Felton's return to jump start the slumping Knicks

I wrote last week of the importance of Amare Stoudemire’s return to the Knicks line-up, primarily around adding some depth to New York’s scoring which has been monopolised by Carmelo Anthony this season.

While Stoudimire’s been decent since his return he certainly hasn’t been spectacular averaging just 11.3 points per night with his highest score just 17. Anthony still maintains an at least 12.6ppg lead over any other player on the roster which as I suggested didn’t exactly bode well for any meaningful team success.

Brooklyn are fast closing on the Knicks who tore away at the start of the season, splitting both their meetings and closing the Knicks’ lead in the Atlantic to a mere 1.5 games.

So it’s the next returning Knicks player, this time Raymond Felton, who New York will be banking on to help maintain their divisional lead and hopefully parlay it into first division crown in 19 years very long years.

For a while the only thing in the former number 5 pick’s life which seemed to be blossoming was Felton’s waste line. However since returning to the Knick’s after stops in Denver and Portland, the former Tar Heel is truly delivering on both his potential and the faith the Knicks had that he could successfully run the point in New York, in the process saving the Knicks a heap of money in not extending Jeremy Lin’s deal.

Quite simply, Felton is having (and by a sizeable margin) his best season as a professional. He’s scoring more and fouling less than at any point in his career while having a huge amount of New York’s offence run through him. Most impressively, he’s turning the ball over at a relatively miniscule 12.1% of his possessions.

When Felton further damaged his hand in New York’s Christmas Day loss to the Lakers, the Knick’s were 20-8 with Felton in the line-up. Since his injury they’re travelling at 6-6, with their January 3^rd defeat of San Antonio their only win over above .500 opposition in 6 weeks. Meanwhile the offence has seemingly stalled, scoring more than 88 just once over their past 6 encounters.

Thankfully for New York, Felton’s return against Philadelphia today will be followed by a 5 game home stand against a collection of teams who’ll bear little relevance to the shape of this season’s playoffs. However as potentially easy as those games will be for the Knicks, they’ll be vital in correcting the course of New York’s season and in rejuvenating their offense, finding alternative scorers to Anthony and once again handing the keys to Felton.

With Anthony, Tyson Chandler and Felton each having their very best seasons, anything less than a divisional crown will be considered a sizeable failure in New York this year.