Danny "Not Goth" Ferry is doing things down in Atlanta with what will prove to be an alien artifact as far as the Knicks are concerned: cap space. Be wary of Ferry, he oversaw two league best Cavaliers season records and his two tenures as Vice President of Basketball Operations in San Antonio have been successful. His return to the East, along with other comings and goings, can mark the tilting of a cyclical balance in favor of Eastern Conference basketball.
Derrick Rose and Danny Granger are poised to return to action for teams that haven't missed them too much. The Heat are the Heat regardless of what happens this post season. Long time blue and orange elixir sipper Rajon Rondo- he really, really likes playing against the Knicks- will also be back, but his is a team that has space to be made, so the verdict is yet to be out on the 2013-14 Celtics. Andrew Bynum didn't play at all for the 76ers this season. He didn't play a single minute for a team in a Conference where big men can run rampant. He doesn't even need to worry about defense too much, he just needs to get into the post and clock in. We are all avid viewers of the Roy Hibbert show currently being filmed in Indiana and Miami. We remember the "Brook Lopez All-Star Hip Hip Hooray" and the Bulls shameless brand of big man sloth ball- megafauna sloths to be exact. The Toronto Raptors are out and about looking for a new GM amidst a reconstruction period that has reeled in the likes of Rudy Gay and Kyle Lowry. Keeping it in the Atlantic Division we witnessed a heartless Nets team pick up 49 wins in their first season in Brooklyn. This was good enough for a 4th seed berth, only 5 wins less than the Knicks. Did I mention that they did this without a single piece of evidence that anything remotely close to a heart existed in the chests of their players? Just checking.
-You left out the Knicks.
- Oh, yeah. Them.
- Well?
- No, they're not well.
- But they won the Atlantic Division and a playoff series. They have the 6th man of the year and the scoring champ.
- They're also paying Marcus Camby millions for the next two seasons.
- Where's the nearest leather shop?
- Google it. Just try not to go full goth.
Depressing hypotheticals aside, let's come up with a thesis centered around divisional statistics. The Southeast Division, home of the defending champion Miami Heat, won a total of 180 games. 66 of those wins are accounted for by the Heat. This is nice. Great. Fantastic. Wait, there's a problem here. In a division with 5 teams how can 1 team be responsible for over 1/3 of the wins? Oh yeah, because the Wizards, Bobcats, and Magic play there. No member of this tremendous trio could crack 30 wins in a full 82 game season. The Central Division is slightly better, and definitely more competitive. A total of 185 wins, the 3rd, 5th, 8th seeds, and 2 teams that couldn't pick up 30 wins. The Atlantic Division is a much scarier place. 212 wins in total with the 2nd, 4th, and 7th seeds. The bottom two teams came in 9th and 10th and they surpassed 30 wins. The average team placement in the Atlantic was 6.4, Central's was 8 (last playoff spot), and Southeast came in last at 9.6 (out of the playoffs & the worst average team placement in the NBA).
Okay, here's some more depressing stuff coated with nice thoughts. The Knicks will make an appearance in the playoffs next season. Well, maybe. The acquisition of veterans to flank a scoring forward is a nod to the Dallas Mavericks strategy that won them their sole championship. That hasn't boded well for them since and they actually missed the playoffs this season. Yet one cannot fathom missing out on the post season or the remote possibility that the Knicks do anything positive without- I hate saying this- gifting Carmelo Anthony a couple of players opposing defenses have to worry about. I didn't ask for Melocentricity, you probably didn't either, but that's what we got. Tesla would have us paying nothing for our energy needs, the world went with Edison. Much like Tesla the Knicks are so overspent (broke, sorta) and overcontractually obligated (dumb) they're not realistically competing for a title in 2014. Anthony may very well have to settle for island living when the playoffs come around. During some necessary exploration he will find Amare Stoudemire's tree etchings and camp grounds, the carcasses of fires built to keep him warm during unseasonably cold nights, and a diary in which STAT mostly dwells on his earliest days as a Knick. He may even find Amare Stoudemire.
After all, it is no coincidence that Woodson and Wilson are such similar names.
-Alex Moran
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