The All-Out of Nowhere Team

While perusing NBA box scores a few days ago, I came across an unfamiliar name in the Milwaukee Bucks starting lineup -- Ersan Ilyasova.  I consider myself a pretty big NBA fan, but I had no idea that the second year Turkish import was averaging 11.7 points per game.  Upon further investigation, I learned that Milwaukee selected Ilyasova in the second round of the 2005 draft.  The forward saw limited time in 66 games with Milwaukee during the 06-07 season, but then returned to Europe for two years.  Back in the NBA, Ilyasova has emerged this year as a key contributor for the shockingly decent Bucks.  Ilyasova is not the only breakout performer of the young NBA season.  In fact, there seems to be an unusually high number of players outperforming their preseason expectations.  With apologies to Danilo Gallinari (who sadly just missed the cut), the Buck List presents the All-Out of Nowhere Team.....

PG - Brandon Jennings.  Jennings was only the fifth point guard taken in the 2009 draft, but he has emerged as the clear standout in the rookie class.  Jennings leads the Bucks in scoring (21.8 ppg) and assists (5.7 apg), and he put up an astounding 55 points against Golden State in just the seventh game of his career.   Now if only someone could persuade Jennings to bring back his incredible flat top. 

SG - Dahntay Jones.  Since entering the league in 2000, Jones has served primarily as a part time defensive stopper.  The former Duke star had never averaged more than 7.5 ppg in a season, but now is scoring just under 17 per game for the Pacers.  Also, he did this.....



SF - Trevor Ariza.  Some of you might disagree with Ariza's inclusion on the All-Out of Nowhere Team.  After all, Ariza played a prominent role on last season's championship Lakers team and signed a five year, 33 million dollar contract with the Rockets in the offseason.  But Ariza's value on the Lakers was primarily on the defensive end.  Often he covered the opposing team's top perimeter scorer, freeing Kobe Bryant to conserve most of his energy for the offensive end.  Ariza has continued to play stellar defense in Houston (he is fourth in the NBA in steals), but he has upped his offensive game considerably.  The small forward leads the Rockets with 18 points per game, more than double his previous career high.  Ariza is also averaging 5 rebounds and 4 assists per contest.  Most NBA fans knew that Ariza was a valuable asset, but few expected him to carry a team the way he has so far in Houston.

PF - Ersan Ilyasova.  With 11.7 ppg and 7.6 rpg, Ilyasova is Milwaukee's third leading scorer and second leading rebounder.  The 6'10'' Turk is shooting an impressive 37 percent from three point range.  Imagine how dominant a team would be if they had five Ilyasova's!  Or just watch this Turkish commercial....



C - Joakim Noah.  Noah entered the league with great expectations after leading the Florida Gators to back to back national titles.  The Bulls took Noah with the ninth pick of the 2007 draft, but the flashy center disappointed in his first two seasons in Chicago.  Noah has looked like a completely different player this year, though.  In addition to putting up 11.5 points and 1.6 blocks per game, Noah is third in the NBA in rebounding -- behind only Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh -- with an average of 12.1 per night.  Also, he sure can dance....

Are the Knicks overcompensating?

The New York Knicks are never short on critics; they may as well get royalties for the phrase "much-maligned."  So I'm typically hesitant to pile on them with the rest of the crowd—in fact I'm probably far quicker than most to defend the Knicks.  But the latest in the Knicks' ongoing series of blunders—namely, passing on Brandon Jennings in the 2009 draft and refusing to sign Allen Iverson after his release from the Grizzlies—have left me wondering:  Are the Knicks now so afraid of being the Knicks that they've done themselves in (again)?

For New Yorkers, the pain of the Knicks' recent history is that it has been a slow, steady accumulation of mistakes.  There's no one event so misguided as to stand out as the cause of their decline.  I suppose there rarely ever is a single moment that derails a franchise (maybe Herschel Walker for the World or passing on Michael Jordan), but it's the odd franchise indeed that can point to such a constant stream of gaffes as the Knicks.  After burying the payroll under contracts to Steve Francis, Penny Hardaway, and Stephon Marbury, sending two unprotected first round picks to Chicago for Eddy Curry (which became the numbers 2 and 9 picks in the 2006 and 2007 drafts), and becoming embroiled in a sexual assault scandal to boot, one can understand if the Knicks feel that they need a change of direction. 

And a change of direction is precisely what the Knicks have had.  For the past two seasons, Knicks fans have been told to wait; 2008 and 2009 will be bad, but they will be building blocks for the future, and the summer of 2010 will make it all worth it.  Isiah Thomas, who could draft unheralded talent but sure couldn't balance a checkbook, was excised.  James Dolan brought in Donnie Walsh who realized that redemption couldn't be bought in every off season—it had to be bought in the off season of the century.   So the Knicks displayed unusual resolve and launched a two-year assault on the Knicks' payroll to clear space ultimately for Lebron James (and maybe more) in the 2010 free agent market.  Contracts were jettisoned or otherwise allowed to wither away. And for once the Knicks seemed to be doing not only the difficult thing, but the right one.  The organization that once shelled out $30 million for a 30 year-old Jerome James finally realized that it had to pinch and save, sacrificing marginal success today for the prospect of real success tomorrow.

To a large extent Dolan and Walsh have the plan right, but in an ironic twist, they may have gone too far in exorcising the Knicks of old.  To be certain, gorging on the standard offseason fare would have been a tremendous mistake with 2010's offering of James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, et al. looming on the horizon.  But in scraping and saving for King James's contract, the Knicks forgot one crucial point:  the whole point of the plan is to win.  In what will be a stiff competition for James's services, that oversight might just sink the whole operation.  Indeed, New York dutifully ensured that they'd have all the money the Chosen One could want, but they failed miserably to put together the one asset that James may value the most: a team with championship potential.  I doubt it is easy to dump a decade's worth of bad contracts, get younger, and grow more competitive all at once.  But surely the Knicks realized that they'd need to spend at least some money to put together a reasonably competitive team.  Though spending nothing put the Knicks in the unique position of being able to potentially sign two of the biggest 2010 free agents, pitching that prospect to Lebron is nothing more than wooing him on a  contingency.  It's hard to say what exactly the Knicks should have done to suit their roster to James's eye (making a stronger play for Steve Nash might have been a start), but leaving Danilo Gallinari as James's primary running mate certainly wasn't it.  Looking at the Knicks current roster, and their current chances of landing James, one can't help but wonder if the organization is more interested in building a better team, or in "changing direction" no matter the cost.