The lesson to learn from Monday night’s game (Jan. 2) is that if you live by the three-pointer, you also die by the three-pointer. The New York Knicks attempted 35 three-pointers against the Toronto Raptors, making just 10 of them to finish 28.6 percent from beyond the arc. Overall, the team went just 28-for-78 from the field (35.9 percent) in a game that simply got away from them at the end.

This 90-85 loss to the Raptors is extremely frustrating; especially with how good the Knicks looked against the Sacramento Kings back on Saturday (Dec. 31). The team had to play without All-Star power forward Amare Stoudemire again, and at first it didn’t seem like it would hurt the team. The Knicks took a nice 23-22 lead at the end of the first quarter and it looked like a great game was brewing. The second quarter got out of control though, as Toronto out-scored the Knicks 29-11 in those 12 minutes alone.

Heading into halftime with a 17-point deficit to a team that won 22 games last year is not what Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni wanted to see, and at least the team put in more effort in the second half. The Knicks fought back to within one point with just 35 second left but couldn’t stop the Raptors when it mattered most. In the early Atlantic division standings, New York now falls behind Toronto by means of the head-to-head tie-breaker. This is definitely not where the team wanted to sit after five games in a shortened season.

Carmelo Anthony finished the game 13-for-31 from the field, often taking shots he wasn’t comfortable with just to get the offense going. Far too many times there were other players passing up shot opportunities and it seemed like Bill Walker was afraid to even take shots on Monday night (Jan. 2). I don’t blame Anthony at all for attempting 31 shots, but I would have liked him to make a couple more. He did finish with 35 points, 11 rebounds and 4 assists though, so fantasy basketball owners that have him had to come away happy from this game.

Next up for the 2-3 Knicks are the Charlotte Bobcats, who come to town on Wednesday (Jan. 4) for a 7:30 p.m. ET game.

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Sources:

Full Knicks Schedule

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*Ryan Christopher DeVault is a fan of the New York Knicks that has followed the team since the days John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason instilled their defensive will on the rest of the league.

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The New York Knicks really took it to the Sacramento Kings on Saturday night (Dec. 31), and in the process proved that the team has weapons other than Amare Stoudemire. Forced to play without the power forward, the Knicks still cruised to a nice 114-92 victory.

Every starter for the Knicks scored in double-figures against the Kings, including rookie Josh Harrelson going for 14 points and 12 rebounds in his first career start. The Knicks have a real asset in Harrelson, and it is clear that he could add a lot to the team this year. This is what I was talking about when I wrote about how the Knicks could benefit from having Stoudemire sit out a game.

Carmelo Anthony led the team in scoring with 23 points, but he struggled from the field (6-for-15). Anthony made up for it by going 11-for-13 from the free throw line, grabbing 7 rebounds and dishing out 5 assists. Down low, Tyson Chandler was an absolute beat, going 6-for-8 from the center position and hitting all 10 of his free throws. For a guy that took only 6 shots total in the first three games, this was a huge outing. Chandler’s 22 points were more than any Kings player had.

Helping with the additional scoring was Landry Fields with 21, Toney Douglas with 17 and Bill Walker with 11 points off the bench. The Knicks made 88.9 percent of their free throws, going 24-for-27 from the line to really put this game out of reach. It also didn’t hurt that the defense held the Kings to just 34.9 percent shooting from the field and just 27.3 percent from three-point range.

After losing two games on the West Coast to the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers, this was a great way to bounce back. The Knicks improved to 2-2 on the season and kept pace with the 2-2 Philadelphia 76ers in a tie for first place in the Atlantic division. For a team still trying to find itself, Knicks fans have to come away from this win with a big smile. The team got forced to find offensive weapons other than Stoudemire and passed that test will flying colors. If the team can keep this up when he returns, it could become tough for any of the Eastern Conference teams to stop them.

The next game for New York is on Monday, Jan. 2 against the Toronto Raptors in the first of several games at Madison Square Garden.

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Sources:

Full Knicks Schedule

New York Knicks Website

*Ryan Christopher DeVault is a fan of the New York Knicks that has followed the team since the days John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason instilled their defensive will on the rest of the league.

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

Jeremy Lin is headed to the New York Knicks.

The 23-year-old point guard was claimed off waivers and will fill a starting position that will eventually go to Baron Davis, the recently-signed point guard whose currently back injury is preventing him from playing, ESPN reported Tuesday.

Released Sunday by the Houston Rockets to allow the team to sign Samuel Dalembert, Lin is from a rookie native of Calfornia who is the first person of Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA and the first Asian-American to play in the league since 1947, according to ESPN.

Yao Ming and other Asian players have played in the league to success, but they are citizens of Asian nations, not Asian Americans.

Lin, who is 6’3″ and 200 pounds, graduated from Harvard after failing to receive any athletic scholarships after high school and being undrafted after college, but was able to make it onto his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors. He played in 29 games in his rookie season last year with the Warriors.

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The Knicks also signed small forward Steve Novak off waivers last week, and rookie guard Iman Shumpert injured his knee during the team’s first game of the season on Christmas, when they beat the Boston Celtics.

“Jeremy’s just looking for an opportunity to show what he can do,” his agent Roger Montgomery told ESPN on Tuesday. ” And what better place to do so, than on the biggest stage in basketball?”

Winning their first game this year against the Celtics gives the Knicks momentum headed into the condensed 66-game season, but Shumpert’s scary MCL injury, which should leave him out for about a month, according to New York magazine, does not bode well for a team already seen by many observers as less than solidly assembled.

But Carmelo Anthony’s great performance (see video below) in the team’s first Madison Square Garden appearance this year, and Amar’e Stoudamire’s new role under Anthony (pointed out by Sports Illustrated), in which he relied more on staying out of the lane as a screener than on his traditional pick and roll mastery, are promising signs that the team is gelling at the outset of its first full season with Anthony.

