The Knickerbockers and the tale of two 4s.

Apparently there are 4s.

 The Knicks are a very interesting team. They easily have one of the oldest teams in the league, 3 pieces that still havent found out how to fit well together yet, and Rasheed Wallace. With an injury to Amare Stoudemire keeping him out 6-8 weeks the Knicks have some rotation tweaks to make at the 4. I am no stranger to Carmelo's versitlity and has ability to play the 3 and 4 effectively and neither are the Knicks. With Melo at the 4 and Tyson Chandler at the 5 the Knicks posted 107.6 points per 100 possessions, the highest for a Knicks lineup that played at least 100 minutes together. While we wont be seeing this exact same lineup featuring Baron Davis, Landry Fields, and Iman Shumpert, the new edition of Ronnie Brewer and the return of JR Smith and Raymond Felton should be able to at least match or improve the Knicks offense with Melo being Melo at the 4.

The Interesting thing about the lineup of Melo, Tyson, B.Diddy, Shump, and Fields was that it also was the best Knicks lineup in terms of defense too. This lineup held opponents to 95.4 points per 100 possessions. The Scary thing about this is that there should be room for improvement on the defensive end with Ronnie Brewer taking up time at the 3 and the eventual return of Shumpert. With these two, the Knicks will be able to reek havoc on the wing while Tyson holds down the paint. The Knicks improving on an already top 5 defense could be a really interesting development.

Now, you may be asking where this leaves Amare,and you would be right to ask this. That is why I propose to you that upon STAT's return, he immediately be placed in the sixth man role a la Zach Randolph after his knee stuff. I know I'm not the only, person who thinks this; it just makes to much sense. Imagine if you will, a lineup of Jason Kidd/Pablo Prigioni, JR Smith, Steve Novak, STAT, and Camby. Now obviously, this lineup is lacking in the defensive department, to put it lightly, but is this lineup any worse than the one the Knicks featured in the '10-'11 season? For comparison, the lineup playing the most minutes for the Knicks was Felton, Fields, Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari with STAT at the 5. Now in my humble opinion, the second unit for the '12-'13 Knicks could come close to matching the production of the Knicks most used lineup of  '10-'11.

Of course, all of this depends on a number of things. Melo being OK with spending more time in the post and guarding 4s, the rehab of Shump's knee, STAT being OK with coming off the bench, Mike Woodson developing a consitently good small ball lineup and giving them minutes, and a bunch of other things. But with some of Melo's production at the four basically being left on the table and STAT being out for 6-8 weeks, there is a chance that we see a lot more small ball in NYC. Or they could start Kurt Thomas at the 4. That's an option too I guess.