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[bballfreak]

I think I'm becoming a closet Knicks fan. Alright, this is my last post about Gallo. This is my official goodbye.

I hope he fails, miserably.

The Knicks had a chance Thursday to obtain a player with a scouting report to make fans swoon: Tall (6 feet 9 inches) and still growing. Skilled enough to bring the ball up the court and shoot 3-pointers. Tough enough to score in traffic and get to the free-throw line. Averaged 17.5 points and 5.7 rebounds at age 19. Works hard. Wants the ball in crunch time.

If Danilo Gallinari had an N.C.A.A. pedigree, an endorsement from **** Vitale and a less-exotic name, he might have been greeted with roses instead of raspberries when the Knicks made him the sixth pick of the N.B.A. draft.

Instead, fans at the Theater at Madison Square Garden booed the unknown. The scouting report may not fit the soft European stereotype, but it does, in fact, belong to Gallinari.

He flashed another important trait Friday morning: the prescience to acknowledge that scouting reports mean nothing to a jaded fan base.

“I came from Milan, that has similar fans,” Gallinari said during an informal news conference at the Knicks’ training center. “I will work to prove to everybody the type of player that I am.”

Aside from grainy YouTube videos of Gallinari in Milan, there is little for Knicks fans to base their impressions on. Even Donnie Walsh, the Knicks’ president, has never seen him play in person, although he watched Gallinari work out twice.

But Walsh received in-depth reports from Kevin Wilson, the Knicks’ director of international scouting, and got firsthand accounts from two other staff members: Glen Grunwald, the senior vice president, and Isiah Thomas, the deposed team president, whom Walsh dispatched to Europe last month.

The most comprehensive information came from Wilson, who has been tracking Gallinari for three years, since Gallinari turned professional at 16.

“He was a special kid from an early age,” Wilson said.

It was not until recently that Wilson saw something more. In the second half of last season, “I really zeroed in on how big his heart was, how hard he worked, how much improvement he’d made, how good he could become,” Wilson said. “Because he’s not a finished product.”

According to Wilson, Gallinari has exceptional ball-handling skills for his size, a high basketball I.Q. and a jump shot that is much better than he showed in Europe. He can hit the N.B.A. 3-pointer consistently and is an adept passer with good court vision, Wilson said. But unlike the stereotypical European big man — including his countryman Andrea Bargnani — Gallinari is not content to float on the perimeter.

Wilson said that Gallinari aggressively drove to the basket and averaged 8 to 10 free-throw attempts a game this season. Gallinari was his team’s primary fourth-quarter option, as a scorer and a playmaker.

“He has toughness,” Wilson said. “American guys over there heard that he was ‘the Man,’ so they wanted to put him in his place. They would pop him, they would ’bow him, they would hit him. He would take it. He wouldn’t get mad, he wouldn’t get rattled. Just come down, make a basket on them, look at them, wouldn’t back down.”

Gallinari can play either forward position, although he may not have the lateral quickness to guard small forwards or the muscle yet to guard some power forwards. He is listed at 210 pounds, but the Knicks intend to put him on a weight training and conditioning program immediately. (They will also see his baseball skills — Gallinari is throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at the Mets-Yankees game Saturday.)

Gallinari is staying in the United States for the next three weeks and will play for the Knicks’ summer-league team in Las Vegas next month.

And then there is this: Gallinari is probably still growing. He said that he measured 6 feet 9 inches without shoes and that doctors told him he would grow another inch or two.

“The combination of being able to take it to the goal and to shoot from the outside, for a guy that big, is going to be, I think, a pretty lethal combination,” Walsh said.

Talent and size do not always translate immediately from Europe to the N.B.A., particularly among younger players. Dirk Nowitzki looked like a bust as a 20-year-old rookie in 1999, then blossomed over the next few years

“You might have to wait on him,” Wilson said of Gallinari. “You’re going to have to work with him, wait on him, encourage him, develop him, play him, let him take his lumps. It will make him stronger, it will make him better.”

Walsh said Gallinari needed to adjust to the N.B.A. game and lifestyle.

[TheNetsFan]

  Let it go. 

[MillerTime101]

And were done.

(always wanted to say that. )

[Toasty]

And we're done.

Get it right 

[ace]

 

[TheNetsFan]

Can we lock & bury this thread now?

[bballfreak]

It might be locked, but it will never be buried. 

[MillerTime101]

And we're done.

Get it right 

I wanted to give it my own flavor 

[DaveB]

For the record, the man who was adament about the Knicks taking Gallo was the one and only Isiah Thomas, and we know how great his draft history is.

[bballfreak]

He got it right on this one.

[KrnTriFecta]

Vitale's first name is censored..

[ace]

New York got more bad news on Friday with the news that rookie Danilo Gallinari could miss the entire preseason schedule because of his sore back, the New York Post is reporting.

Gallinari will not be participating in training camp, and while he may be okay by the end of training camp, coach Mike D'Antoni does not think it'd be wise to throw his rookie straight into running after so long off.

"The way we play, a guy sitting for two months without running, I don't want to do that to him," D'Antoni said.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09272008/sports/knicks/no_italian_stallion_130944.htm