Danilo Gallinari says there is nothing wrong with his shot that some extra shooting can’t fix — if only his wrist would allow it. Meanwhile, Mike D’Antoni essentially says there is nothing wrong with Gallinari’s wrist that making a few shots can’t cure.
The Knicks, up seven points on the Trail Blazers with 5:15 to go, laid an egg at the end of Saturday night’s home opener. And it wasn’t as if Raymond Felton, for one, was chicken to take shots down the stretch. He had the Knicks’ only field goal the rest of the way.
That was largely because after following up an 0-for-6 in Boston on Friday night with a 2-for-9, Gallinari, the team’s essential zone beater and potential Amar’e Stoudemire facilitator, was buried so far down D’Antoni’s bench that Gallinari might as well have been in the training room receiving treatment.
Even if he doesn’t much need it, according to his coach.
“Maybe, because of his wrist bothering him a little bit, it’s messed up his confidence a little bit,” said D’Antoni. “Again, the more that we make a big deal out of it . . . I think he’s just gotta fight and hunker down and his time will come.
“Everyone will go through a little slump,” D’Antoni said. “Talk to me months from now and we’ll talk about it. He just needs to pick it up a little bit.”
Sounds like the coach and player first have to pick up the dialogue a little bit. When a coach thinks a player is exaggerating a physical issue, there is a problem between them, or eventually will be.
Let any of us, D’Antoni included, feel Gallinari’s pain. When it’s not in a cast and doubt gets cast, relationships between player and team can become a lot more irreparable than any sore wrist.
“It’s not an excuse; I would never use it,” said Gallinari, but, of course, he is.
And almost as naive as it is for Gallinari, a third-year NBA player with English as his second language, to expose himself to a typecasting of hypochondria is for an eight-year veteran coach to feed that characterization and still believe everything is going to be fine between him and an important player.
Whatever his pain threshold, Gallinari is better off suffering silently. And D’Antoni is better off finding another way to get an important player going rather just suggesting he suck it up.
“For now I cannot do a lot of shooting like I used to because of my wrist, but I think I just have to find my rhythm,” said Gallinari.
And D’Antoni, who threw open the possibility of rotation change after the game, can best help Gallinari locate that rhythm by removing him from the rotation until he feels healthy, then bringing him along off the bench.
Wilson Chandler likes to shoot, in the first three games for good reason, which is why he is best used as a reserve while Stoudemire is getting a rest.
That said, the Knicks would be better off having Chandler start for now, or at least better off finding out how that works.
Only Gallinari knows how much he is hurting. But everyone knows how much shooting like this is killing the Knicks.