The Knicks have been adding players so much in the last two weeks that they’ve been slipping by us. Two more Knicks made their debut in Wednesday’s 107–88 win over New Orleans, and we haven’t even had time to talk about them yet. So, as the Knicks prepare for tonight’s please-don’t-lose-to-them-again game against Cleveland, let us do so.
Derrick Brown. He played four minutes against the Hornets, grabbed a rebound, and picked up two fouls. If you blinked, you missed him. But he was there! So who is he? Well, he is not the poet Derrick Brown. The Knicks picked him up off waivers from the Bobcats, essentially dropping Kelenna Azubuike and Corey Brewer for him. He’s 23 and unpolished, good at driving the lane, and a halfway decent shooter who can jump like crazy, but hardly the type of guy who is going to end up in Mike D’Antoni’s rotation. All told, we’d rather have Azubuike. He is, however, supposedly quite friendly and fun to have around. So there is that.
Jared Jeffries. For a guy who came to symbolize so much of the Isiah era — the overpaying part, not the erode-your-soul part — Jeffries sure did get a nice welcome back to the Garden on Wednesday. We never thought we would see the day that the MSG crowd chanted “JAR-ED JEFF-RIES,” at least in a non-mocking way. He’s here to help out the obviously deficient defense, though it was a bit surprising to see him play 24 minutes in his debut. True to form, he didn’t score a point in those 24 minutes; he, alas, did not learn to score in his time away. If you can come to emotional terms with this photo, it might not make you ill to have him around again.
As for the Knicks themselves, they play the Cavs again tonight, and if they lose to them tonight, they will be responsible for a quarter of Cleveland’s wins this year. The Knicks haven’t had a taking-care-of-business win for a while. This would be a nice time for one.