Once again, Jeff Clark at CelticsBlog has rounded up NBA bloggers to do previews for their respective teams in the early, hope-filled, (largely) basketball-less months of September and October. I'm honored once again to be part of the blogging contingent this year. I'll be posting links in the coming days to everyone's outstanding work, but you can also take a look at the schedule if you have particular teams you want to keep an eye out for.

Team Name: New York Knicks

Last Year's Record: 29-53

Key Losses: David Lee, Al Harrington

Key Additions: Amar'e Stoudemire, Anthony Randolph, Raymond Felton, Kelenna Azuibuike, Ronny Turiaf, Timofey Mozgov


What Significant Moves Were Made During the Off-Season?

After two seasons of scorched earth roster decimation, Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni actually got down to the business of building a team. Sure, a certain prized free agent decided to go elsewhere as part of a SuperFriends package in South Beach, and no small amount of fretting took place among Knick fans as coveted plan B free agent Joe Johnson was signed to an absurd contract by the Atlanta Hawks.

But Walsh promised backup plans covering every letter of the alphabet, and he delivered by: 1) signing Amar'e Stoudemire to a max contract, 2) pulling off a small coup by trading David Lee to the Golden State Warriors for Kelenna Azubuike, Ronny Turiaf, and is-he-a-head-case-or-a-crazy-transformational-multi-positional-player Anthony Randolph 3) acquiring PG Ray Felton in a very thin market for guards for a reasonable two year, $15.8m deal, 4) signing young Russian center Timofey Mozgov to a 3 year $9.7m deal, again reasonable given the scarcity of bigs, and 5) drafting and signing second round picks Andy Rautins and Landry Fields, with the latter making enough waves in the Summer League to merit especially high praise from ESPN's David Thorpe.

The Knicks also retained Bill Walker, and signed Roger Mason and Patrick Ewing Jr. to fill out the roster.

What are the team's biggest strengths?

The roster has been turned over so drastically, with such interesting pieces replacing the high-usage, high-maintenance expiring contracts of the last 2 years, that it's easy to respond with a miasma of hopeful one-word proclamations: "youth!" "potential!" "athleticism!" "versatility!". In last year's preview, I referred to the D'Antoni system as the team's biggest strength, which in restrospect reflected a much too hopeful expectation on my part that the system could turn corned beef hash into gold (or at least hash with edible gold strands).

The strength of this year's Knicks is its depth and the increased number of players who better fit D'Antoni's system; in particular, a surplus of versatile wings and inside players who have experience playing the pick and roll on offense, who have played for running teams, and who can better protect the rim and guard more positions on defense. For the last two years, David Lee was the hub of the system, setting screens,  diving to the basket, popping out for a jumper, or managing the offense from the top of the key and finding shooters. Lee had too many ball-dominant teammates, however, and those teammates were terrible defenders, with every defensive switch producing a freeway to the rim or a wide open jumper for the opposing team.

This season Amar'e, Randolph, Turiaf and Mozgov -- in conjunction with Felton, Chandler, Douglas and Gallinari --  all give the Knicks more options on both ends of the floor that they didn't have in the past. The improvements may be modest, but this will be a much more interesting team in terms of both its offensive and defensive execution, especially if Randolph and Gallinari are able to realize their potential as playmakers and defenders. Last year Jared Jeffries fulfilled a valuable role as D'Antoni's swiss army knife player, except for his unfortunately atrocious hands and numerous liabilities on the offensive end -- Randolph and Gallinari promise much more.

And while there's some justified skepticism about Amar'e as a modest (and more fragile) upgrade over David Lee, at his best he's one of the most talented and efficient power forwards on offense in the league, and he'll be driven to prove he didn't simply benefit from having one of the league's greatest point guards dishing him the ball at his former team.

What are the team's biggest weaknesses?

Health and team cohesion are notable and obvious concerns -- Stoudemire's past injury history is well documented, but it's also notable that the 3 arrivals from the David Lee trade played a grand total of 84 games combined in 2009-10. (There are some questions about whether Azubuike will be ready at the start of the season, and how serious the injury really is). Additionally, for all the excitement about the new roster, there's still a curious lack of guard depth and outside shooting, which may explain why Rautins was signed despite underwhelming college numbers and Summer League play.

D'Antoni's system remains highly point guard driven, which puts a lot of pressure on Felton to make the offense run. He will probably log huge minutes as the primary point guard the same way Duhon had to in his first year. Felton has been an average point guard in his career -- he's likely to get the "D'Antoni bounce" in the transition from Larry Brown's system, but he's an expedient option rather than an inspiring one. There's some hope that returning to a faster system like the one Felton played at in college will benefit him - the Bobcats were in the bottom five in percentage of shots taken and points produced within the first 15 seconds of the shot clock last year, categories where the Knicks were in the top three, so it should be quite an adjustment.