New York Knicks: Still sitting at rock bottom

Linsanity

On February 4, 2012, the Knicks’ backup point guard did not play due to injury and Iman Shumpert, who started at the point guard position couldn’t get it going. He went 1-5 from the field in 25 minutes of play.

The Knicks had dropped 12 of their last 20 games before Jeremy Lin was put into the game against the Nets. That night and Lin would go off scoring 25 points to go along with seven assists, five rebounds and two steals leading the Knicks to a 99-92 win.

Linsanity was born.

Two days later, Lin had gone from being a bench warmer to the Knicks’ starting point guard against the Utah Jazz. And but for Carmelo Anthony leaving that game with a groin injury having only played five minutes and 49 seconds, Linsanity may have only been two really great games by that Asian-American guy that one time.

Why do I say that? Well, have a look at the video of Stephen A. Smith interviewing Anthony and asking him about Linsanity and tell me if you believe it when he says he loves it.

Frankly, his performance doesn’t convince me. But even if it did, looking at a bit more of what he said immediately after that paints a pretty clear picture of Anthony himself and one of the reasons Linsanity was doomed to be short-lived.

Being used to listening to Toronto Raptors players give interviews, his choice of words immediately following, “I love it”, jumped right out at me. I’ve become very used to each and every single member of the Raptors deflecting from themselves when asked about great performances and pointing squarely at themselves only when they underperform. It’s about the team, never about the individual.

In the first four sentences of this interview, not including the first time, he said, “I love it,” Anthony said 21 words. Five of them were I or variations thereof. For all of you lovers of analytics out there, that 23% of his words. He could have said something like, I love it. It’s great that the team is winning. It’s great for the fans. If we can keep this going we have a shot at turning our whole season around.

No, instead he said I, I’m, I, I, I’ve. Once again, for those of you wondering why Melo can’t get anyone to sign him right now…

Back to the topic at hand though.

On February 10th, when the Knicks were hosting Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers, Lin outscored Bryant with 38 points, the Knicks won 92-85 and the Garden was lit. This game was played with only an eight-man roster as Jerome Jordan, Renaldo Balkman, Amar’e Stoudemire, Toney Douglas, and Carmelo Anthony were all out with injuries.

Then, on February 24, Lin hit a buzzer-beating 3-point shot to get the win against the Raptors. To this day, my husband laments this moment any time the subject of Jeremy Lin comes up. He still can’t believe that happened.

Sure, for us looking at it in hindsight Linsanity was short-lived and only the smallest of blips in the Knicks’ troubled history but at the time, this was HUGE for Knicks’ fans. D’Antoni had decided to try something different and it was actually working.

Amar’e Stoudemire returned and things continued to go pretty well. Carmelo Anthony returned to the Knicks’ lineup on February 20 in a matchup with the Nets, the team against which Linsanity had begun. The Knicks lost 92-100.

With Lin in the starting lineup, the Knicks won their next six games in a row and then went on a slide where they won only three of the next 12 games including 6 consecutive losses with Anthony back in the starting lineup.

Remember what George Karl said about how Melo was addicted to the spotlight and hated sharing it? Yeah, all of the attention Jeremy Lin was getting must have just burned. Looking just a little deeper, there was even more reason for Anthony to be salty over Jeremy Lin’s success.

The Knicks were more successful when Lin outscored Anthony. The two started in 17 games together and Anthony outscored Lin 10 times in only three wins. In the seven games where Lin outscored Anthony, the Knicks won five games. Once again, Anthony couldn’t seem to put himself second to the success of his team.

Mike D’Antoni confirmed these issues years later saying that he couldn’t get Anthony to move to power forward to make it work with Lin at point guard. He said:

"So now it’s like, what are we going to do? We could see how to go and I didn’t know how to get there and with losing again and you’re trying to prod them and you’re trying to tell ’em to play harder and all the coach’s speak and communication just like deteriorated."

Then, Mike D’Antoni left, Lin got injured and the Knicks refused to match the offer the Houston Rockets made for Lin as an unrestricted free agent.

Linsanity was over.