will definitely pull out of that division, but I don't see a single team that looks like a legitimate playoff team, which would really scare me trading arguably our best asset for that pick because I could pretty easily seeing every other team in that division winning 30 or so games. Brooklyn has no incentive to tank either but they look so old and slow and the guys who came from Boston have looked so terrible that I can't really count on them at this point.
Also why would you bring up Toronto? Did they change the rules that the top 2 finishers in a division must be in the playoffs? Last I checked it was the top 1, and the Knicks are 3 1/2 back of Boston, and 2 1/2 back of the 8th place Bulls.
I am familiar with how playoff seeding works. I only brought up Toronto to show another example of how bad that division is. There is not a single quality team in the bunch. That division is up for grabs and no ones out of it. The Knicks are not 3.5 back of Boston they are 2.5 back.
) and grew tired of Beal's incessant ability to brick wide open jumpers. He had a few games where he shot the rock well but I expected quite a bit more, frankly.
