Let's say this about Friday nights with the Knicks: I am truly impressed with the sheer variety of difficult losses this team is delivering. You wonder how many ways an excruciating loss can happen, and it doesn't matter whether there are no superstars, one, or two, the Friday Night Knicks keep delivering the surprises. (This time around, blowing an 11 point lead in the fourth quarter after delivering their best come from behind scoring run of the season in the third). One of these Fridays, who knows, they may provide the ultimate shock and deliver a win.

That's it for the levity, since I've never been a big believer in curses. (I do wish they had picked another day besides Friday to have these kinds of losses). This loss came down to the stars looking quite mortal down the stretch of a back to back -- Carmelo is understandably bearing the brunt of the heat with his worst game since a loss to the Hornets as a Nugget, but Billups with 8 turnovers and Amare with 20 points on 16 shots and 5 turnovers of his own (and a really big miss with 1:59 left in the game) were similarly culpable for their inability to carry the Knicks in the closing minutes.

Chauncey once again just doesn't look quite right -- many of his turnovers are self-inflicted, and on those he resembles a wind-up toy whose spring simply stops working and ends up doing a faceplant on the ground. Since he's often the player furthest from the basket when he leads the offense, his turnovers lead to automatic transition opportunities where he can't keep up. Amare, meanwhile, after looking rejuvenated with fresh springs after the trade thanks to the attention devoted to the two new additions, is again starting to look more earthbound and more prone to getting stripped or blocked when he attacks the rim. He abused Wallace in the first meeting against the Pistons in November, but Wallace handled him pretty well for most of last night's game when they were matched up.

Now for the man fans and media are directing their ire against. I generally don't comment on the extracurricular drama that the media consistently seeks to turn into back page headlines, but in the case of Carmelo not speaking to reporters, I've never thought it's a terrible thing to blow off the media once in a while in the case of a difficult loss or especially poor performance. Yes, I respect the players that do the stand-up thing and fall on their sword in front of the press hordes, but at some point, i just look forward to the player redeeming themselves the next time around. What I see on the court speaks much louder to me than what's said to media members who prod and bait and look for any chance they can for a player to slip up and speak out of line so that they have a story to run with.

(I'll qualify here that there are a few thoughtful reporters that ask questions that are meant to probe without injecting spurious drama, such as Howard Beck of the NY Times)

With all this in mind, there *is* a process of adjustment for the newly acquired Knick stars, not just on the court but also in managing relationships with the media in New York.  Like it or not, Carmelo does need to have some understanding of that. If it's true, as Beck indicated, that last night was the second time Melo failed to speak to the press in a week, it's the sort of behavior that plays into the hands of the Vesceys and Lawrences of the tabloid media, giving them more ammunition for their silly narratives about character and team performance, and creates unnecessary distractions for the team. I've been amazed at how gracefully Amare has managed the media and taken on a leadership role with the team this season, no matter what his occasional issues are on the court. I hope he, Chauncey and the Knick coaches can impress on Carmelo that he has off-court as well as on-court responsibilities that go with being one of the faces of the franchise.

Now, to the on-court stuff with Carmelo. It was a bad game offensively, a combination of not getting shots in his comfort zones, and being extremely off even when he had good looking opportunities. It was not a case of volume shooting gone awry (the typical accusation), but a more peculiar case of ineffective invisibility. There are going to be nights where he gets less than his teammates, but his inactivity in stretches last night reminded me of Lebron and Wade's early games together taking turns being passive -- Melo spent significant amounts of time standing passively in the left corner during the third quarter while playing with the second unit, seemingly content with letting Douglas and Shawne Williams play their two man game that kept the Knicks ahead after their run.

Carmelo had only 7 shots through three quarters -- when he tried to assert his will in the fourth quarter, nothing went right and shots didn't look close to going in. He didn't get calls either, but when you project the kind of body language Melo did, the refs don't tend to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Defensively, he fouled too much and occasionally lost a shooter, but he also had some of his best defensive moments as a Knick during the amazing 17-0 Knick run during a 4 minute 45 second stretch of the third quarter. He blocked Austin Daye on a jumper and provided terrific help in two different defensive possessions to continue the run. I felt he did enough positive in this area to not throw the book at him for the way this game turned out. It was an especially bad game by his standards, but a team loss.

No need to further dwell on a bad loss that typifies the mood swings of the adjustment process -- even the fall to the seventh seed is a talking point but not a drastic change in fortunes. What I would take from this loss is 1) the need for Billups to keep getting healthier, or failing that, for Toney Douglas to spend more time running the offense and maybe even Anthony Carter getting some minutes again, and 2) the need to continually refine how Carmelo is involved in the offense. Some of that is on Carmelo himself, some of it is on his teammates.

I'll end this recap with three shot charts, which introduce some ideas I may revisit in a future post. First, here's Melo's shot chart from his 50 point game this season, a highlight of his final days as a Denver Nugget -- note that though he was hot from almost every area of the floor, his opportunities are heavily weighted toward jumpers on the right side and drives in the lane:



Carmelo Anthony Shot Chart, 50 point game vs Houston, 2/7/11


Here's Carmelo's shot chart for his 15 point first quarter two nights ago against Memphis, one of his best and most efficient spells of scoring since the trade. In Mike D'Antoni's offense, more of his offense comes from receiving passes off the pick and roll or through cuts, but the activity still tends to be right-center weighted:



Carmelo Anthony Shot Chart, 15 point first quarter vs Memphis, 3/17/11



And here's Carmelo's shot chart for the ENTIRE GAME against the Pistons. (Sorry this one is reversed, because it was a road game). i was struck by how much he was lingering on the left side and taking bad looking long jumpers. In his defense, the Pistons were doing a pretty good job of pushing him out or denying him in the post and focusing their defense on him (which is why Douglas had such good opportunities isolated against Stuckey or Bynum)...but the alternative shouldn't be to drift to less efficient zones.



Carmelo Anthony Shot Chart, 6 point game vs the Pistons, 3/18/11


Final note about the game: the Pistons that ended up killing the Knicks in the fourth quarter (Will Bynum,Charlie Villanueva, Chris Wilcox)  didn't even make MSG's scouting report. Yikes.

Next up is Milwaukee, which might be the worst opponent to face after this kind of loss, since their defense will test the ability of the team to stick to the principles of ball movement and may tempt Anthony or Stoudemire to force things when the Bucks clamp down. The Bucks have been an odd, unpredictable team all season, but they'll be playing at home, and they're the rare team that has two defenders that can guard Amare and Melo one on one. I'm honestly not sure what to expect from this one -- other than it's safe to say that both teams are similarly maddening to their fans.