Schmeelk: Knicks' Effort Against Warriors Showed How Far They Are Away
By John Schmeelk
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The Knicks' game against the Warriors on Wednesday night got ugly in a hurry.
But losing to the defending NBA champion, on their home court, is in no way a crime. Even getting blown out by 30 on its own isn't something to become apoplectic about. The Knicks weren't the first team to get eviscerated at Golden State and they won't be the last.
The problem is how the game was lost.
It was nothing you could see the in box score. You had to watch the game. It was like the Washington Generals playing the Harlem Globetrotters. It was like a team from the And One Mix Tape Tour heading down to the local YMCA and playing an over 40-year-old rec league team. It was like taking a really bad team from three decades ago, putting it in a time machine, and asking it to compete against the baddest offensive team of the 21st century.
It looked like the two teams were playing two completely different brands of basketball.
Watching Jose Calderon try to guard Stephen Curry was like watching my French bulldog "Cousteau" trying to run stride for stride with my editor's purebred greyhound on the track. He tries his hardest, but no matter what he does he just can't keep up. It isn't his fault and it isn't Calderon's. The Knicks literally have no chance against a team like that due to physical limitations. Calderon is also on a long list of players to get victimized by Curry this season. This is not meant to blast him.
The Calderon-Curry matchup was just a symptom of the larger disease. The Knicks looked painfully slow. They looked slow running up and down. They looked slow moving without the ball. Their passes were a couple beats slower than the Warriors'. Curry & Co. were a blur moving up and down the court, playing with speed and joy. The balled whipped from side to side, and went wherever Golden State wanted.
The Knicks, on the other hand, plodded. The ball was walked up. It went into the post as players away from the ball went through the motions at half speed. While the Warriors looked to be having the time of their lives, the Knicks looked detached. Carmelo Anthony said as much after the game when he commented it didn't look like the team was competing out there.
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Here's the thing: I think the Knicks were trying to compete. They did their best. They were just so outclassed it didn't look like it. At the end of the first half, Kyle O'Quinn tried to sprint down the court and beat the buzzer for a layup. After watching the Warriors sprint around, it looked like he had 20-pound weights tied to his feet. He was going as fast as he could and tried as hard as he could, but that's what it looked like.
It comes down to talent and player utilization. The Knicks simply don't have many great athletes. The only players that looked like they could physically run with the Warriors were Derrick Williams, Jerian Grant, Anthony (at power forward) and Kristaps Porzingis (but only if he was playing center). No one else really looked like they belonged out there. Langston Galloway did the most with his physical gifts, but he is limited physically as well.
The players also weren't helped by their coach. Kurt Rambis played the Warriors like he would a normal team. He started big with Lopez and Porzingis, and too often kept two traditional bigs out there at the same time. In a game against Golden State, Porzingis needed to see more time at center with Anthony at the four, Arron Afflalo at the three, Galloway at the two and Grant at point guard.
Athletically speaking, that group would have had a chance. Grant only played after Jose Calderon got hurt. Williams should have played power forward, not small forward off the bench. Sasha Vujacic shouldn't have played at all.
Why Rambis decided that a game against the Warriors was the best time to blow the dust off of Kevin Seraphin, no one can feasibly understand. He ended up playing more minutes than Williams against an opponent that feasts on teams with slower defensive-averse big men. It didn't make any sense.
Also evident was the weakness of Rambis' defensive schemes. He lamented a while back how the team was too worried about guarding the 3-point line, and had to get back to defending the paint. He insinuated that Derek Fisher getting the team to guard the 3 better this year was a bad thing, when in fact his improvement in that space was one of the biggest reasons for the Knicks' early season success. Too many times the Warriors' shooters were unmolested firing wide-open treys.
Likewise, on offense, the Warriors were creating movement with screens and rolls, while the Knicks were working through the post in stagnant sets.
The fact the two philosophies implemented by the two teams coming from two very different decades was never more apparent. Can the Knicks win playing that way? There's no way to know, but it didn't look that way on Wednesday. They looked like a team that was outmatched not just physically, but philosophically as well. The former will only change with the importing of better, younger, more athletic players. The latter will require a serious change by the team's president that he has shown no willingness to make.
Either way, if the Knicks even want to be in the conversation to be one of the teams with a chance to knock off a team like the Warriors one day, a lot of things are going to have to change. It is on Phil Jackson's shoulders to make that happen.
For everything Knicks, Giants and the world of sports, follow John on Twitter at @Schmeelk
