Everyone is giddy about the Knicks' surge in recent weeks, about Amare and Felton, about Fields, about renewed excitement around the league and MSG, and for good reason. (Sunday's win against Denver might have been the first time I felt the sheer rush of emotion from MSG actually wash over me from the television set). People also can't resist speculating on what could be next, with an unforgivingly difficult schedule the next six weeks after the easiest schedule in the NBA the first six. And of course, there are those never-ending free agent rumors.

I don't believe in coming down too hard on this Knicks team for piling up their wins against bad teams -- what's been most valuable about the schedule to date is how it has allowed the Knicks the luxury of growing as a team with so many new players. The schedule did provide subtle (and valuable) tests along the way: seven back to backs, including one with two afternoon games (the bane of NBA players), a short West coast road trip on the heels of a six game losing streak that forced the team to come together, learning to play and adjust to player injuries (notably Turiaf and Douglas), and developing the kind of thick skin and mental toughness necessary to overcome so many early excruciating close losses and deal with the expectations of an extremely anxious fan base.

The Knicks are still a work in progress, and a more prosaic, metrics based look at the team, courtesy of the NBA's John Schuhmann, says what most fans have seen during the winning streak: an elite offense (at least against mediocre teams) and a gradually deteriorating, bottom third of the league defense. It's reasonable to question how elite the offense can be against good teams: the Knicks have played six of the top 12 defensive teams in the league so far, and lost to four of them. The two wins came against the Bulls in the fourth game of the season (which featured a flukish 16-24 shooting performance on 3 pointers) and the Hornets without David West. Only against the Bulls were the Knicks above average on offense.

The Knicks can derive some comfort from the fact that most of those six games came before the current winning streak, and that the offense is clearly running at a higher level with the increased chemistry between Felton and Amare and the extremely hot shooting of Wilson Chandler (46% shooting on 3 pointers the last 10 games). But if this team is to evolve beyond 6th to 8th seed, happy to be in the playoffs territory (assuming we don't settle for knee-jerk "TRADE FOR MELO NOW!" type prescriptions), then some consideration of how to improve the defense would logically be part of the discussion.

Or would it? Cynics would claim that D'Antoni has never had any interest in defense, but his best teams in Phoenix were generally average or slightly above average -- they were never worse than 17th in the league in defensive efficiency. He prioritizes offense at a fast pace, but he looks at the numbers -  he surely isn't thrilled with his team being 23rd in the league currently on defense.

Getting Hurt In the Interior

The biggest culprit appears to be the interior defense, "led" by Amare Stoudemire. Stoudemire has never been a great defender, but he's looked particularly indifferent or unengaged early in games, especially as his minutes have gone up. And to be fair, the coaching staff seem to realize that acting as anchor of the defense and carrying the offense for 40+ minutes may be asking too much of Amare, so they've tolerated numerous defensive lapses in the interior, the same way they tolerated (or worked around) Steve Nash's shaky defense in Phoenix.

According to Hoopdata, the Knicks are the second worst team in the league in opponents shots attempted and made at the rim, allowing 26 attempts and 17 makes per game -- they are 11th in opponent FG% at the rim, one percentage point below league average. Teams that are successful at limiting shots at the rim tend to be strong defensive teams and good teams generally (with one or two exceptions): Indiana, Atlanta, Utah, Orlando and San Antonio. D'Antoni's Phoenix team in 2006-07 with Amare and Nash was in the middle of the pack (15th) in shots attempted and made at the rim, and 8th in FG% allowed. This Knick team isn't quite there in terms of forcing the opponent to take jumpers and limiting higher percentage attempts inside.

Early in the season, D'Antoni seemed to address this issue head on, based on his past experience with Stoudemire, as well as extensive experience with another defensively challenged power forward forced to play center in David Lee. In the first six games, the Knicks started Mozgov and played him (and Turiaf off the bench) heavily, both to give Amare rest and pair him with a center would could take the responsibility for defending big men and the paint against penetration. And in the first five games, the Knicks were able to keep opponent percentages at the rim below league average.

After a Turiaf injury in the seventh game of the season which forced him to miss four games (and limited his effectiveness for several more) -- along with Mozgov's rough adjustment to the NBA -- D'Antoni removed Mozgov from the starting lineup and started experimenting with more wing-heavy groups. There was still a commitment to a "big" lineup of sorts when Turiaf returned from injury during the West Coast road trip, as Turiaf started with Amare for several games. But after another flaring up of Turiaf's knee, the coaching staff made a change in the starting lineup for the 17th game of the season at Charlotte, and put Chandler at the power forward -- this change has stuck as the coaches see no need to mess with a good thing with the winning streak.

Again, all this occurred as Amare's minutes were iincreasing, and as the rotation was compressed from nine deep in the first 12 to 15 games to seven players receiving the bulk of the minutes more recently. Keeping Amare and Felton on the floor longer with Chandler has been excellent for the offense, but a less desirable result has been a lot of what we've seen lately: Amare pacing himself in order to avoid foul trouble, and barely contesting anything inside for two to three quarters.

Time to Revisit "Big" Lineups, or Anthony Randolph?

A lot of this may read like I'm picking on the toast of New York, the subject of all those "MVP" chants, but that's not the intention. Amare has actually been a pleasant surprise in so many areas of the game, and his commitment to defense (especially earlier in the season) is part of that package -- he hustles for loose balls and steals, has delivered some of the most memorable late game blocks in recent Knick history, and cares greatly about winning enough that he understands that defense is part of winning.

But since his foul trouble in Minnesota (which played a big part in the Knicks' worst loss of the season), his avoidance of fouls and pacing of his defensive play has been much more difficult to ignore, especially with the smaller lineups of the last eight games.

It isn't just winning with a breakneck offense that's empowered the coaches to maintain smaller lineups -- existing numbers on Knick lineups haven't been flattering to lineups that pair Stoudemire with Turiaf. A closer look at how they've played together in different games shows that there are a few extremely bad quarters (the first quarters against the Bucks and Kings, the fourth quarters against the Warriors and Bobcats) that skew these numbers negatively, and that they're certainly capable of being effective together in doses. The key seems to be Turiaf's ability to stay on the floor and avoid foul trouble or difficult matchups -- he turned a close game around against the Wizards last Friday by containing Blatche for example, but didn't do so well against Denver because of fouls and difficulty defending Al Harrington.

D'Antoni seems content with using Turiaf situationally when needed, and as long as Chandler is effective that seems warranted. What seems less sustainable, however, is leaving Amare exposed on the interior for two to three quarters, which good teams are likely to exploit more ruthlessly. For most of the streak, perhaps the most telling number has been how poor the team has been in the first quarter: the Knicks are 21st in the league in average first quarter margin, with an average 1.5 point deficit. In the second and third quarters, on the other hand, they are in the top 10, and most Knick fans are familiar with the drill by now where they allow close to 60 in the first half and then clamp down on defense (somewhat) in the 3rd quarter.

The Knicks are a good enough team to wear down mediocre opponents after shaky starts, and let Amare bring them home in the fourth if they are caught in a tight game. Against the likes of the Celtics, Heat, Magic and others on their upcoming schedule, that may not be enough. This is why not everyone is clamoring for Melo, and instead craves some interior help via trade, or a revisiting of more minutes for the "dual bigs" lineup -- or even a revival from the dead of Anthony Randolph, who's been locked down to the bench while the team wins.

The schedule for the rest of December and all of January is difficult enough that I suspect we may eventually see Randolph in some spot lineups against teams with size. That is, if he isn't traded -- but that's another story pertaining to the possible "upgrading" of this team that I'll leave for another time.