So I take another look and decide, nope I'm not going to pick up David Lee's rookie option.
Training camp ensues, during which Raymond Felton wrests away the starting SG spot from Jamal Crawford, Acie Law looks like he might have more potential than we first though, Joakim Noah less.
I send Alando Tucker down to the D-League, because he's honestly not going to get much in the way of PT as the 12th man in New York. So he'll go play for the Tulsa Tejanos until further notice instead.
Renaldo Balkman and Mardy Collins are D-Leaguers as well, I notice, as is Randolph Morris. Wow, we had some real scrubs on this team, eh? The Spurs sent down Marc Gasol to the D-League, too.
...Interesting. Alando Tucker is listed as the starting PG for the Tejanos. Mardy Collins and Renaldo Blackman starting at PG and SF respectively for the Dakota Great Apes. I see another mancrush of mine, Gerry McNamara, is the starting PG for Fort Worth. I really should sign him and put him on the Tejanos for life.
Since there doesn't appear to be a 2008 draft file yet, I'm just going to go ahead and kick off the fictional fest. It grates on me to do that, because I'm a historical guy with this series, but so be it.
It appears that the lottery scheme worked, because we've come very close to selling out our season tickets. Hooray for gimmicky marketing!
I'm even more shocked when I take a look at the season preview mags and just about everybody has us picked to win the #5 seed in the playoffs and finish 2nd in the Atlantic behind the Boston Celtics.
Damn it, my owner already has Very Low patience and a Very High desire to win! Don't make it worse, you asshats!
My reign as Knicks GM opens with a 98-84 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, who, don't forget, still have Kevin Garnett in this universe. Eddy Curry destroys the T-Wolves for
24 points and 20 rebounds.
Caron Butler puts 24 on the scoreboard as well. Joakim Noah had a quietly efficient Knicks debut with 8 points and 7 rebounds in 16 minutes.
All five starters score in double digits and David Lee doubles his fun with 16 points and 11 rebounds, but Paul Pierce's 38 points lay the hammer on us and we fall 109-99 to the Celtics in the second game.
The next three games are all losses, where our opponents break triple digits and we don't. Our bench is playing for absolute crap and we're not getting much firepower out of anyone but Caron and Curry.
Eddy Curry makes sure the losing streak doesn't hit five, as he scores 30 point and grabs 14 rebounds with 5 assists in a 103-96 win over the Spurs. Caron Butler and David Lee also had double-doubles with 21 points and 11 rebounds and 14 points and 10 rebounds respectively.
Is this the start of a firestorm? No, because the Rockets beat us by 29 and the Mavericks destroy us by 38 in the next two games. We're looking like a definite lottery team out there.
We beat King James and the Cavs behind Caron's 21 points and double-doubles from David Lee and Eddy Curry of 12 and 10 and 16 and 11. Our bench is really struggling though and Mike Montgomery's lost all confidenc e in our #4 overall pick, Acie Law.
The next two games are a split, as we drop one to the Hawks and topple Toronto, the 88-76 Raptors win thanks to Eddy Curry's 10 points, 16 rebounds, 2 assists, steal and 2 blocks and some really hard-nosed defense, not to mention balanced scoring.
Is this a win streak? Yes it is! We beat Toronto again in our next contest, 99-91 on the strength of a balanced scoring attack, led by Caron's double-double of 19 points and 11 rebounds. Greg Oden is having a tough first month, as Chris Bosh is cramping his style in a big way.
Atlanta beats us again, ruining our win streak, Eddy Curry's 30 points and two double-doubles: 12 points and 11 rebounds from David Lee and 19 points and 11 assists from Starbury.
We make up for it by closing out the month with a 112-104 victory over the Grizzlies, Eddy Curry scoring 34 and Starbury doubling for the second straight game with 11 points and 16 assists.
After this first month, we're within shouting distance of .500 at 6-8 and we're already looking a lot better than last year's 23-59 team, if the record is any indication. We're tied for third in the Atlantic, 4 games behind the prohibitive East Conference favorite Celtics.
Wow, I forgot how bad the East sucks. There's only 3 teams with records over .500 right now. Compare this to the West, which has 3 teams with winning records per DIVISION, for a total of 9.
I'm not even going to mention our stats right now, except to say that Eddy Curry is far away our best player with 17.7 PPG and 8.5 RPG.
Oh yeah, Kevin Durant leads all rookies in scoring by a huge margin with 17.2 PPG. Closest guy has barely 10, heh.