Knicks fall to 1-1 in loss to Atlanta

Knicks:
Coming off of an impressive triple overtime road victory against a young Grizzlies team the Knicks had to be feeling good about themselves entering last night's game against the lackluster Hawks. However, in the NBA it is difficult to win two straight road games, and the Knicks failed to accomplish such a feat last night.

As was the problem all of last season, the Knicks turned the ball over way too many times. The Knicks turned the ball over 17 times and allowed 18 fast break points, compared to the Hawks 13 turnovers and holding the Knicks to 10 fast break points turnovers was obviously a key factor in the Knicks defeat.

As for the important individual stats, a handful of Knicks had nice nights. Eddy Curry was once again impressive offensivley, scoring 20 points. However, Curry nabbed only two rebounds, compared to the 14 he grabbed against the Grizzlies. Curry also played 39 minutes, his second straight game of at least 39 minutes. Quentin Richardson also continued to play outstanding basketball. He scored 19 points on 6-12 shooting, he also snatched six boards. Steve Francis played a terrific all around game as well. Francis only had nine points, but he also had nine assists and six rebounds, and only two turnovers, a large improvement from the five turnovers he had in game one in about the same amount of minutes. Stephon Marbury was solid, but not great in the loss. He only scored 9 points on 2-9 shooting, but he dished out five assists, and he only turned the ball over once. David Lee was once again outstanding on the boards. He nabbed eight boards and scored nine points on 6-8 of shooting, mostly in the paint. The last Knick who was solid in the loss was Nate Robinson. Robinson scored 15 total points, howevber all of them came in the fourth quarter. However, Robinson was also hit up with a technical for complaining, and had four total personal fouls in only 22 minutes.

Although there were a lot of good looking games, there was also a lot of red flags. Channign Frye played dreadfully for the second straight game. Frye looked uncoordianted, dropping more than a few passes, he also turned the ball over four times, and shot 2-11 and scored only four points. Dating back to the pre-season Frye has not had a game where you could say he was anything but bad. Another flag is Jamal Crawford. Crawford played 27 minutes and scored only five points on 1-8 shooting. He also had no assists and only two rebounds. When Crawford is going bad he trys to shoot his way out of it, and that means that if he doesn't turn it around soon there may start to be problems if he is the only one not following the team concept. Keep an eye on Crawford to see if he continues to shoot his way out of his funk.

Report Card:
Offense: C
Defense: C-
Overall: D+