Categories: SPORTS

Reviewing the Knicks’ 2006-07 Season

The Knicks ended their season with a last-second win and finished with a record of 33-49. Last night’s win was significant for two reasons. One, they avoided the dreaded 50-loss season and two, it tied the Knicks with the Bobcats for the 11th best record in the East. With the Knicks lottery pick going to the Bulls, that meant Chicago had just a 2.4% chance of landing the top slot in the draft.

Overall, it was a 10-game improvement over last season’s fiasco. Prior to this season, I speculated that a 30-win campaign would be a good year for the club. But the season was still a mixed bag for Knicks fans. By far the biggest accomplishment was the establishment of Eddy Curry into a force inside the paint. For all of his faults, Isiah Thomas deserves a lot of credit for Curry’s development.

Curry finished the year 22nd in the league in scoring with a 19.5 points per game average. He converted .576 percent of his shots, good for 4th in the league. He even did a slightly better job rebounding, as he upped his average from 6.0 to 7.0 rebounds per game. Curry got better as the season progressed, learning how to read double teams and passing out to the open shooter. He developed into a legitimate all-star, even if he did not make the mid-season team.

Another positive development for the Knicks during the season was the acceptance of point guard Stephon Marbury of his role on the team. Marbury played his best once he realized that Curry was the focal point of the offense. Marbury was still going to put up numbers, because of his jump-shooting ability, but he is now clearly not the team’s first option when it comes to points.

David Lee turned into perhaps the best sixth man in the league. The Knicks slide at the end of the season coincided with Lee being sidelined with an injured leg. The team could not reproduce his energy and rebounding. Rookie Renaldo Balkman turned into a nice surprise. He went from a head-scratcher of a pick when the Knicks took him in the first round into the high-energy player that big free agent acquisition Jared Jeffries was supposed to be.

However, there were even more negatives than positives surrounding the Knicks this season. While they improved 10 games for a year ago, that was due mostly to the dismal play of the team under Larry Brown, which led to a woeful 23 wins. Despite playing in the decrepit Eastern Conference, the club missed the playoffs for the fifth time in the past six seasons.

Channing Frye went from being one of the team’s building blocks after his rookie season to a player very much available in the right deal. Many wondered if Lee should have been in the starting rotation over Frye, who looked unsure of his role in the offense with the development of Curry.

The Knicks were booed at home often, a once unthinkable condition. They managed just 19 wins at Madison Square Garden, the sixth-worst home record in the league. Even in the Eastern Conference, the average playoff team won over 27 home games. In the Western Conference, playoff teams averaged nearly 30 home wins.

The defensive effort of the club still leaves a lot to be desired. Opposing teams averaged over 100 points per game against the Knicks, the fourth-worst mark in the Eastern Conference. Jeffries was brought in to be a stopper and he proved to be just as bad defensively as the rest of the team’s starters.

But the biggest disappointment of the year came when owner James Dolan announced that Thomas would return to the club. Previously, Dolan had given Thomas an ultimatum, saying that the club needed to show “evident progress” or else he would be fired. The implication was that Thomas needed to lead the Knicks to the playoffs to keep his job.

With the Knicks sitting with a 29-34 record, Dolan gave Thomas a multi-year extension, going back on his earlier promise to wait until the end of the season to decide Thomas’ fate. Once Thomas had his deal, the Knicks finished the year 4-15, although to be fair the team did have several players missing due to injuries. But it is at least a little curious how the team fell apart once Thomas was secure.

Ideally, Thomas’ role with the Knicks would be as the man in charge of the team’s drafts. He has shown a knack for finding talent from the college ranks. But his performance as a general manager has been awful – his best deal has been for Curry and he ended up giving away two lottery picks, including the #2 spot in last year’s draft – and his coaching record has not been much better.

Dolan believes that Thomas is the man to lead the Knicks back to the playoffs. I hope he’s right but I’d be lying if I said that I agreed with that conclusion. One thing I do know is that if Thomas can’t return the Knicks to the post-season with one of the top centers at his disposal while competing in a weak conference, well he should never get the chance to coach again.