Box Score Analysis: Knicks Fall to Magic, 114-102

Despite a great effort this past Friday, the New York Knicks failed to deliver a worthwhile performance against the Orlando Magic. After hanging with the Magic for the better part of 3 quarters, the Knicks fell a part in the 3rd, ultimately costing them a shot at their 4th win of the season. The Knicks are now 11 games below .500 with a record of 3-14.

Here is the box score analysis from last night’s game:

Dwight Howard Goes Off: Howard has gotten a lot of scrutiny for his unimpressive start to the 2009-2010 NBA season, but his 24 points and 16 rebounds were certainly a shot back at his critics. He was definitely the reason the Knicks lost this game, as his plus-minus ratio of +19 was the highest of any Magic player last night.

Rashard Lewis Equals Efficiency: Scoring 26 points on just 15 shot attempts, Lewis proved to be a problem for the Knicks. This was kind of surprising given that the Knicks are a pretty long team at 2 through 4 positions, but they failed to show any evidence of that one the defensive end.

Wait, the Defense Gets Even Worse: The Knicks let the Magic shoot 50.6% from the field, including 13 of 38 from 3-point land. Clearly, the Knicks aren’t going to win games when the other team shoots this well, as the Knicks are quite incapable of shooting at a rate considerable higher than 50%, which is what they would need to do in order to beat anybody that they allow to shoot the ball so efficiently.

Al Harrington Played Just 28 Minutes: Harrington had his fair share of fouls, but I still don’t like that he only played 28 minutes yesterday. His minutes were cut back in part because of the minutes Nate Robinson got en route to his 24 point effort, but the Knicks aren’t going to win games in which Harrington scores just 9 points and has only 10 shot attempts.

Speaking of Nate Robinson: In an effort to prove he knows which basket the Knicks are supposed to shoot at, Robinson put up 24 points on 11 of 17 shooting. He also had 3 assists in what was a good all around effort the Nate. I don’t like that he had 0 steals, but that may be more of a coaching issue than anything else.

Danilo Gallinari Looked Nice: Just when I was about to get off the Gallinari bandwagon, he goes out and scores 15 points on 5 of 7 shooting against the Orlando Magic. I can’t scoff at that, especially when he had 6 rebounds to go with it. Granted, 4 of his field goals came from 3-point land, but that’s the type of outside shooting the Knicks have lacked for sometime now.

David Lee Does It Again: How Lee is still a New York Knick is beyond me. All he does is get double-digit points off hustling and grabs 10+ rebounds every night. Yesterday, he had 20 points and 12 rebounds, and he even threw in 3 assists. He also didn’t commit a single turnover and shot 50% from the field. If the Knicks can’t afford a second max-player this off-season, they might want to go ahead and re-up David Lee early on in the free agent process.

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