The D.A.Y.vid Lee

By Sam Rubenstein

I have a hundred billion million things to do this morning, and I’ll have a more thorough blogged out D.A.Y. in a few hours. For now, I’d like to celebrate the greatness that is David Lee.

Two years ago Lang went to the first round of the NCAA tourney, saw Florida play, and came back really impressed with David Lee. When he was drafted by the Knicks, he reminded us all of how hard he played in college and that Larry Brown was going to love him. Last year, whenever David was on the court, the Knicks resembled a not horrible team. Of course, he was a rookie and Larry Brown did not play him because… I don’t know. You’d think he would have broken his policy of stubborness to play a guy that “plays the right way.” Isiah has been taking a beating lately, but the one thing he’s always been able to point to and show a level of competence in his post-NBA player career is his eye for talent. Lang and Isiah are apparently very similar men. Ahahahahhahah!!! No but seriously, Isiah brought in a sleeper in David Lee, and maybe Larry didn’t play him last year because of his petty power struggle with Isiah.

This season, David still doesn’t play enough. Every time he steps on the floor, he makes the team better. The very best thing to come out of the suspensions and the injuries to Francis and Q Rich, has been that its forced Isiah to leave David on the floor for 40+ minutes. In those games he has 20 and 19 boards. David Lee is an animal on the glass. Against Utah, he threw the perfect pass to Steph to convert a sure loss into a win. Against the Bobcats, he won the game by tipping in a lob from Jamal Crawford with 0.1 seconds left. Do you know how often those lob plays work? Almost never. David Lee has been a rebounding machine and winning games with the key play at crunch time, back-to-back.

Charles Oakley sat courtside because New York City spotlight hog Michael Jordan was in the building, and witnessed a Knicks player put forth an Oakley-like night (minus putting the fear of God in the other team). Channing Frye and Eddy Curry were able to keep shooting and scoring cause David was doing the dirty work. Much like Oakley enabled Ewing to play his game.

David Lee is my favorite Knick since Sprewell.