Via NY Post

That said, Garden fans should be smart enough to know they’ll need Douglas to be a contributor if this season is going to be a success. Booing him is not the answer. If anyone deserves some slack it’s Douglas. As D’Antoni pointed out, Douglas had a hectic offseason rehabbing from shoulder surgery and then inherited the starting point guard position when the Knicks released Chauncey Billups just before camp opened to make room for Tyson Chandler. It was too much too soon.

“He had offseason surgery and wasn’t ready to play until November and didn’t get any work in the whole time,” D’Antoni said. “He was a little bit behind and then thrown into a starting lineup where everybody expected us to win the championship two weeks ago. I think it got to him a little bit.”

People get way too concerned as it relates to players starting over others. Douglas, whose strength is his ability to catch and shoot and cause a reaction from the defense off of head fakes, is not making the defense honest because he is short-arming all of his jumpers in my opinion. He’s in the midst of what equates to pre-season and he’s like a pitcher coming off arm surgery working out kinks in spring training. Douglas is a piece to the puzzle who I’ve always seen as a great 1st or 2nd guard off the bench on a contending playoff team. Once he starts hitting shots it adds just another dimension to the space of the overall offense whether he plays 30 minutes or 20.

The guy has been a productive player for the franchise over a pretty good stretch of time. The Knicks will need his shot making ability if they have any chance in getting big wins moving forward.

Knicks guard Toney Douglas had successful right shoulder orthroscopic surgery today to repair a torn labrum. Recovery time is expected to be 12-16 weeks. The procedure was performed by team orthopedist Dr. Answorth Allen at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.

There may be no bigger fan of Douglas than me, but truth be told I was very disappointed in his playoff performance. Look, I always said I consider TD a very solid 3rd guard on a strong playoff team and an excellent 4th guard on a championship team. But let’s be real he’s a great value at his salary. He can shoot, play SOME point and guard multiple positions. I think D’Antoni lets him take too many defensive possessions off on the ball, especially when you consider the amount of ground he covered to close out on Ray Allen before he was tripped by KG in Game 1.

Renaldo Balkman
Derrick Brown
Anthony Carter

In other words, expect more points on the board tonight. But has we know, that would mean expect more points for the Celtics as well.

I’ve been a fan of Douglas despite his shortcomings since day one. He certainly takes bad shots and holds onto the ball too much at times, but I’m a fan of his toughness and his quiet confidence.

Despite this being just his second playoff game, Douglas shook off the nerves early in game one and was effective in his 26 minutes.

He’s going to be that much more effective if the Knicks are going to have any chance in Game 2.

Via Newsday

“I don’t know, my leg feels good,” Billups said. “I’m not going to continue to address that. I don’t make excuses. I was good enough to play, so it’s not an issue. I just didn’t shoot the ball well. No excuse.”

Douglas had his worst shooting night of the season, going 1-for-12 from the field, including 1-for-8 on three-pointers. He had three points, five rebounds, three assists and one turnover in 26:41. Douglas had averaged 16.6 points and 6.6 assists in the previous six games.

The Knicks, who have had a very efficient offense since the big trade that brought in Carmelo Anthony and Billups, totaled only 11 assists on 30 made field goals and shot only 36.6 percent from the field.

I think this duo will be fine. Billups needs to get back in the swing. He wasn’t himself last night. To me the issue is instilling this notion that players can’t have success against the Knicks by just playing hard. It’s like the whole league is saying to themselves, “just play hard and we’ll be fine.”

That has to stop immediately.

“Toney’s playing well,” Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni said. “He’s played well a lot this year. He took a little step back when we made the trade because we had new guys and he was deferring a little bit, but now he’s playing his game and he’s doing a real good job.”

Douglas credits Felton for some of his development as a point guard, and predicts he can continue to improve with Billups around.

“I picked up a lot of stuff from Raymond,” he said. “He was a veteran guard—sixth year in the league. Every time I was in practice or on the bench, I always studied him—or even when I was playing with him. And same thing for Chauncey—him just being a veteran, just being here, talking to him, [I'm] picking his brain. It’s making me a smarter player and a better player. I’m looking forward to learning a lot from him.”

Interesting that the infusion of Anthony Carter and the play of Toney Douglas has seemed to soothe the need of a back up point guard for the time being. The focus then shifts to the front line, or coaching…until Douglas as a bad game.

