# David Lee Is Losing Minutes



## USSKittyHawk (Jul 22, 2005)

> David Lee said he knows why his minutes and numbers are down this season, and their names are Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry.
> 
> Lee was one of the Knicks' few success stories last season, averaging double digits in scoring and rebounding before his season was ended by a right-leg injury after 58 games. But this year has been a much different story for the third-year forward.
> Lee is averaging just 9.5 points and 7.9 rebounds off the bench, and he played just 31 minutes in the Knicks' recent two-game win streak. He was noticeably absent in the second half of a 113-109 victory over the Jazz on Monday, playing 10 minutes - three in the fourth quarter. “We've got two big guys in front of me who are playing real good ball right now," Lee said yesterday. “Zach is playing tremendous, and Eddy is a guy who is a centerpiece for us. So it's something I'll have to accept. I'm going to have my opportunities. It's not something I'm too worried about."


http://www.nypost.com/seven/11292007/sports/knicks/lee_is_losing_minutes_879786.htm


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## Krstic All-Star (Mar 9, 2005)

As we pretty much all predicted, the Knicks have chosen to go with their overpaid lumbering frontcourt over energy guys like Lee and Balkman. Feh


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## Tom (Jul 15, 2002)

Looking back at Isaah's support of Rodman when he spoke down to Larry Bird...I think we know why he isn't playing.


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## USSKittyHawk (Jul 22, 2005)

Tom said:


> Looking back at Isaah's support of Rodman when he spoke down to Larry Bird...I think we know why he isn't playing.


Oh please, that isn't the reason why he isn't playing, the Randolph trade killed it for Lee. If he was such a big racist, then he wouldn't have drafted Lee in the first place. Posts like the one above demonstrates you should stick with your political posts.

What should happen is that now we see the Curry and Randolph tandem not living up to the hype, Isiah should adjust his minutes because the L's are surpassing the W's.


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## Tom (Jul 15, 2002)

I don't think so. I don't care who they picked up...Lee can still get minutes. He is at the very least a complete idiot. He drafted Lee with no expectations...like taking a flyer on a Euro.


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## USSKittyHawk (Jul 22, 2005)

Tom said:


> I don't think so. I don't care who they picked up...Lee can still get minutes. He is at the very least a complete idiot. He drafted Lee with no expectations...like taking a flyer on a Euro.


:lol: @ Isiah drafting Lee, with no expectations. He had scouts watching him from the very beginning and was high on him that's why he got drafted. Get your posts out of the sand. What you going to tell me next? Is that Chandler isn't getting any playing time as well because he is light skin? :biggrin:


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## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

The whole I.Thomas is a racist is so old and untrue.

his best friend during those piston years was Bill Lambeer.

He was so close to the Pistons owner in those years they used to call him Bill Davidson's son.

its ignorance really because the Bird comment wasn't as much about Bird as it was about the reporters reporting on him .

he was saying if Bird wasn't white *they*(being the media) would consider him just another good player.

this is his quote in its entireity



> "I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player. _He's an exceptional talent_," added Detroit's Isiah Thomas. "But I have to agree with Rodman. If he were black, he'd be just another good guy."


http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-7595311.html

in truth he was just backing a teammate...not the world's biggest crime.

I dont see an insult there, racial or otherwise.

its odd though Rodman is the one who actually denigrated Bird and no mention has ever been made that he is a racist ...all thomas did was compliment Bird while agreeing with Dennis.


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## Mr. Hobbes (Jul 1, 2005)

Krstic All Star said:


> As we pretty much all predicted, the Knicks have chosen to go with their overpaid lumbering frontcourt over energy guys like Lee and Balkman. Feh


Agreed. Thomas was the one who made the decision, and he has to try to justify it. It's not working, but he's stubborn like that. I don't blame him for this particular decision, because I'd do the same.


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## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

I think the unspoken truth is this.

David Lee or the whole bench for that matter has been performing under expectations.

last season the bench was such a catalyst for good on the knicks in fact it may have been the single biggest advantage the team had , they would come in and *boom* if the knicks were down they were right back in it and if it was close the knicks took control on most nights.

that hasn't really happened this season.

lee and even balkman to a lesser degree have not had the impact expected of them, robinson has been spotty , collins non-existant 

jared has been ho-hum , jerome james hasn't even played yet morris has had a hard time making it on the court as has wilson chandler.malik has been malik...which really isn't much.

the only guy who has been good off the bench and has played as well or even better than expected has been fred jones ...1 out of 10 is not a good ratio.


