Tim Hardaway Jr. has not taken the step forward in his second year that Knicks fans hoped he would take. In fact, he might have even taken a few steps backwards, which should only happen to players encountering age-related decline, not young pups with a decade and a half of basketball still ahead of them.
The good news is, Hardaway Jr. is the least of the Knicks’ problems. Wait, is that good news or bad news? Regardless, the Knicks have some other issues that they need to work out before they worry about Hardaway being a below-league-average three-point-shooter this year. Does J.R. Smith know when to shoot in the Triangle? Will Shumpert ever regain the magic he had at the beginning of the season? Do Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher know how to handle a locker room that’s losing? Does Carmelo’s wife still have the flavor of breakfast cereal? Could we, if given sufficient computational power, be able to predict the future by simulating the behavior of atoms and electrons?