HOUSTON — Maybe in the end the question wasn’t whether Carmelo Anthony could have coexisted with Jeremy Lin, but whether Mike Woodson could have accepted Lin as his starting point guard.
According to a person close to the Knicks’ head coach, Woodson always thought of Lin as more of a backup than a starter. The thinking was that Woodson, who prefers a pure playmaking point guard, felt Lin shot too much.
In fact, that was Woodson’s belief as far back in February at the height of “Linsanity,” when the Knicks were winning seven straight games with Lin running the offense and Mike D’Antoni coaching the team.
Woodson eventually replaced D’Antoni, and it is unclear whether the new head coach would have ultimately benched Lin, who suffered a knee injury in late March and missed the remainder of the regular season and playoffs.
Lin started seven games under Woodson, six of them wins. However, in four of those starts Lin played fewer than 26 minutes after averaging 35 minutes per start under D’Antoni. On Friday, Woodson did his best to tap-dance around any questions regarding Lin, who signed a three-year, $25 million contract with the Houston Rockets in July. “My focus ain’t been on Jeremy Lin,” Woodson said before Friday night’s 131-103 loss to the Rockets. “It’s been on the guys that I coach. That’s behind me.”
At the start of free agency, Woodson said the Knicks would match any offer Lin received. However, Garden chairman James Dolan, upset that Lin had renegotiated his offer with Houston to include a third-year payment of $14.9 million, decided against re-signing the unproven third-year guard.
“Things change,” Woodson said. “It happens in sports all the time. Hey, we have Raymond (Felton), we have (Jason) Kidd and we have Pablo (Prigioni) at point guard — end of discussion. I don’t know what more you want.”
Woodson is clearly uncomfortable having to answer any questions about Lin, whose departure from New York has been the source of constant debate. Last month, Tyson Chandler, who was a strong supporter of Lin’s, admitted that with the Knicks in a win-now mode they are better off with Felton, who had 17 points and eight assists Friday night, as their point guard. When asked about Chandler’s comments, Woodson would say only that Lin had “a good run, but we went in a different direction.
“We went out, we fielded guys like Kidd (7 points, 5 assists and 5 steals Friday night) and Raymond and Pablo, guys we felt can help us and they’ve been great for us,” he continued. “. . . The Jeremy Lin thing is behind us and we’ve moved on in another direction. We wish Jeremy nothing but the best here in Houston — until he plays us.”
“We’re happy with the three guys we brought in, without a doubt,” Woodson said. “Absolutely. Very happy. I am.”
