Knicks point guard Jose Calderon out vs. Cavaliers, expected to miss 2 to 3 weeks with calf strain
“About an hour and a half before the opening tip Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden,” wrote Scott Cacciola of the New York Times, New York Knicks head coach Derek Fisher proclaimed point guard Jose Calderon “‘good to go’ after missing the team’s final two preseason games with a strained calf.” Just a few minutes later, though, the coach reversed course, scratching Calderon from the Knicks’ season opener after the Spaniard had felt “some discomfort during his pregame workout.” Without their expected starting point guard, the Knicks got destroyed by the visiting Chicago Bulls at Madison Square Garden.
It wasn’t quite as dispiriting an opening to a fresh-start campaign as you could have — you’d have to go to the other coast for that — but it wasn’t far off. Well, things got even worse on Thursday afternoon:
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That timetable puts Calderon out through mid-to-late November — a span of about eight to 12 games that includes matchups with at least a half-dozen Eastern Conference playoff hopefuls, kicked off by Thursday’s highly anticipated, nationally televised matchup with LeBron James, Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Things could get awful ugly — uglier, even, than Wednesday’s 24-point home-court blowout — awful quickly here. (And not that Calderon’s anything other than a sieve defensively, but Irving — who’s had some monster games against the Knicks in the past — must be licking his lips right about now.)
The absence of Calderon won’t help accelerate the Knicks’ learning curve as the team transitions to the triangle offense. As I wrote in our Knicks season preview, New York figured to rely heavily in the early going on the 10th-year veteran’s ability to run the show, initiate the triangle, make smart passes and knock down the sort of perimeter shots that the Knicks guards largely tanked against Chicago. Calderon replacement Shane Larkin, fellow starter Iman Shumpert, and reserves J.R. Smith, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Pablo Prigioni shot a combined 2 for 14 from 3-point land on Wednesday.
Knicks fans hope that group won’t be quite as inaccurate and stagnant on a nightly basis, but with Calderon, canned jumpers and steady ball movement were things to be expected rather than hoped for. With 5-foot-11 second-year man Larkin, 37-year-old veteran Prigioni and perhaps even former college point guard Shumpert likely to see more time on the ball in an offense still very much in the beta-testing stage, what to expect seems like anybody’s guess.
“We’re going somewhere,” Fisher said Wednesday. “But at the beginning of where we’re going, it’s going to be difficult to get wins.”
And now, for the next two to three weeks, it’s going to be even harder.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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