Do you know what the second and third best things for a Mike D'Antoni led team is (the best being, of course, Steve Nash)? Athletic bigs who can run the floor (allowing D'Antoni to play smallball while still ably defending opposing 4s and 5s) and wings who can catch and shoot.
Let's look at the Knickerbocker rotation for 2010-2011, starting with their expected top three bigs:
Amare Stoudemire
Anthony Randolph
Ronny Turiaf
All can run the floor (assuming Ronny Turiaf's heart holds up). Stoudemire is, of course, one of the most coveted things around - a high volume, high efficiency scorer (we'll see if that holds true without Steve Nash, but for the moment we'll give him the benefit of the doubt). Stoudemire's weaknesses as a big are a lack of defense, a lack of blocked shots, and a lack of rebounding. Who best to pair him with? How about a big who can do those things. Both Turiaf and Randolph would be top 15 blockers if they could see the court often enough. They're both fairly well regarded defensively overall. And Randolph would be a top 20 rebounder (again, if he could get enough minutes). About the only thing you could nitpick would be that Turiaf is an even worse rebounder than Stoudemire. Anyway, I'd hope the majority of the minutes over the next few years will ultimately go to Stoudemire and Randolph anyway (unless they get someone even better). Those two fit together (and in D'Antoni's system) very nicely.
Now, let's look at the Knick wings:
Danilo Gallinari
Kelenna Azubuike
Roger Mason
Wilson Chandler
Gallinari is a perfect fit for Mike D'Antoni. First, he's Italian. Second, he's a career 39% three point shooter, which is pretty amazing for a guy who takes 6.4 threes per 36 minutes. Then there's Kelenna Azubuike, a career 41% three point shooter, on 3.7 threes per 36 minutes, and a fairly good defensive player. Roger Mason has been 38% on 6.2 threes per 36 minutes. Then, there's Wilson Chandler. A player who probably doesn't fit into D'Antoni's longterm plans unless he can either a.) improve his outside shooting or b.) become a lockdown defender.
What are the positives so far? Gallinari and Randolph are ridiculously young and will only get better with age. Stoudemire (if he stays healthy) is only 28. Azubuike is only 26. If the Knicks want, they can keep those four together for the life of Stoudemire's contract, and even if he starts to trail off, the other three will get better. What are my concerns?
At point guard, according to the depth chart on ESPN.com, the Knicks have Ray Felton (who we'll get to in a second), and Toney Douglas, who I wouldn't even call a point guard if not for seeing that. Douglas hits threes (39% on 5.8 attempts per 36 minutes), so that works for a D'Antoni wing (which is what he should really be playing, because he certainly isn't distributing the ball like D'Antoni would like his point guard to), except that Douglas is probably too small to defend most wings.
Raymond Felton is a mediocre career scorer (49.3% TS on 21.1% usage rate) who will hopefully get more efficient as he won't be needed to score as much playing on this Knicks team as he was on a Bobcats team that didn't have many offensive weapons. He's also an alright distributor, but not great. He plays alright defense. In general, he's alright. But, he isn't great. And unfortunately for the Knicks, they may need a great point guard (or at least one that's a great fit) in order to compete with the top Eastern Conference teams.
So, maybe even more so than Carmelo, Knicks fans should be hoping they somehow figure out a way to get Chris Paul out of New Orleans without giving up any of their best guys (this seems impossible), or that they manage to pick up a rising young PG some other way (like, say, if Ricky Rubio, who seems to love to do nothing beyond set up his teammates, which would work nicely with all these shooters and Amare). Of course, getting Melo would be nice, too.
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