Believe It or Not, Larry Brown's Job Just Got Harder

Last week we went over all the reasons why Steve Francis would be a bad fit for the Knicks. Fast forward one week and guess what? Steve Francis is a Knick.

You think Larry Brown was indecisive in terms of setting a playing rotation before this trade? Wait until he throws Francis into the mix and tries to allocate playing time without further alienating his players.

In Francis, the Knicks get a player who is used to playing nearly 40 minutes per game. In Trevor Ariza and Penny Hardaway, the Knicks give up two players who were receiving no playing time whatsoever. So where are Francis' minutes going to come from? Jalen Rose? Jamal Crawford? Quentin Richardson?

If there's one thing an NBA player wants, it's minutes. Occasionally, in winning situations, players will sacrifice minutes without too much fuss. The Knicks - in case you haven't noticed - are the exact opposite of a winning situation.

Here are the career averages for minutes played per game for each player on the Knicks roster:

Player Steve Francis Stephon Marbury Jalen Rose Jamal Crawford Quentin Richardson Maurice Taylor Channing Frye Eddy Curry Nate Robinson Malik Rose David Lee Jerome James Qyntel Woods Jackie Butler	Min/G 39.2 38.7 31.1 29.4 27.7 25.6 25.3 23.6 19.7 17.5 16.1 14.6 10.9 9.6

This adds up to 329 minutes played per game ... and there are only 240 minutes to go around. See Brown's dilemma? He's gotta find a way to shave 89 minutes off what these guys are accustomed to receiving without igniting a mutiny. The problem is only compounded by the fact that the top five players in minutes per game are all essentially backcourt players. Sure, you can play Rose or Richardson at small forward a bit but there's no getting around the fact that the acquisition of Francis creates even more of a logjam.

Fifty-one games into his first season as coach of the New York Knicks, Larry Brown thought things had bottomed out ... thought the job couldn't get any more difficult or unpleasant. Larry Brown thought wrong.