No, his job is not just to throw the ball to Carmelo Anthony and get out of the way.
Well, every once in a while it is, but Raymond Felton is a lot more key than that in New York. This is a team that more than most needs a conductor with the ball — getting ‘Melo his touches where he wants some isolation, get J.R. Smith the rock in his spots, finding Tyson Chandler on the roll, getting the other players involved. When it’s not going well, there are a lot of Knicks standing round. But when it is, they are a very difficult offense to stop.
Felton talked about the pressure of playing for the Knicks and specifically the pressure of guiding this Knicks team in a fun Q&A with Lang Whitaker of NBA.com.
I feel like I’m somebody that Melo and those guys, they respect me. So if I tell them something, they’re not going to get mad, they’re not going to look at me crazy. They respect my game, they respect me as a point guard. I’m going to get you guys the ball. I know that you and JR need to score this basketball for us. I think those guys, they saw that last year, and this year there’s going to be even more of a respect level, because we had a good season as a team. So I think those guys respected me, just like I give them that same respect back. That’s a big part of having a good team — if you’ve got that respect for each other, it’s easy to play with each other.
About playing with Anthony, who Felton thinks is the best scorer in the league.
Because he scores in so many ways. There’s a lot of guys who can score the basketball in this league. Kevin Durant, by far, is one of the top ones. Him and Melo could be neck-and-neck — those guys can score in a lot of ways. But Melo can score in more ways than KD, because Melo can post up, he can score off the dribble, he can score in the mid-range, he can score finishing at the rim, and he can shoot threes. You’re talking about a guy who has a total, complete game, and he’s big and strong — 6-8, big body, strong body. A lot of people like to talk about how he takes a lot of shots, this and that. Listen man: We need him to score. It gets maximized because if you’re having an off night and you take thirty-something shots, it’s like, “Aw man, he’s shooting too much.” If you’re having a great night, he’s got 40-something points and he took thirty-something shots, ain’t nobody saying nothing. I just tell him, “You do what we need you to do. As a team, we know what you’re going to do every night.”
And being the PG of the Knicks:
To be the point guard of the New York Knicks is like being the point guard of the University of North Carolina. When you put that jersey on, everybody will know who you are, everybody will recognize you. It’s a good feeling, it’s a good feeling. I feel like when you play here in the city of New York, if you play hard, they’ll love you. When you’re slacking, they’ll let you know. That’s one thing I do know about New York — these fans, they’ll let you know if you’re not playing up to the part. Which is a good thing.
Go read the whole thing, where he talks about Jason Kidd as a coach and more of the Knicks/Nets “rivalry” we covered before.
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