Mike D’Antoni
It was on, then it was off, now it’s on again.
After seeing the Knicks start the season slowly and having pundits call for Mike D’Antoni’s head, then having Ivy League savior Jeremy Lin come swooping in to save the season, the head coach might now face his toughest challenge yet: incorporating his returning superstars into a system with Lin at the helm.
“Let’s face it, the pressure is on the coaching staff now to make this work,” said Hubie Brown, the former Knicks coach who will be calling Sunday afternoon’s game against the defending champion Mavericks on ABC. “It’s not on Jeremy Lin or Amar’e Stoudemire, they’re running what the coaching staff is telling them to run. So now it’s up to the coaching staff to blend the running style and to get everyone their touches.”
Tonight at the Garden against the Hornets, superstar Carmelo Anthony is expected to rejoin Lin, Stoudemire and big man Tyson Chandler on the court after missing five games with assorted injuries. That creates a lineup that has a very different makeup than the one Lin has managed to win with — a lineup that revived what was a dead Knicks’ season.
“Let’s give Carmelo Anthony a chance to buy into the coaching philosophy of Mike D’Antoni, backed up by a point guard who is delivering at a level we haven’t seen since 1977,” said Brown, referring to the fact that Lin’s 136 points through his first five NBA starts were the most since the NBA-ABA merger 35 years ago.
“Then incorporate all three guys as scorers,” Brown continued, “because all the great teams have three guys that score.”
Lin is a wild card in the Knicks’ equation, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound point guard who graduated from Harvard in 2010, wasn’t drafted, was waived by his two previous NBA teams, was demoted to the Developmental League numerous times, and, once picked up by the Knicks, played a total of 63 minutes before his breakout game against the Nets on Feb. 4.
“When you look at his game, he has incredible floor vision and that’s God-given,” Brown said. “He has the ability to make the plays in the painted area because of his size.”
But Brown, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005, believes Lin’s story is about a lot more than just his athletic talent.
“You have to go back into his character and his upbringing,” Brown said. “He had wonderful parents, an excellent family [who] brought out the best in him in understanding loyalties and hard work, and that’s what is capturing everyone. He’s not just capturing basketball beanies, he’s capturing the casual fan who is looking at this and saying, ‘Wow, this is something to follow.’ ”
Lin also has captured the imagination of D’Antoni, who is now getting back to the run-and-gun, pick-and-roll style that garnered him such acclaim in Phoenix. So if the Knicks coach is smiling a little bit more nowadays, a former Knicks coach knows why.
“It isn’t like they traded for this guy,” Brown said. “You got to chuckle, right?”