Different thought
Who do you guys expect the 5th starter to be opening game?
Felton
Shump
Melo
Tyson
Are the locks in the starting 5.
But then you have the 5th spot open for either
Pablo
Metta
Bargs
Amare
Each player would be huge in dictating our style of play.
The easy choice is to say Pablo would start because of the continuity that would carry over from last season, but is he built to start 82 games at his age? And we all know kidd sucked at the end of the season, but part of why the Knicks were able to go with the 2 PG lineup was that they were able to rotate in a good 3rd pg for the majority of the season without skipping a beat. Is THJR capable of doing that in his rookie season?
Another reason we might switch from Pablo is because the way we finished the season with that pacers series left a bad taste in the mouth of knick nation. It's easy to throw around the whole gimmicky, small, jump shooting, poor rebounding team labels after that. And for the players and management to understandably believe that it's a gimmick that will get exposed in the playoffs. So maybe the team would wanna go bigger but maintain the identity of being a great team from deep. For that reason I can see Bargnani starting or if Ron gets good work done with Hopla on his J instead of playing cee-lo he can be the 5th starter.
I can't imagine Amare starting. You wanna limit his minutes and not have the team develop an identity with him and his knee goes out and you have to completely change what you've been working and building on. Obviously if the 5th guy is struggling and Amare is STAT once again then that might change around all-star break.
I think Ron will be our guy. We'd match up better with Indiana and Miami. Just hope he can re-discover his offensive touch. The negative to me with him starting is that it makes it very difficult to find an adequate amount of mins for Bargnani, Amare and Kenyon. If you start Bargnani a second unit of Prigs, Jr, Metta, Amare, and Kenyon would destroy other teams benches. Either way our bench is phenomenal as long as Amare stays healthy.