http://www.nj.com/knicks/index.ssf/2010/...D'Alessandro: Almost nobody saw Landry Fields coming, but he is helping to lead Knicks out of mediocrity
Three time zones away, the only guy who isn’t surprised by the force of nature known as Landry Fields watches each Knicks game with almost a blank stare.
Maybe once in a while — after the kid comes out of the mezzanine for a stick-back slam — Steve Fields will turn from the TV in his living room in Long Beach, Calif., and ask his wife, Janice, “I can’t remember — did he get that from you or me?”
Much of it — the intelligence, the feel, the versatility, the freakish hang time and the always-revving motor — Steve Fields has seen before, and he knows it came from ... somewhere.
“He has some of my qualities,” said the father, a star at Miami-Ohio in the mid-’70s, who was a final cut on Lenny Wilkens’ Portland team in 1975. “Some of the things Landry does, I might remark to myself, ‘I did it like that, yeah.’”
He’s actually modest: Steve Fields was a major player in his day, a 6-6 wing who led Miami-Ohio in scoring and rebounding as a senior.
Landry, therefore, can attribute some of what he has to genetic luck. Not only was his dad a player, his mom was a junior college star. Steve’s uncle, Dave Barker, was a reserve on the legendary 1960 Ohio State team that featured John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. And during Landry’s four years at Stanford, he had three — count ’em — cousins playing D-1 ball.
That explains the physical gifts.
It’s the other stuff you can’t quite account for, the qualities that seemed to turn Fields into a glue guy long before anyone should know his name. He is not only a rarity as a rookie — most come equipped with skills and hops nowadays — he’s a rarity as a player, period: a momentum-maker, the kind of guy who changes a game even though Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni doesn’t call a single play for him.
“There’s a court awareness, and a high IQ there,” Steve Fields said. “Landry has a knack for finding opportunities, and he makes things happen at both ends — a block, steal, a charge, a screen, moving without the ball.”
Too often execs fall in love with athleticism and upside on draft day, and overlook these intangibles in a player — especially from the seniors. It’s why Fields was available at No. 39 in last summer’s draft, where team president Donnie Walsh was admittedly stunned to find the 6-7 shooting guard drop into the Knicks’ locker room.
Look at him now: Among rookie qualifiers, Fields is second in rebounding (7.6), fourth in scoring (10.3), second in field-goal percentage (.517), sixth in 3-point percentage (.309), sixth in steals (0.96) and second in double-doubles (6).
As far as impact goes, he ranks behind Blake Griffin and John Wall and nobody else — and that has little to do with numbers. He is just the kind of kid who has an intuitive feel for team chemistry and the rhythms of D’Antoni’s offense. Fields makes them whole because he doesn’t need the ball, but the ball sure finds him often enough.
As Walsh put it, “Not many guys fit into any system, and he’s one of them.”
“Some players have a better sense of chemistry, but I really don’t know what goes into it,” Landry explained. “It’s probably just the personality you have. But it comes pretty naturally to me.”
Quite unnaturally, the Knicks are 14-9 heading into Washington Friday night. Not much of that makes sense. We thought one of the three centers (Ronny Turiaf, Timofey Mozgov, or Anthony Randolph) had to have major impact. Wrong. We thought one of the two shooters (Kelenna Azubuike or Roger Mason) had to be big contributors. Wrong. We thought D’Antoni would have to dial back on the bat-outta-hell style and emphasize defense more. Wrong.
That’s because there have been three startling revelations that have transformed this Knicks season into so compelling a study.
The first is all about Amar’e Stoudemire, not just his emergence as a indomitable, magnificent, inspiring leader, but the realization that he pretty much guarantees a team 40 wins just by suiting up.
The second is about Raymond Felton, who always had the skill, but has now discovered that balance between the discipline demanded by Larry Brown and the freedom provided by D’Antoni.
But the third is all about the rookie. You could see it from 3,000 miles away.
