Beatable Knicks Blowout Danny Granger's Pacers

     According to Grainger the home and home series with the Knicks that started tonight at Madison Garden were "two very winnable games."  Well the Pacers already lost the first one and it hardly looked winnable as the Knicks led throughout and at one point led by 32.

    With all the concern about Knicks interim coach Mike Woodson ending Linsanity, possibly benching him in a few weeks, with Lin getting a downgrade for Anthony and Stoudemire, they seem rather unimportant right now.

    I have been one who has fretted about the idea of Linsanity ending and maybe too much being given to Anthony. Interestingly, Woodson denied this narrative that all three Ny papers-Daily News, Newsday, and the NY Post-had been pushing-namely that he favors a lot of isolation plays. He said that is "so untrue", to the contrary he pointed out that he had many different scorers in double figures in Atlanta.

   Tonight the way the Knicks played certainly did not make a liar out of him as five different Knicks were in double figures-interestingly Stoudemire was not one of them with only 8 points. Anthony didn't have a pretty game either shooting only 4 of 12 for 12 points.

   Lin for his part had 13 points on 3 for 7 shooting with 5 assists, 5 rebounds. Best of all, he had only 3 fouls. Maybe "Woodsanity" is working for him too.

    So what we had was the Knicks playing a very strong team game with many players getting involved. As much as many of us like Lin, he does have room for improvement-to say the least, and he is a rookie essentially. It's probably true that he sometimes did try to do too much in the past. For those who fear he'll never take a big three point shot again he got another big one to finish the first half.

    They also got some very strong play out of Chandler and Steve Novak again came off the bench to hit 4 of 8 three point shots to tie Chandler for the team lead with 16 points.

    What the Knicks really excelled at as they did in the 121-79 win over Portland was defense, where Granger shot 4 of 15 for nine points, while All-Star Roy Hibbert was 2 of 10 and scored four.

   http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap;_ylt=Aroe4o6vyOTnrM19riPo0928vLYF?gid=2012031618

    If this is what Woodsanity means I'll take another big heaping helping! Judging by the first 2 games it seems to be this-very strong defense and spreading the ball around. Sounds good.

    Let's give the last word to the defeated opposition who came in thinking the Knicks were very beatable. The coach contradicts his star Grainger:

    “We’ve got to understand what we’re facing. This is an extremely talented team, maybe one of the most talented teams in the NBA, and they’re playing with a renewed sense of urgency because of the coaching change like all teams do with coaching changes,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “So they’re a force right now.”