What’s up with Al?

by Tommy Dee on March 31st, 2009 at 3:31 pm

I’ve always seen Al Harrington for what he is. He’s a solid player who is not a star. He’s made a nice living and has played on some bad teams. In essence, he’s a stopgap guy.In this situation, however, he’s trying to prove too much and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing.

When the Mets were bad before Piazza it was Todd Hundley and Carlos Baerga. The Rangers had Petr Nedved and even used Messier that way on his second go around. Pretty good players who keep fans interested and coming to games, but not ones who are going to win you any more games by themselves.

Harrington, again, is a guy who hopefully can keep the team decently competitive. Donnie Walsh loves him, but I’m not sure he’s sold on him being here after 2009, not when Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari will be begging for 30-plus minutes. But when you ask yourself who you’d rather have Harrington or Jamal Crawford, it’s Al in a second mainly because of his contract. Crawford is in Nellie’s doghouse too and will have to take a serious pay cut if he opts out of the Bay Area. In fact, if the Warriors had it to do over again, maybe the wait to deal Al in the same way the Knicks waited to move Z-Bo.

Al has been tee’d up too much lately, we know this. And he has been begging for respect from officials. But the refs are human and aren’t going to respect a guy who’s been a losing player for the better part of their careers. They have more respect for a guy like Joe Smith, who has lost his share of games and doesn’t get frustrated and constantly bark.

I like Al, but I agree that he has to tone it down with the refs. He may be a veteran in this league but, again, refs are human and it’s easy for them not to give that respect to a guy who thinks he’s earned it but has a reputation of being a malcontent in Golden State and didn’t lead the Hawks anywhere. Al has played hard here. Sure he’s settled for too many threes, and takes some possessions off. But for the most part, he brings it every night.

He’s been pretty good here and my bet is that he’s here next year. But he needs to reel himself in and just continue to play hard.
  • Mucha

    Al Harrington is also better than Crawford from a basketball standpoint IMO Tommy. Harrington’s a chucker at times but Crawford is the definition of a chucker. Google it. And Al creates mismatches, Jamal doesn’t.

    Harrington plays like a knucklehead every now and then but I respect him, he plays hard everynight and he seems proud to be a Knick. He’s clearly our best player IMO, I mean I have to forgive him. The Knicks could be the worst team in the NBA without him now that Gallinari’s out.

  • cragganmor

    He wants to be make that jump to being recognized as a star because he badly wants to be here in ’10; does not want to be lumped into the “just another expiring deal” category for next year.

    Remember how amped he was to be gone from GS and to play for his hometown heroes? He wants to be a Knick when we start winning, this is his childhood dream, like every kid that calls “swish” on a rumpled ball of paper into a wastepaper basket.