Knicks-Cavs Tonight

The deflated Knicks head to Cleveland tonight to play Lebron James and his numerous sidekicks. No word yet on whether Q will be returning for tonight's game. His presence would definitely be useful, as there is pretty much no on else on this team who could defend Lebron, even if he was handcuffed, naked, and covered in molasses. No one expects anything from the Knicks tonight, so I guess the only way to go is up. Awesome.

Several other things to touch upon. First of all, I spent some time this morning pondering the play of Renaldo Balkman. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't this guy always been touted as a good defender? Humpty's got a good game, but I would not list defense as one of his strong suits. I think scouts and experts might be too quick to label high-energy, hustle guys as good defensive players. Great defenders like Artest combine effort with strength, speed, and an understanding of good positioning. I just don't see Balkman exuding any of those traits. Overall, the labeling of players as good individual defenders is a little dubious to me. In some cases (not Balkman's), it's just a disguise for a shitty offensive player. I could be wrong. Either way, Balkman could use a summer or two in the weight room and some good coaching before he's really a good defender. Not a bad player, though.

"Look at me, I'm skinny. That never stopped me from gettin' busy."
Speaking of Balkman, I'm sure someone else has pointed this out, but his Wikipedia page looks like it was written by a disgruntled Knicks fan in about 45 seconds. Worth a look.

Moving on, Simmons wrote this piece breaking down the Eastern Conference, "The worst conference in history". He makes a few good points, and it's pretty funny, so you might want to check it out...if that's your cup of tea.

Fantastic post from Knickerblogger about some sportswriters' tendency to attack the obvious. It's a very well written post and I wholeheartedly support his case. People are paid to tell me that Isiah Thomas is a bad coach, or that Stephon Marbury loses a lot? It's a little tired. I guess that huge organizations like SI and ESPN have to cover so much material that they can't really go into detail about everything. As far as ESPN goes, Simmons gets away with it cause he's funny and usually writes about only a handful of teams. A diehard fan isn't really gonna learn anything new about their team from an international news source like SI or ESPN. This is why I read the blogs.

Recap later tonight. Go Knicks.