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## alphaorange (Jul 2, 2006)

*Wrong....*

Until Jones became your posterboy in MIl., he was shooting 37% with a lot of TOs based on time played. Thats better than you expected? Lee is actually boarding at the same rate as always. He shooting % is all the way down to 48%. Woohoo. All the other numbers are comparable to last year. Its early. Wanna bet he ends up over 50%? Typical post by you....unsubstantiated tripe.


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## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

*Re: Wrong....*



alphaorange said:


> Until Jones became your posterboy in MIl., he was shooting 37% with a lot of TOs based on time played. Thats better than you expected? Lee is actually boarding at the same rate as always. He shooting % is all the way down to 48%. Woohoo. All the other numbers are comparable to last year. Its early. Wanna bet he ends up over 50%? Typical post by you....unsubstantiated tripe.


you know whats typical tripe ?

your need to win an argument with 1-2 stats like no one here knows anything about basketball.

what about the fact that jones is 4th on the team in steals (he really should 3rd morris has only played 5 minutes this season , he really shouldn't even count, because i dont think any1 really believes he can keep up the pace if he played more.

he is tied for 3rd on the team in blocks with balkman,

he is only 1 of 3 players on the team who if you added his blocks and steals together it would be more than his turnovers along with balkman and qrich so his handling of the ball is fine and his activity is great, and more importantly his impact has been a misnomer among the bench players that he is performing at or above expectations(see once again you misread what i wrote by merely stating that I posted that jones was playing above expectations...Reading is Fundamental , you are over 50 at some point you should get it and comprehend what you are posting about.)

and who cares what his %s are after 10 games played , he has played in 11 and his shooting % is .436, pretty decent for whats expected of him(career .410 shooter) if i took Lee's perentages from his best game out of his season averages you would ( &rightly so) jump all over it , so dont be 2faced and try it with me...if you wanted to bring up jones' after he played 10 games % you should have done it before the bucks game...when it would have mattered.

and lee is not playing as well as he did last season , thats obvious stats or no stats, his impact has been significantly less, last season every1 was so big on his +/- stats ...wonder why it hasn't been mentioned much this year ?

it probably has something to do with the fact that he has a negative rating in fact one of the lowest on the team while Zach has one of the highest , the exact opposite of last season with frye and Lee, so there really shouldn't be much of a clamoring for him to play more ...it isn't helping.

of course the slight fact that lee's 23.7 avg. isn't very different from the 25.7 he was avg. last season after november means little and that Randolph has been a much better player at the starting 4 couldn't mean anything especially when coupled with the fact that Lee hasn't been as good as he was last season at this time or really at any point until he got hurt.

i mean its just 1 stat but what makes a player go from shooting .636 to .478 in consecutive novembers , outside of the numbers things like paul milsap coming in and tearing Lee a new one in the Jazz game , just didn't happen last season because 

1. lee never left his man so guys who lived off of garbage baskets just had their opportunities lessened by that fact alone.

2. he played with alot more energy last season he got alot more accomplished.

this season he still didn't leave much, milsap just took it right at him and his deer in headlights "put your arms straight up in the air" routine just didn't work.

if you looked purely at the numbers he garnered 8 points and 4 boards in 20 minutes ...not too bad , but when you actually saw the game you knew numbers or no numbers he didn't fare well at all that game.


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## alphaorange (Jul 2, 2006)

*So....*

Its plain what you know or don't know. Lee is pretty much the same player as he was. So if Randolph is such a superior player to the team...and the team is virtually the same except him for Frye...why are we so bad? I can answer this for you..."we are bad now but we're going to get much better"...or how about this one..." the other guys just aren't getting it done". Close? As I said before and it is only more obvious on this team, Zach is a guy that needs to get a lot of shots and he is NOT conducive to ball movement or balance. He and Curry cannot exist together and it was a mistake to get him. You can go back and check on that. While you were expounding on the offensive juggernaut known as the knicks, I was saying that Curry and Zach would not be as effective together as they were alone. Not close. While I said we needed more outside shooting, you were saying Zach would provide some of that. You said we wouldn't NEED to be a great defensive team because we were going to outscore people. I am STILL waiting for one of your observations or predictions to come true. And BTW, Lee had as much to do with the pitiful win the other night as anyone. He was huge at the end with his hustle and boards. He's on the bench...we probably don't win. People get all caught up in the numbers game with Zach. His liabilities go beyond the numbers and Lee's benefit goes beyond them the other way. If Zach played defense and passed, it would be different, but he doesn't. I've seen nearly every game this year and I can't tell you how many times his sticky hands has been mentioned. This team is NOT going anywhere until some very big changes are made. Thomas actually made us WORSE on both sides of the ball. Remember the saying that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts? Well, the Knick team is just the opposite. When adding the individual talents of the players, we should, theoretically, end up with a given quantity that equals that number. However, when it comes to real life, it is seldom so. Sometimes the result is inexplicably higher....and sometimes (like the Knicks), it is lower. The really special GMs can not only evaluate talent, they have a real feel for how it needs to fit together to be better, or at least equal, than the sum. Thomas does not possess that quality. Jerry Colangelo does. Until Thomas goes, we will struggle. Its going to get worse before better. He is starting to lose the players.


