Knicks Season Home Opener Preview

by Mike Slane, NYKnicks.com

A new coach. A new high-powered offense. A new season.

The new era of Knicks basketball is set to tip off tonight as New York hosts Michael Beasley, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat in the 2008-09 season opener at Madison Square Garden at 7:30 p.m. ET.

After finishing the preseason with a 3-4 record, which included a victory over the defending-champion Celtics in Boston, the Knicks are ready to run and run some more, as they play a regular-season game for the first time under Head Coach Mike D’Antoni, who is known for his fast-paced, up-and-down offensive system.

D’Antoni, who left Phoenix for New York last spring, led the Suns to an average of 58 wins while averaging 110 points per game over the past four seasons. And while he doesn’t hesitate to say the Knicks have a lot of room for improvement, D’Antoni believes his team is headed in the right direction for the start of the 2008-09 season.

"I think everybody should come to The Garden, and it is a journey and we're not even halfway down the road, but let's all take the first step together and let's do it," D'Antoni told The Associated Press. "We're going to play as hard as we can play and understand every night we're going to try to win, and I would love to have everybody get behind us."

New York, which averaged 96.9 points last season, posted 106.9 points during the preseason and only failed to reach 100-point mark once in seven exhibition games.

Looking for the right pieces to fit his run-and-gun offense, D’Antoni experimented with three different starting lineups during the preseason. But after going extremely small with a three point guard set in a home loss to the Celtics on Oct. 21, D’Antoni switched back to the lineup that he began training camp with in the preseason finale and will likely use the same lineup on Wednesday -- a backcourt of newcomer Chris Duhon and Jamal Crawford and a frontcourt of Quentin Richardson, David Lee and Zach Randolph.

Wilson Chandler, who missed the final tuneup against the Nets with a sprained left knee, will be ready to go and will likely come off the bench tonight despite starting one exhibition game in place of an injured Lee. Chandler, the Knicks’ first-round pick in 2007, is expected to play a major role in D’Antoni’s rotation, which will include eight to 10 players. Stephon Marbury, Nate Robinson and Malik Rose are also expected to play significant minutes early in the season.

The Knicks had 16 players with guaranteed contracts during the last week of the preseason before Patrick Ewing Jr., a rookie out of Georgetown, was released to reach the mandatory 15-man limit. Anthony Roberson, Jerome James and Jared Jeffries, who will miss the first three to five weeks of the season with a broken left leg, will begin the 2008-09 campaign on the inactive list.

Danilo Gallinari, the sixth overall pick in June’s draft, missed the entire preseason after suffering a back injury last July and will be available tonight; although it’s unlikely he’ll play.

“I want to get him out sooner than later,” D’Antoni said. “We’ve got to know about that piece, and that’s a big piece for us. We need to start nurturing that.”

The Heat, meanwhile, will likely debut with a lineup that features rookies Mario Chalmers and Beasley alongside Udonis Haslem, Shawn Marion and Wade, who played under D’Antoni, a U.S. assistant coach, at last summer’s Olympics in Beijing.

The Heat finished with a league-worst 15-67 record last season, helping their chances of securing the second overall pick in the draft and selecting Beasley. But that record has no bearing on where the team could end up this season.

With a healthy Wade, an upgraded frontcourt and new Head Coach Erik Spoelstra leading the way, many experts predict the Heat to make the postseason. But their quest back to the league’s elite begins against a Knicks team that defeated them in three of their four meetings last season.

This is the only meeting between the teams this season at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks are 31-30 in home openers. They will meet again at the American Airlines Arena on Feb. 28 and Apr. 12.

NYKNICKS.com