khandor’s sports blog

In last night’s victory against the Detroit Pistons, embattled New York Knick’s head coach, Mike D’Antoni, unveiled a new Starting Line-up for the home team:

PG, Tracy McGrady [6-8, 223], 34:28/MP
OG, Bill Walker [6-6, 230], 36:27/MP
SF, Danilo Gallinari [6-10, 225], 37:24/MP
PF, Al Harrington [6-9, 250], 35:45/MP
C, David Lee [6-9, 250], 43:56/MP

and, then, chose to give only 2 other players a significant number of minutes coming off the bench:

PG, Sergio Rodriguez [6-3, 176], 29:44/MP
OG/PG, Eddie House [6-1, 180], 19:27/MP

in what turned out to be a very tight, and effective, 7-Man rotation:

Detroit Pistons 104
NEW YORK KNICKS 128
Boxscore 

During this game, the Knicks used the following 5-Man Units with the associated +/- results:

LINE-UP TYPES FOR THE NEW YORK KNICKS vs Detroit Pistons, Wed Mar 03 2010
TIME	PG	OG	SF	PF	C	TYPE		+/-	DURATION
1st Quarter
12:00	McGrady	Walker	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	2 big G’s		+5	06:05
05:55	Rodriguez	McGrady	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	1 small G		0	02:36
03:19	Rodriguez	House	McGrady	Gallinari	Lee	2 small G’s		+5	03:19
2nd Quarter
12:00	Rodriguez	House	Walker	Harrington	Lee	2 small G’s		-6	04:36
07:24	McGrady	House	Walker	Gallinari	Harrington	1 small G		+11	04:04
03:20	McGrady	Walker	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	2 big G’s		-6	01:59
01:21	McGrady	House	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	1 small G		+3	01:21
3rd Quarter
12:00	McGrady	Walker	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	2 big G’s		-1	04:47
07:13	McGrady	House	Gallinari	Harrington	Lee	1 small G		-4	04:17
02:56	Rodriguez	House	Walker	Gallinari	Lee	2 small G’s		+2	02:56
4th Quarter
12:00	Rodriguez	House	Walker	Gallinari	Lee	2 small G’s		+1	03:11
08:49	McGrady	House	Walker	Harrington	Lee	1 small G		+14	06:00
02:49
TYPE			BY SHIFT			TOTAL +/-	TOTAL DURATION
2 big G’s			+5, -6, -1			-2	12:51
2 small G’s			+5, -6, +2, +1			+2	14:02
1 small G			0, +11, +3, -4, +14			+24	18:18

While some observers in the on-line hoops community might be scratching their heads today about the level of success which New York enjoyed last night, while playing without a “traditional” Point Guard in their Starting Unit, it should come as no surprise at all to regular readers of this blog.

If Mike D’Antoni elects to stick with this arrangement, which dramatically improves New York’s ability to REBOUND the ball for significant segments within a game, it will be very interesting, indeed, to see how this new 7-Man rotation holds up for the Knicks over their next 3 games:

at TORONTO RAPTORS [.500+; Tied for 24th in Rebounding Differential]
vs New Jersey
vs Atlanta [.500+; Tied for 24th in Rebounding Differential]

prior to heading out on the road for 5 consecutive games:

at SAN ANTONIO [.500+; 3rd in Rebounding Differential]
at MEMPHIS [.500+; 2nd in Rebounding Differential]
at DALLAS [.500+; 18th in Rebounding Differential]
at PHILADELPHIA
at BOSTON [.500+; 23rd in Rebounding Differential]

If any of New York’s upcoming opponents are asleep at the switch, during this late season stretch of games, it should not come as any sort of surprise to that team’s fans to see the Knicks rise up and steal more than 1 or 2 of these specific match-ups. 

—————————–

PS. Yours truly has advocated that Tracy McGrady be used at the Point Guard position, going back in time to his initial years in the NBA with the Toronto Raptors. Even after all these years, it is still gratifying to see him succeed when placed in this specific role by his head coach. Oh, what the Raptors could well have developed into, way back then, if the people responsible for running the franchise had truly known what they were doing, from a basketball acumen standpoint with the triumpherate of T-Mac/PG, Vince Carter/OG and Doug Christie/SF on their roster, in conjunction with a slew of solid Bigs that included the likes of Antonio Davis/PF, Kevin Willis/PF, Charles Oakley/PF, Jerome Williams/PF, Keon Clark/PF and Hakeem Olajuwon/C, over a series of years from 1998 to 2002. 

 

Tags: Al Harrington, Bill Walker, Danilo Gallinari, David Lee, Eddie House, Mike D'Antoni, need4sheed.com, New York Knicks, Sergio Rodriguez, Tracy McGrady

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Analytics, Basketball, NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.