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## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

whats plain to see is that this continued back and forth goes nowhere because you are apparently focused on me and not my posts and thats not my intention to keep going i have no intention on hijacking the thread so ...

i'll just assume that you never heard of the term _adjustment period _ (for the same record than they had after 15 games last season) and move on .

p.s. the post you are responding to was all about the thread topic and the bench , i noticed that in your post hidden in the middle of that long winded rant, i noticed you actually got around to it for a line or so about Lee so *i'll* focus on that 

i considered his game so-so at best he provided some energy but very few in the way of tangible results .

0-2 from the field ...with both of his attempts getting blocked no points 5 boards , but he did manage to stay out of the way of randolph and crawford while they spearheaded the comeback in the 4th though..so i'll give him credit which may have been more than curry would have accomplished under the same circumstances.

what made Lee so much better last year is that he could stay out of the way and give you points, rebounds, hustle high % scoring in virtually every game , he was very consistent ...he is not this season , he may give energy in 1 game but but no points or give you points in another game but take alot of shots to do it and maybe the couple of extra possessions we are used to seeing him get on hustle plays dont happen...something always seems to be missing.

for whatever reason that consistent supersub isn't there yet this season...how many games last year would have 2 point blank shots and get them both blocked and thats it for his scoring attempts that game, and to the bucks of all teams not a team known for its post defensive presence ...i cant rememeber that happening last season at all.

the team is actually quite lucky so far , outside of Qrich , each starter is playing better than they did at this time last season (or in zach's case much better than frye)

after november.

jc 16.5 pts .396 shooting 3.2 ast.
marbury 10.1 pts .388 Fg% 4.5 ast
frye 7.6 pts 5.5 reb. .379 fg
curry 15.0 6.3 .530 fg

zach 17.9 11.3 .439
marbury 14.2 5.3 .413
JC 17.1 .410 4.2
curry 16.3 5.8 .558


if the bench had stepped up like they did last season i suspect the team would be in much better shape...bench players especially young ones tend to be much better at home , so its a matter of seeing what happens if the subs can be more productive 9 of the 14 games this month will be in msg...they should be better if only for that reason, it remains to be seen if they can match last season's production.


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## alphaorange (Jul 2, 2006)

*I'll try to help you..*

Lee's role is different this year. They have a pf who is logging a lot of minutes. Lee is playing some 3, some 5. Yes he got blocked. Big deal. Thats because he is one of only a couple of guys that will take to the rim. If you weren't so anti Lee you'd see it. Randolph played well early but wasn't the big factor in the rally, JC and Lee were. Get off it. Adjustment period my ***. That pairing sucks...just like the Knick offense. As I said before the season, they'll play so good as to make everybody cream just enough of the time to keep the hope. The majority of the time they will suck. These guys have played nearly 25 games counting pre season plus practices. Gimme a break.


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## da1nonly (May 8, 2006)

I think Lee will eventually leave the Knicks and be a starter elsewhere.


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## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

*Re: I'll try to help you..*



alphaorange said:


> Lee's role is different this year. They have a pf who is logging a lot of minutes. Lee is playing some 3, some 5. Yes he got blocked. Big deal. Thats because he is one of only a couple of guys that will take to the rim. If you weren't so anti Lee you'd see it. Randolph played well early but wasn't the big factor in the rally, JC and Lee were. Get off it. Adjustment period my ***. That pairing sucks...just like the Knick offense. As I said before the season, they'll play so good as to make everybody cream just enough of the time to keep the hope. The majority of the time they will suck. These guys have played nearly 25 games counting pre season plus practices. Gimme a break.




Benjamin Franklin: 
"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else."


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