post game stuff updated in the second post of this thread.

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To all of my friends, comrades and companions at PF.com

Thank you for another great season!

Great games from our starters except Sheed, man he mailed this one in tonight. Rip and Tay had great games but Ben had an extremely good game, quiet as kept.

Arroyo was good tonight, very impressive. Dyess may have finally turned the corner in the 2nd half, as he hit a few J's tonight......SWWEEEEET.

This bench needs an aggressive player at the wing position, I mean a cat that will attack with no conscience, like a Jamal Crawford, we could even sacrifice some defense for this type of player, dare I say........Call Spree??!!??

Dale Davis is going to be a saving grace come playoff time,and will make Joe look like a genius.

Right now I would trade DMC+Delfino for Al Harrington and sign Spree. We won't be able to afford DMC on the open market with Ben's new contract,Tay's new contract, & Chauncey opting out of his last year, meaning we'll have to pay him a year sooner. By then maybe JMax andAJ will start to bring it and Tay and Rip will still be the primary scorers.

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Play hard, Play smart, Play together, share the ball, have fun....Play the right way!!!!!!

KGREG, I agree that some wild man off the bench like Spree would be a lift to this "who's going to step it up bench". Right now, we are winging it with a bench that has no identity because they have yet to show that they can win a game for us. Can somebody go back and check the box scores to see if our bench has scored more than 25 points in any game this season.

Adding Harrington and Spree could create some ego problems and headaches, but if Spree is still watching games from home in February and Harrington's team is still in the cellar, then I say go for it as both should be hungry and frustrated enough to play by the rules and not disrupt the chemistry. I can see 25-30 points a night from them where is I am willing to bet anyone in this forum that we won't see more than 15 a night from Darko and Delfino combined the rest of the season if that many.!

tonight is just a bad game for darko. with any player just learning the nba game he will have good games and he will have bad games. he shouldn't get shipped out of town after every bad game. what about the game when he had about 4 blocks in a few minutes. how come you didn't take that as an indication of what to expect from him. darko is basically a rookie he has no game time experience to speak of. look at ben gordon he sucked at first for chicago but he found his way. darko is trying to find his way 5 minutes at a time.

darko isn't complaining about lack of playing time. he was complaining about when he is playing. flip is proving that playing darko doesn't lose you any games. flip should notice as darko's playing time went down his performance went down. darko should be getting consistent minutes like he was in the preseason if flip expects consistent results.

I say we trade Darko and CD for Josh Smith and Josh Childress. Atlanta is dumb enough to make that move.

observations from being at the game...

the boo birds were the first ones to see larry, then there were claps, and overall it was about 50/50. a lot of people gave larry a standing ovation when the players went over and hugged him. unfortunately he didn't do his signature 1 or 2-handed arm flick of digust when unhappy with a refs call...was waiting all game for that. but his post-game press conference had a lot of 'specials' and 'neat' and 'great' and 'huge' words thrown in there which made up for it.

the crowd was DEAD, moreso than most of the regular season games i've gone to. i think a lot of people got tickets who aren't huge fans, just wanted to be there because it was supposed to be a big deal. people weren't even making noise when the knicks were FT-shooting, which is rare. the crowd made some noise toward the end of the 3rd (btw WOW holding the knicks to 8 points), but the 4th started and you could hear a pin drop. when the knicks started coming back...normally that's fan time to give the team a boost, but instead people were heading for the exits. i truly believe if the crowd stayed into it a little longer that we wouldn't have given up that lead.

as for the game...

- darko didn't look very good but wasn't given much of a chance.
- i dunno why delfino is not given a shot, i can understand why flip likes TP on the floor so much but c'mon let's see what delfino can do.
- marbury thinks he's allen iverson with driving the lane, etc., but clearly he's not.
- channing frye is a BIG man, and he's got some game. he got a lot of offensive rebounds that ben normally would have gotten, although i will say the sore legs were noticeable for ben.
- as soon as mcdyess drove the lane (didn't shoot, passed the ball), he hit 2 jumpers in a row. he should keep that trend up of going to the hole first.
- dale davis is going to be huge come playoff time. when he was in he showed the knicks' rookie bigs what it's all about, preventing 4 straight consecutive shots from going in in the span of about 20 seconds.
- one of the refs was absolutely atrocious tonight; young kid lookin like he wanted to be the star of the floor
- i wanna see jmax play in these situations, against the newer players in the league, and show what he's made of.
- go pistons!!!!

also, the isiah tribute stuff was really somethin, awesome to be a part of. and carlos arroyo did very well today, i remember tellin my friend in the 3rd/4th that i hadn't even noticed any dropoff w/out chauncey running the point. he didn't get any friendly calls from the officials though lol.

It's happened three times. Against Philly the bench scored 29. Against the Raps the bench scored 42 (!) and against the Nuggets, 43!

The boxscores:

76ers boxscore

Raptors boxscore

Nuggets boxscore

If you're curious, the most futile effort by our bench was against the Nets, when they managed all of 6 points.

The evidence:

Nets boxscore

The Knicks had a lb scoring drought in the 3rd that or the piston d showed up i can’t decide which but holding the Knicks to 8 points in the 3rd quarter was big. I know I should be happy as hell with how they shut them down but what happened to us in the 4th. We were up by 19 and the only sub that went in was Dyess for sheed and we blew that lead down to what 6 or less. 6 turnovers or Billups that is not like him at all and 3 came in the 4th I don’t know why other bench guys did not get in with that kind of lead imo that’s messed up but to blow that kind of lead sucked. I think the Pistons backed off so they would not make lb look bad, but why?
I bet Ben was pissed that the rook Ariza dunked on him the Knicks were acting like they won the game after that. If Ben is healthy I say he throws it back in the rooks face. 12-2 great start and 40 for rip he might not make the all-star team but he deserves it if he keeps playing at this level.

I hate Spree, but I was thinking the same thing. That tells you how concerned about the bench I am right now. Maybe that will change with time.

I hope you're right about Davis.