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Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - Printable Version

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Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - Leftcoast - 10-25-2010

Per Jake Curtis, Landry has a good chance of starting for the Knicks when they open the season on Wednesday.  

Fields\' journey from the draft bubble to a possible starting position for the Knicks has surprised many - but not Stanford fans.  Last year Fields, playing out of position, showed the all-around game which can make for a long NBA career.  

He\'s not showy and won\'t be among the leading NBA scoring leaders this season or next, but he can finish, fill multiple roles and has the knack of making a bad team better and a good team great.  

No surprise that D\'Antoni thinks of him as a "glue guy" and points out that he can contribute without demanding the ball.  (An important skill if you\'re going to play with Amare Stoudamire.)   Also no surprise that  he\'ll be playing at off-guard - the position he abandoned due to Stanford\'s dearth of low post players.

Way to go, Landry - We believed!   And now those who passed on you for the Pac 10 POY and NBA 1st round draft positions may too.

http://www.examiner.com/stanford-cardinal-basketball-in-san-francisco/landry-fields-could-be-knicks-starting-lineup-for-opener

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - washingtonismoney - 10-25-2010

Surprised he\'ll be at the 2, if indeed that\'s what he plays. Not sure he has the speed to stick with the faster off-guards in the league; I always thought he\'d be a swing 3/4. But the Knicks are well stocked at the latter role, so maybe that explains it.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - Leftcoast - 10-25-2010

Yeah, he\'ll need help against some of the NBA\'s best 2\'s but he does have length on his side ... and they\'ll have to guard him as well.  

I think he\'s quick enough to not get get labeled as a "tweener"  - a death knell in today\'s NBA.

Remember that D\'Antoni has a European pedigree, is offense oriented (the anti-Pat Reilly) and was the man behind the Phoenix Suns resurgence during Nash\'s heyday.  The combination of  D\'antoni\'s style of play and the Knicks roster look like a good stop for Fields - he\'ll have the chance to learn a style suited to him while getting valuable minutes.  

But - confession time - I was one of those who thought Casey J. could get his shot off in the NBA and that he would have a career in the association as a 3 pt specialist.  Turned out he took just a split second too long to pull the trigger and his shooting percentage wasn\'t compelling enough to make up for his defensive lapses.   You just never know.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - washingtonismoney - 10-25-2010

I don\'t think "tweener" is a death knell in these days. With the smallball lineups that proliferate in the NBA, tweeners are played a lot, particularly those guys who drift between the 3 and 4 and shoot threes (they\'re often called "stretch fours," and are guys like Rashard Lewis, Jamario Moon, etc. Come to think of it, Fields reminds me a little bit of Moon.)

I agree with your overall point there: there\'s scarcely a better destination in the NBA for Fields\'s quality. The only other team I could see him fitting well in is the Magic.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fyao - 10-25-2010

I wish him well because I am a Knicks fan as well.  But I just don\'t see how he can get away with his jump shot over time, which has almost no arc on it and thus has very little margin for error.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - Leftcoast - 10-26-2010

Yup .... it\'s decided.

http://offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/fields-named-knicks-starter/?src=twrhp

Most folks have the Knicks pegged as a middle-of-the-pack team in the East and in the middle of a tight group fighting for the 7th and 8th playoff slots.  Suddenly I\'m a <gulp> New York fan.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - rwait08 - 10-27-2010

Quote:I wish him well because I am a Knicks fan as well.  But I just don\'t see how he can get away with his jump shot over time, which has almost no arc on it and thus has very little margin for error.

They\'re not asking him to shoot.  He made the starting lineup because he plays energetic defense and has always displayed phenomenal off-the-ball skills, which have apparently translated well to the NBA.  

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fullmetal - 10-27-2010

I\'m not saying Fields will have a great game today, but I wish I\'d been able to organize a watch party for this game!

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fyao - 10-27-2010

Quote:
Quote:I wish him well because I am a Knicks fan as well.  But I just don\'t see how he can get away with his jump shot over time, which has almost no arc on it and thus has very little margin for error.

They\'re not asking him to shoot.  He made the starting lineup because he plays energetic defense and has always displayed phenomenal off-the-ball skills, which have apparently translated well to the NBA.  

He is starting at the 2 guard and Amare Stoudamire is a low-post player. Their off-guard has to be able to shoot.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fullmetal - 10-27-2010

Gallinari is playing the 3, so I\'m guessing he gets the open looks.  He did really well from long-distance last season.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fyao - 10-27-2010

How will Gallinari get looks if the other team sends their 2 guard to double Amare?  

Landry did credibly tonight.  He hit 3 of 6 three pointers and 4 of 8 overall for 11 points in 30 minutes in the Knicks win over Toronto.  

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - washingtonismoney - 10-27-2010

An important stat to track for Landry, given the fact that he won\'t be taking a lot of shots, is his plus/minus. It was +6, second-best on the team. Don\'t take it too literally--a lot of noise in plus/minus from game to game--but a nice little thing to think about, I think.

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - Nan3cy - 10-27-2010

For a rookie starting his first game, I think his stats are more than credible.  :)

Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fullmetal - 10-28-2010

I didn\'t think the Raptors\' offense tried to pick on Fields, as Fields\' man was generally not the man trying to score.  I did see a couple of lapses in defensive effort, but out of a full game, that\'s not bad.  Fields did lose his handle once trying to drive in on someone, but the ball was not turned over.  He had a block to go with his 11 points and four rebounds (two offensive, two defensive).  His successful 2pt bucket was a clean-up jam--good energy and hustle.

Chad Ford admits mistake about Landry - Ratmandoo - 11-01-2010

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/20975/hawks-next-move-wolves-feeling-love

Quote:On draft night, the Knicks caught me by surprise when they took Stanford forward Landry Fields with the 39th pick in the draft. Fields was in our database ranked as the 116th-best player in the draft. He\'s the first American player ever to be drafted that wasn\'t in our Top 100 since we started doing this in 2003.

Clearly, I blew it.

Fields has earned a starting position for the Knicks and through three games is posting a very impressive 19.30 PER -- better than both Blake Griffin and Cousins.

How did I (and a number of NBA teams) miss so badly? Our Top 100 is based on the consensus of a number NBA scouts and executives. Fields wasn\'t mentioned by any of them. He was so off the radar that he wasn\'t one of the top 60 players invited by the NBA to participate in the Chicago predraft camp. The NBA selects participants based off of rankings by all 30 NBA teams.

But that\'s not an excuse. One NBA scout, along with a source close to the Stanford team, called me and told me I was sleeping on Fields. I pulled down some tape from Synergy and frankly, just didn\'t see it. Had I thought about him specifically for Mike D\'Antoni\'s wide-open system -- maybe. But the truth is I thought he was a good European prospect, not an NBA one.

He\'s proven me and the rest of the league very wrong in the early going. From all accounts he\'s a very nice kid who\'s working really hard. Here\'s hoping he keeps it up over the course of his career.


Re: Landry Fields to start?  (Jake Curtis) - fullmetal - 11-01-2010

I think the Knicks have a really smart front office, or at least, their front office made a really smart move with Fields.  We\'ll see if that pays off in the team\'s W-L record over the next few years with stable coaching...