Jeremy Lin Game-Winner Hides Deficiencies in New York Knicks' Performance

With a game-winning three-pointer with just 0.5 seconds remaining on the clock last night, New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin continued to grow his own legend. At the same time, though, his virtuoso performance masked some blunders from the Knicks as a whole.

New York trailed to an inferior Toronto Raptors team for the vast majority of the night and was truly outplayed on the stat sheet, but Lin and power forward Amar'e Stoudemire willed the Knicks back into the game.

In terms of overall effort, though, the Knicks have to be much better moving forward.

The Knicks, who are 14-15 thanks to a six-game winning streak, were beaten on the boards and in terms of offensive efficiency in their 90-87 win. The Knicks were also outrebounded in their previous game against the Minnesota Timberwolves as New York escaped with a win in similar fashion.

Perhaps the biggest issue has been on defense, where the Knicks have given up far too many easy buckets.

Against Minnesota, New York actually ended up with a better shooting percentage because the T'Wolves went cold down the stretch, but Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic tore them up on the interior.

Things were a bit different against Toronto, but the Raptors outshot the Knicks by nearly 10 percentage points as they converted over 50 percent of their attempts from the field. The Raptors didn't own the paint like the Timberwolves since Andrea Bargnani was out with an injury, but point guard Jose Calderon was able to get to the basket at will.

Some of that was Lin's fault as he has had some defensive slip-ups during his brief stint as a starter, but when it comes to allowing players to get to the rim, that is more of a team defense issue than anything.

The Knicks were somehow able to hold the Raptors to just 87 points in the game, but much of that had to do with the fact that Toronto couldn't sustain its early hot shooting throughout the contest.

It's no secret that defense was always the Achilles' heel of head coach Mike D'Antoni's explosive teams with the Phoenix Suns. While the Suns were the most exciting team in basketball during his tenure and were always in contention for titles, poor defensive posture is what prevented them from ever making it to the NBA Finals.

The Knicks obviously have championship aspirations and once Carmelo Anthony returns from his groin injury, their offense will be even tougher to stop, but defense still has to be addressed.

New York has some good defenders in Tyson Chandler, Jared Jeffries, Iman Shumpert and Landry Fields, but they can't all be on the floor at the same time with great regularity.

If the Knicks can continue to grow offensively and buckle down on defense, then they will be an extremely dangerous team moving forward. If the defense doesn't get better, though, Lin's heroics won't be able to bail them out when it really counts.