Tyson Chandler: Defensive Player of the Year Award Will Not Save Knicks' Season

Tyson Chandler will be honored as the 2012 NBA Defensive Player of the Year. Yahoo! Sports was first to break the news. 

Update: Wednesday, May 2 at 3:35 p.m.: The NBA has officially announced Chandler has won the DPoY award. 

Unfortunately, that distinction isn’t going to make a difference in the New York Knicks first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat.

Chandler’s team is down, two games-to-none, and things have not looked bleaker.

Amar’e Stoudemire is out with a hand injury suffered from punching a fire extinguisher after a loss.

Jeremy Lin has been out for some time with a knee injury and will not be walking through that door as the savior of the franchise.

Top perimeter defender Iman Shumpert went down in Game 1 with a torn ACL. The Knickerbockers simply cannot catch a break.

Even with Chandler being acknowledged for an award he deserves, it won’t give the Knicks the boost they need to overcome this hungry Miami squad. They simply don’t have the firepower.

Carmelo Anthony is the leading scorer and putting up just 20.5 PPG through two postseason contests. J.R. Smith—a relentless gunner who was trapped in China up until February—is No. 2 on the team with 15.0 PPG.

Even more ridiculous is the fact that the oft-injured and clearly out of shape Baron Davis is just behind Amar’e Stoudemire in scoring (13.5 PPG for STAT, 11.0 for B-Diddy).

If the Knicks were somehow scoring, it would still be tough for them to slip by Miami. It’s not Chandler’s fault but rather his teammates.

Last year, Tyson’s defensive prowess gave the Dallas Mavericks the edge they needed in the finals against this same Heat team. He controlled the paint, protected the rim and blocked or altered a number of shots. He was the unquestioned defensive leader on a focused, veteran team.

While no one on New York has a problem with him filling that same role here, which is largely why he won the prestigious award, the Knicks collectively do not have the same drive or skill as a unit to lock down Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and the rest of the opposition like Dallas did.

The Knicks have a lot to learn from this season and they will have a long time to reflect on it once they are inevitably eliminated from playoff contention.

Perhaps the only thing they can be sure of is that Tyson Chandler is their best defensive player and he has the hardware to prove it.