Everybody who had Shane Larkin in the pool as starting for the Knicks at point guard against the likes of Derrick Rose, Kyrie Irving and next-up Kemba Walker, please stand up.
Liars. Sit down.
“Those are all All-Star caliber guys, so as a second-year guy coming off an up-and-down rookie season with an injury, being able to be thrown into that type of fire and just go out there and play, it’s a great experience for me,” Larkin said after Knicks practice in Tarrytown on Saturday. “It’s just going to make me better and that’s what I want to do: keep getting better.”
One man’s injury is another man’s opportunity. So Larkin grabbed the chance when Jose Calderon grabbed his calf. The planned starter, Calderon, who arrived with Larkin and Samuel Dalembert in the trade that sent Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton to Dallas, has a left calf strain that is expected to sideline him for two-to-three weeks.
Calderon said he aggravated his calf during warmups on opening night and stressed both he and the Knicks want to be cautious with the injury.
“That’s for sure. That’s what we’re going to try,” Calderon said. “I don’t want to be out again, the only problem is we have so many games right now.”
All the more chance for Larkin to grow. After Walker and the Hornets on Sunday, John Wall and the Wizards roll into the Garden on Tuesday. It doesn’t hurt that Larkin’s primary asset is friction-burn speed. But speed alone won’t do it so Larkin has taken advice from veterans Calderon and Pablo Prigioni.
“I talk a lot to Shane. He’s been great. He played a really good game Thursday. I was with him in Dallas as well, so it’s not like we just met. I try to always advise him,” said Calderon, who has witnessed the growth in Larkin on two teams.
“Last season was tough for him. He even says that. He got the injury in summer league, so he came kind of late to training camp. He didn’t have a lot of minutes for a big part of the season. He’s learning. He’s progressing every day. He has played more than any of us in the triangle because of the summer league.”
Larkin was awful, just like everybody else, against Chicago opening night. But in Cleveland on Thursday, he played well, hit some open shots and began proving he is more than the answer to “Who is baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin’s kid?”
“Shane has been really good for us,” coach Derek Fisher said. “To think about a young guy that didn’t have a preseason or a training camp last year, misses a lot of games, gets traded over the summer, new team, new coach, new way of playing basketball, 10 minutes before opening night, finds out that he’s the starting point guard for the New York Knicks. That’s a lot.”
The Knicks, however, let the midnight Friday deadline pass for picking up Larkin’s third year $1.675 million option (they also did not extend Iman Shumpert, which likely leads the shooting guard to restricted free agency). Larkin still can re-sign and knows it’s strictly business.
“That’s a business deal,” Larkin said. “Obviously they want to build a championship team here and they need as much money as they can next summer to be able to bring in the big free agents that they’re looking at. It’s not like they told me, ‘We don’t see you as part of our future, we don’t want you.’ If that was the case I’d be sitting on the bench.”
Or in another city. And Larkin did not see motivation arising from it.
“I’m as motivated as I’ve ever been in my life to go out there and prove to everybody I’m an NBA player,” Larkin said.
“If they didn’t believe I can play they definitely wouldn’t have me starting. It’s not like we’re going into this year thinking, ‘Let’s just throw our young guys out there, have a bad year and let’s get in the [draft] lottery.’ They’re the Knicks who are a proud organization and want to win.”