Charles Barkley sees big things happening in New York this season. On the other side of the East River. Read more after the jump.
The TNT analyst and Hall Of Famer dubbed the Brooklyn Nets “the best team in New York,” and predicts another frustrating year for the Carmelo Anthony-Amar’e Stoudemire experiment.
“It’s not going to work, and it’s not going to click,” Barkley said of the All-Star pairing. “I’m not a believer that a leopard can change its spots.”
The Knicks are 30-33 in the regular season when Stoudemire and Anthony are healthy and on the floor together. In the postseason, New York is 1-7 when they’re together (Stoudemire missed Game 3 of last season’s series with the Heat after he tore his hand open punching a fire extinguisher case.
“They’re both very good offensive players — Carmelo is a great offensive player, Amar’e is a very good offensive player. But I don’t think all of a sudden they’re going to become great rebounders and great defenders,” he added in his breakdown of the Atlantic division on NBA.com.
The shortcomings of Stoudemire and Anthony on the defensive end will create bigger problems for the Knicks, Barkley said, adding that it puts more pressure on Tyson Chandler, who struggled with foul trouble last season.
“They don’t rebound the ball well and they’re not a good defensive team,” Barkley said, adding that he wasn’t a good defender himself. “ I really think that’s going to be their downfall.”
“I don’t foresee them getting better, to be honest with you,” he said.
Barkley also criticized the Knicks’ decision not to bring back point guard Jeremy Lin depite the so-called poison pill final year on his three-year, $25 million contract from the Rockets. Barkley argued, incorrectly, that the Knicks could’ve brought back Lin and paid him the $5 million he was due in each of the first two years of the deal and used its amnesty clause on the Ivy League-bred guard in the final year, where he’s due nearly $15 million. The Knicks already used their one-time amnesty clause on Chauncy Billups before last season and used the extra cash to sign Chandler.
Meanwhile, Barkley has a much rosier outlook on the Nets’ first season in Brooklyn.
“I think they are the best team in New York,” he said, calling Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries “underrated” while beaming about the addition of shooting guard Joe Johnson.
“I think Joe Johnson is going to be huge in Brooklyn, because he’s more of a role player,” Barkley said. “The problem he had in Atlanta was they expected him to be the best player. The best player (in Brooklyn) is Deron Williams. So I really think that they’re the best team in New York.”
The edge, according to Sir Charles, goes to the Nets because he likes their offseason acquisitions — Johnson, Andray Blatche and Keith Bogans, among others — better than those of the Knicks, who added 38-year-old Marcus Camby, Jason Kidd, 39, and Raymond Felton.
“I told somebody the other day, they were telling me about the Knicks getting Camby and Kidd. I said, ‘I love that (move) … if it was 2000.’ I’m not so sure that I like it in 2012,” he said.
