I had been avoiding getting into the Knicks thing because fuck 'em but for everyone who is going OM GTHE KNICKS ARE FURREAL!11 uh dude did you guys really not pay attention to last season? I have been avoiding discussing it because I hate Carmelo Anthony and seeing him succeed is going to be the biggest buzzkill for me personally. Besides the playoffs Woodson is up to 21-6, and even if you figure he is due for a course correction it looks like he should be a 60% win level coach, and he did finish turning around what had been to that point a bad squad. A lot of people were just ascribing it to Jeremy Lin but that is completely missing the point seeing how they performed with Lin out, and that by the end Lin was shooting very badly in some of these games (like 4/17 in the Sixers win).
With Lin: beat Pacers at home, Pacers away next game, Sixers away
Without Lin: beat Magic w/Howard, lost to Hawks away, lost to Pacers away, beat Magic w/Howard away, beat Bulls w/Rose, lost to Bulls away next game w/o Rose, lost to Heat, beat Celtics, beat Hawks away, beat Clippers
I hold the view usually that how you perform against bad teams matters too, I know some people can only fixate on the performance against good teams so I just laid that out...none of the losses were 20 point blowouts or anything, so you could see even though the Knicks still lost to the Heat (3-0 with Lin, 6-4 without against good teams) they were obviously really performing at a high level under Woodson. Fluke or not, Anthony shot 49.5% too (this season 43.5% so far), I think that playing too slow (30th/30 pace) is returning Anthony to bad habits a little much. The Knicks really will be a 60-65% win squad with Woodson in charge :|