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Walsh Blames Himself: The New York Knicks will play host to the Orlando Magic tonight in New York, and with Magic guard Jameer Nelson questionable for the game, the Knicks may have their best chance to end their six game losing streak, especially if the Magic are forced to start Gilbert Arenas at point guard.

No one in New York is happy with how things have gone since acquiring Carmelo Anthony on February 22nd. In that 19 game span the team has gone 7-12 and are limping towards the post-season.

Knicks’ president Donnie Walsh says that the struggles the team has endured were not entirely unexpected, but the losses illustrate flaws in the team’s roster that need to be addressed during the off-season.

"We have a lot of work to do," Walsh said to Marc Berman of the New York Post. "There was work to do before. There’s work to do now. We were missing pieces before the trade. We’re still missing the same pieces."

Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire has been the team’s horse all season, but lately he has started to wear down and according to Walsh it’s not because of Amar’e, it’s because of what they are asking him to do each night.

"What I see is I still got to get players to put around him to help him," Walsh said of Stoudemire.

"He can do what he can do great, but we’ve asked him to do what’s beyond him. I know what I have to add to this team. We need bigger people on the team. We need more of them."

Walsh also refused to lay blame on his head coach Mike D’Antoni, admitting that he’s put his coach in a tough place with so much roster change.

"I think it’s very little [D'Antoni]," Walsh said. "It’s very difficult to put these pieces back together in a short time. That’s why it’s more my responsibility. That’s why I rarely trade in the middle of the season, because it’s a big adjustment. But I made it because it’s better for the franchise long term."

From Walsh’s viewpoint the Knicks are still a work in progress and while the struggles as of late have not sit well with anyone, the future foundation is now in place.

"Though it’s a future trade, I realized it would be a major disruption, and it’s hard to get back to where it was. I liked the team we had before. But I didn’t think we were going to win the championship."

"I didn’t expect this, nobody did," Walsh said.

"We haven’t played well. We’re definitely struggling as a team… We’re starting from scratch, on offense and defense. You can throw the records out."

The Knicks have until April 30th to exercise their contract option on Donnie Walsh, which according to sources has not been discussed, so whether Walsh will be allowed to finish what he’s started remains to be seen. How the Knicks perform in the post season could go a long way towards an ultimate decision.

The Knicks have a four and half game lead on the eighth seeded Indiana Pacers and a five game lead on the ninth seeded Charlotte Bobcats. With nine games remaining on the schedule the Knicks would need to suffer a total collapse to fall out of the playoffs and with just four teams at or above .500 left on the schedule the Knicks should make the post-season. It’s clearly in their hands.

Please Get Over It Phil: Lakers’ head coach Phil Jackson simply can’t help himself. He finds a subject and rides it into the ground and because he’s Phil Jackson, owner of 11 championship rings, he is never called on the carpet about it.

Last night, Jackson was asked about the New Orleans Hornets losing forward David West for the balance of season and how that might affect the Hornets run to the playoffs.

"(Carl) Landry is a very good ball player. He’s going to cost them, what, two points, maybe four points in the ballgame maybe overall? Six points?" Jackson said to Jimmy Smith of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "It turns out it was providence for the NBA to really help them get back and get Landry."

Really Phil?

The NBA helped the Hornets get Carl Landry? Most would have thought that the Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Hornets had more to do with it than the NBA?

It’s amazing to hear someone as smart as Phil Jackson continue to ride this flawed concept.

The NBA holds the pink slip on the Hornets, they give the Hornets a budget and have empowered management to run the team as the staff in place sees fit. The NBA is actively involved in the sales process – selling tickets and the image of the team – but on the basketball operations side that’s left to GM Dell Demps and team president Hugh Weber.

The Carl Landry deal fit well within the budget the NBA established for the team and even though cash changed hands, it was budgeted cash the Hornets were permitted to spend.

If you look at what Sacramento got out of the deal, cash and Marcus Thornton who has been averaging 24.4 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game on 48.9% field goal shooting and 56.5% from NBA three, the Kings may have gotten the better end of the deal.

It is amazing to hear coaches, who benefit from the success of the league, perpetuate and validate flawed concepts.

Casual fans will hear Jackson say things like this and buy into it because it came from Phil Jackson.

There is no doubting that Phil is trying to create controversy, he is one of the best in the league at keeping the focus on himself and not his team, and that’s done to provide cover for his guys. That’s a smart tactical move by a head coach.

The problem is when coaches, especially coaches like Jackson, Stan Van Gundy and others at the top of the food chain, they have a responsibility to be honest about things, and when those kinds of coaches validate the conspiracy theories, to their own ends, it simply brings down the league.

Phil knows better, he just can’t help himself.

Costing The Lakers Money?: According to Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com, if the NBA owners approve the Sacramento Kings relocation effort to Anaheim it could impact the value of the Lakers’ new 20-year deal $3 billion TV deal the team inked with Time Warner.

According to Markazi, if a third team is added to the LA marketplace, the value of the Lakers’ Time Warner deal would decrease by roughly 10% or $15 million per year, or said yet another way – $300 million over 20 years.

The Maloof family is preparing to present a relocation proposal featuring Anaheim to the NBA Board of Governors in mid-April and simply needs a majority vote to gain approval.

The LA Lakers and the LA Clippers have started petitioning owners to block the move to Anaheim, citing market and competition conflicts.

Sources near this situation have maintained from the beginning that both the Lakers and Clippers draw very little from Orange County, and that both teams are putting up objections in order to receive a large cash payment. The Kings will have to pay some level of relocation fee, which is a discretionary amount charged by the Board of Governors and can be set at any price the Board deems fit.

Its believed that beyond the $30 million other teams have been charged to move, an additional amount will need to be paid to the Lakers and Clippers to get their approval.

Given that the Lakers stand to lose upwards of $300 million over the life of their Time Warner deal, not to mention what the Clippers may lose in their TV deals, it will be interesting to see what it will cost the Kings to move to Anaheim.

The Morris Twins: If you don’t watch a lot of college basketball, you may have caught yourself double taking the Kansas Jayhawks during the March Madness tournament. Arguably the best front court tandem in the country, Markieff and Marcus Morris, are fraternal twins.

Good luck telling them apart.

{AUTHOR_BOX} Both twins have roughly the same build, 6’9 in shoes. Both have the same haircut. They both have exactly the same tattoos in exactly the same places on their bodies.

"We are one," said Markieff to John Branch of The New York Times. "We’re the same exact person."

The challenge for the Morris twins is that life at the next level is going to be hard for a tandem that’s never been apart.

"We’ve been together since Day 1," Marcus said. "He’s been on this Earth seven minutes before me, and since then, we’ve always been together. You do the math. Twenty-one years, seven days a week, 365 days a year — how many minutes in a day? Whatever that is, we’ve been together"

The Morris twins are NBA first round draft picks, in fact it could be argued that both are top 20 draft picks, especially if Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger indeed returns to Ohio State as both he and his father have pledged.

The question is, are the junior twins from Kansas ready to be separated? That’s going to be the big question.

Both players have acknowledged that being separated is a deterrent in their decision making process and unless a NBA team wants to have two of the same player, it may be hard to convince the Morris twins that life in the NBA is going to be better.

During the college recruiting process it was implied that to get one, a team would have to offer a scholarship to the other.

At the next level it maybe a little harder to arrange the same kind of deal, but with teams like Utah holding the what appears to be the 6th and 12th picks in the draft and Phoenix holding the 13th and 23rd picks in the draft, there are several teams that could double up, the questions is will they?

That is what it may take for The Morris Twins to come out this year, they seem awfully happy to be playing together at Kansas.

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