The Knicks Were Inevitable; So Were the Mets

5/15/2013

Ancient warriors could not give Melo an imagination

In New York we have multiples of everything – exquisite Indian restaurants or places where the roti is as heavy as a discus. The same applies to our sports teams – eight of them overlapping in the early spring.

The Devils vanished early, the Nets could not sustain; and the Islanders taught their doomed constituency to care again. The Red Bulls are in first place under my man Mike Petke. The Rangers won a seventh game on the road. And the Yankees are doing amazingly with replacements, showing that Brian Cashman is indeed a dandy general manager when he is not rappelling or sky-diving. Or maybe because he does.

That brings us to the Mets, who are reaching the nether level that was preordained once the budget was shrunk. The Mets are squabbling over the temper tantrums of Jordany Valdespin. Rick Ankiel as the great center-field hope -- the ball clanking off his borrowed glove? Oy.

Then there are the Knicks, who managed to win a playoff series against Boston, but are the dysfunctional playoff team they always were going to become.

The great Harvey Araton – once labeled The Rebbe of Roundball – dissects the imperfections of Carmelo Anthony in the Wednesday New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/sports/basketball/knicks-one-man-play-still-needs-stage-hands.html?ref=sports&_r=0

Anthony is a point machine, which is fine for the regular season, when every night is Garbage Time. But he is not a player for pollen season, when defenses tighten up, when the Hibberts of the world assert themselves.

Anthony is the softest superstar you will ever see. The Knicks brain trust surrounded him with ancient guardians with the mobility of the Xi’an terracotta warriors. I could have sworn I spotted Wally Osterkorn, Bob Brannum and Al McGuire from the old elbow-wielding days of the N.B.A. But none of the imported tough guys could give Anthony the imagination of a true superstar.

Can I drop a name on you? I know Jeremy Lin did not have a great playoff round with Houston, but I still have the memory of him penetrating defenses and finding the open man in his wonderful Linsanity flurry a year ago. He made his teammates better – even Steve Novak – but Anthony demanded the ball early and often. This was always going to happen once the Knick ownership broke up a very decent developing team two years ago, to bring in Anthony for a sugar rush of points.

Now the Xi’an warriors are calcified; Anthony and J.R. Smith keep chucking away. It is mid-May and they are exposed. This was always going to happen in the playoffs. But it could be worse. The Knicks could be the Mets.

Thor A. Larsen

5/15/2013 04:55:16 am

George,
I had been a Knick fan since high school but when they did not pick up Jeremy Lin, I switched my attention to the Brooklyn Nets who seem to have jelled as a fine team. I appreciate your assessment of the Knicks and I could not agree more!

George Vecsey

5/15/2013 06:36:44 am

Thor, great to hear from a Jamaica friend. Lin is no Alan Seiden, of course, but I think he would have distributed the ball if Anthony had not voted him off the island. Best, GV

Thor A. Larsen

5/15/2013 09:38:13 am

George,
When Jeremy Lin began playing with the Knicks regularly last season, my wife Arlene became an avid fan, and she is NOT a sports fan normally. Alan in his prime and Jeremy have three similar traits, high intelligence, quick in movement of ball and body, as well as being team players.
Very best wishes,
Thor

Ed Martin

5/15/2013 02:46:25 pm

almost as much fun as saying "I told you so!" is saying George told you so, something about ability to lead team to championship, as I recall. Chandler "told you so, too". Which will probably win him a trip out of town, despite his abilities. Of course they could win the tiwo they need, but I am not betting on it, and if they did they would swoon in the next round.

Dave

5/15/2013 03:52:24 pm

George: I agree with you completely. I think the team coached by D'Antoni and with Gallinari and a bunch of other young emerging stars (much like Indiana a couple of years ago) was a contending team in the making. I loved watching that team and was very disappointed when the trade with Denver happened. Denver got better with that trade, and, even though this year the Knicks finally got better, I knew that come playoff time, good defenses were going to shut down the one-dimensional Knicks. Indiana, Chicago and more than anybody, Miami, were always going to shut down 'melo. That the Celtics almost did is proof that there was a problem there...

Brian Savin

5/16/2013 01:03:47 pm

I feel like an extremist, but I will live with that. I do not like the NBA. I do not believe it provides honest sports competition. I believe that outcomes since my boyhood have been determined by refs who have promoted the financial well being of the entertainment above all else. I think that the extreme financial punishment for critical comments on officiating proves that fact beyond cavil. Honest basketball stops at high school.

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7/11/2013 06:47:33 pm

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Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

The Knicks Were Inevitable; So Were the Mets

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