I’ve been a Douglas supporter for a long time. I think he has the potential to be the perfect 3rd guard on a really strong playoff team…and he’s never been to the playoffs. That means I’ve allowed my expectations to be set too high and they need to be managed. After a year and a half in the league, all things being equal, Toney is about where he should be.

Douglas hasn’t developed into your classic point guard, but he can facilitate. He gets the team into their sets and has the ability to find open players. He’s not a great creator, however, and rarely gets anyone easy baskets even in the pick and roll.

Defensively, he guards both positions, an asset that simply cannot be overlooked.

I was talking to my good friend Mike Salfino about the subject as he was doing research on the piece he wrote, which came out today.

Mr. Douglas has a reputation for being a better on-the-ball defender than Mr. Felton. And there’s supporting evidence of that in our numbers—opponents average 12 fewer points per 48 minutes when Mr. Douglas is quarterbacking the Knicks compared to Mr. Felton’s time on court. Additionally Mr. Douglas’s turnover rate is about half of Mr. Felton’s and his paltry rate of assists suggest he’s a poor distributor. But Mr. Douglas has played with 61 different combinations of players (excluding those with Mr. Felton). And he hasn’t logged more than 26 minutes with any of them. That’s hardly a formula for fostering basketball chemistry.

How the Knicks fare when Raymond Felton is playing point guard compared to how they fare when Toney Douglas is playing, plus how they do when both are on the court at the same time.

Point Guard	Minutes	Points per 48 min.	Opp. Points per 48 min.	Differential
Raymond Felton	1817	107.2	107.6	-0.4
Toney Douglas	434	103.2	95.4	7.8
Felton With Douglas	606	102.8	103.6	-0.8

Source: BasketballValue.com

The bottom line is that, yes, the Knicks hope Douglas, using Dallas as an example, can be the scorer that Jason Terry is with better defense, and have a JJ Barea-type come off the bench to spell Felton.  Although, to be fair, Felton is far younger than Jason Kidd who played close to 40 minutes per night in his hay-day. Lead PGs log minutes.

For now, Douglas is playing a key role, at least according to the above numbers. He doesn’t turn the ball over much, but I equate bad shots as turnovers and TD often takes poor shots.

I think for now the Knicks want to see if Felton is capable of playing high level basketball during a high amount of minutes. Twenty guards in the NBA average more than 35 plus. At some point, I’d look for the Knicks to add depth at the PG position.

Via KnicksNow.com

1. Toney Douglas. (Last week: 6.) If the Knicks had just held on to their third-quarter lead over the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday afternoon, Toney Douglas might have made the back page of a tabloid this week. (In a good way.) Douglas struggled with his shot Sunday, but he was unstoppable in wins over the Bulls and Wizards, including a career-high 30 in the eye-opening win over Chicago. Douglas’s struggles against the Sixers showed just how important to this team he has already become; he’s the second-leading scorer and he leads in steals. Obviously, Douglas won’t hold this spot all season — or probably even for a week — but so far, it’s clear that when Douglas’s shot is falling, the Knicks win.

2. Amar’e Stoudemire. (Last week: 2.) Amar’e should probably have the top spot on these rankings every week, but we’re gonna make him earn it. As Seth from Posting and Toasting put it Sunday, the loss to the Sixers was precisely the type of game in which the Knicks needed their superstar to be a superstar. The Knicks weren’t hitting from the arc; it would have been a nice time for the $100 million power forward to take over. It’s not fair to ask Amar’e to make up for all his teammates’ occasional issues, but hey: That’s why he gets paid the big bucks. We’re all still waiting for the Amar’e Effing Stoudemire game. more.

Chandler fell from 1st to 5th…Gallinari is 6th.

35-7

The Knicks are also creeping up on a positive +/- rebounding differential as well. They are securing 43.40 rebounds per game vs. 43.80 they are giving up. Their 43 per game has them a very respectable 9th in the NBA.

After 5 games they are 11th in overall offense and climbing and also climbing in overall defense where they are 7th in the league.

Individual stats

Assists: Felton (7.4…T-10th)
Steals: Douglas (2.4…T-7th)
Blocks: Chandler (2.2…T-6th…STAT…2.0…Turiaf…2.0…T-9th)
Double Doubles: Felton (T-15th)

Stats via nba.com and basketball-reference.com