The New York Knicks hope Baron Davis can help save them. The Knicks hope Davis can help facilitate an offense that has largely had a horrific time scoring. The Knicks hope Davis can make a few shots among those he distributes to help relieve some of the scoring burden from Carmelo Anthony.
But hope, as has been said, can be a dangerous thing.
Baron Davis missed practice, couldn’t take contact due to back soreness.
Uh oh.
When Baron Davis was cut, amnesty-style, it was revealed he had a seriously herniated disc in his back. We’d heard the recovery time could take between 10-12 weeks. That was six weeks ago.
Now Baron, who was supposed to slowly ratchet up his participation in an effort to get back out on the floor next week, is missing practice. It may just be a one-time thing. It could just be some soreness that they want to be careful with.
Or it could be more. We’ll have to wait and see. But it’s becoming a little less likely that Davis will be the guy who strolls onto the court and magically cures what ails the Knicks. Because he’ll need something to magically cure what ails his back before he can do anything.
I can’t wait for someone inside the Knicks front office to spill the beans about what happened this year. The team vastly overspent on Tyson Chandler and jettisoned a clearly effective Chauncey Billups to get that done. When you look at what Samuel Dalembert is doing in Houston (I understand that’s not entirely fair considering they are two different situations), you’d think a cheaper defensive option could have helped the Knicks without disrupting the progress that had been made.
Baron Davis was given their full “mini” mid-level exception, but if this is serious, he will never play a minute for the Knicks. The Knicks have a ton of money, but their pattern of questionable-at-best personnel decisions has cost this team dearly.