With only 65 games left to play, the Knicks should be on their way to their best season in years.

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The New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics on opening night, stealing first place in the Atlantic division over an aging team playing without Paul Pierce. The loss left Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett pretty upset, and he went at the throat of Knicks forward Bill Walker. Garnett grabbed Walker by the throat with one hand and pushed him backwards, creating a situation that should have been pretty embarrassing to the league. Apparently the league doesn’t care though.

A source from the NBA leaked information that Garnett would not get punished for this incident, basically sweeping it under the rug. This is an unacceptable decision by the league and it really reeks of favoritism for a player that is likely heading to the Basketball Hall of Fame. What Garnett did was basically assault Walker after the game, something that it would seem that the league would try to stop from happening. If it happened during, a player could get ejected, fined and then suspended for the action.

Walker was the mature one in this situation, approaching Garnett later that afternoon when the Celtics were heading to the team bus to leave. If we believe what Walker has to say, the situation looks closed and is unlikely to re-surface when the teams face off again this season. As for the fan opinion of what took place after that final whistle and just how ridiculous what Garnett did is another debate entirely. For a player that already has a negative reputation for playing dirty, this is not sitting well with Knicks fans that watched the aftermath.

The league needed to make a statement here, if for no other reason than t stay consistent with policy. Players get suspended in the NBA for simply leaving the bench during a game, but assaulting an opponent after the game has ended seems so much worse. Apparently not.

Celtics fans are quick to excuse Garnett’s actions on articles about the game, most likely because they have become used to this behavior. It’s not something that flies off the court, so why should it get considered proper behavior after the game. I am curious about one thing though; where are the NBA fans that were attacking LeBron James for not shaking hands after a loss back in 2010? Is trying to choke someone not worse than skipping a handshake?

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Sources:

Full Knicks Schedule

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*Ryan Christopher DeVault is a fan of the New York Knicks that has followed the team since the days John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason instilled their defensive will on the rest of the league.

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

Read More: Carmelo Anthony (F – NYK), Tyson Chandler (C – NYK), Jason Terry (G – DAL), Dirk Nowitzki (F – DAL), Amare Stoudemire (F – NYK), Toney Douglas (G – NYK), Mike Woodson (H – ATL), Landry Fields (G – NYK), Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks

SB Nation New York will be running a five-part season preview of the 2011-12 New York Knicks, culminating right before the start of the season on Christmas Day.

Part I: The Stars

Part II: The Non-Stars

Part III: The Coach

Part IV: The X Factor

In the first two parts of our 2011-12 Knicks Season Preview, we broke down the Knicks’ roster into two factions: The Stars and the Non-Stars. Those who belong to the first group are Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and the newly acquired center Tyson Chandler. I made the distinction because its clear who the most important players on the Knicks are, but also because we know what we’re getting with The Stars. Carmelo and Amare will score, a lot, and won’t play tons of defense. Chandler will do the opposite. You know what you’re getting from them, and if they don’t play well, the Knicks are doomed. We’re going to sort of assume that they’ll be themselves.

That leaves us with the rest of the roster. On any winning NBA team, the ancillary players make a huge difference. When you get to the finals and late playoff rounds, every team has stars. Often the better and bigger stars prevail, but there hasn’t been a championship team that didn’t get major contributions from its role players. Last year the Dallas Mavericks rode Dirk Nowitzki to a title, but they don’t get there without the play of JJ Barea, Jason Terry and Chandler, now a Knick. The team they defeated, the Miami Heat? Sure, LeBron James wasn’t as great as everyone would expect of him, but they were giving huge minutes to the likes of Joel Anthony and Eddie House.

For this Knicks team, there are a few candidates for the team’s X Factor, the guy who could help the team immensely with good play and slog them down with poor play. There’s Baron Davis, who is a huge unknown at this point. How healthy will he be when he finally comes back? Will he be in shape? Will he be motivated? There’s Landry Fields, who was an All-Rookie selection last season but only based on his play pre-Carmelo Anthony trade. If Fields can find his form from the beginning of last season — knocking down open threes, playing sold defense, getting out in transition — he’s the type of role player that many successful teams have. Does iman Shumpert improve on his shot selection and become a better offensive player?

And that brings us to Toney Douglas, who I choose as the X Factor for this Knicks squad. Douglas will begin the year as the starting point guard, but will he end it there? Douglas will have to get off to a fast start to keep his job, with Davis entering the fray in a few weeks. The way Mike D’Antoni seems to have shaped the offense will help Douglas, as it calls for Anthony to handle the ball the most and play as a point forward. With that being the case, Douglas will be relied upon to provide secondary scoring by hitting perimeter shots. Douglas hit 37% of his three pointers last year, down from 39% in his rookie year (he did attempt many more as he played more minutes). He’s going to get a lot of open looks from deep. If he can hit nearly 40% as he did as a rookie, the Knicks will put up a ton of points.

Defensively, Douglas is one of the Knicks’ more aggressive players. Aggressiveness doesn’t always lead to being a good defensive player, but Douglas does cause a lot of turnovers with his speed and relentlessness. It will be interesting to see the effect assistant coach Mike Woodson has on the whole team, and specifically Douglas. Woodson likes to pressure the ball right as it crosses half court, and Douglas will often be the guy given that task. If Douglas can turn into a very good defender he’ll get a lot of minutes, and the Knicks will be better for it.

The season begins soon, and all eyes will be on the Anthony, Stoudemire and Chandler. But if the Knicks want to be playing deep into June, the others on the team will play a big role — perhaps none bigger than Douglas.