New Orleans Hornets snap thee Knicks' 5-game winning streak

Jeremy Lin can't win them all. At least not if he plays like he did on Friday at the Madison Square Garden against the New Orleans Hornets. Sure enough, Lin had been the responsible for what we could call the Knicks Revival, as he guided the New York Knicks, sans Carmelo Anthony, back into a .500 season, winning 5 consecutive games and breaking a couple rookie records. Sure enough, he has scored more points than any player in the first three NBA starts, but he was just awful against the Hornets. Lin finished the night with 26 points, but his 9 turnovers were almost doubling his assists. This 89-85 win on the road should certainly come as a motivational boost for New Orleans. Trevor Ariza guided the Hornets with 25 points, to help the franchise win three straight games after a 4-23 start.

Now, at 15-16, the Knicks are going to have to get their act together for their next matchup on Sunday, as the face the NBA defending Champions, the Dallas Mavericks, and it is quite certain that despite showing improvement over the groin injury he's been suffering, Carmelo Anthony isn't going to start. So then again, it will be up to Jeremy Lin to prove that he could actually make it work for the Knicks and that once Melo get's back on the court, it would be Anthony who's going to have to adjust to the Lin strategy.

But to be realistic, despite what Lin himself says about it, it wasn't his entire fault. The Knicks shooting was just awful. Sure enough, Lin puts all the blame on himself: at least that's what he said in the postgame conference. "Just a lackluster effort on my part coming out and careless with the ball, and so nine turnovers is obviously never going to get it done from your primary ballhandler," Lin said. "It's on me in terms of taking care of the ball and also the game in general (…) I think everyone wants to credit me for this last seven games, then I definitely deserve this one on my shoulders and so that's fine with me."

Amare Stoudemire took over the commanding roll with 26 points and 12 rebounds for the Knicks. And even though it's still uncertain what's going to happen with the Knicks once All-Star Carmelo Anthony comes back from what has already been a 6-game recovery, one thing is for sure: they need to find a decent three-point shooter. Just consider for a second that the Knicks missed 20 of their 24 3-point attempts Friday night against the Hornets. As if that was not enough, New York was only 19-of-29 and looked as if they couldn't get their rhythm going.

So, the bottom line is that Lin has been doing great things for the franchise and for his career. But there is still lot of work to be done to make the Knicks a true championship contender. Sure enough, Jeremy Lin has a whole lot of positive record-breaking stats, but he has struggled greatly with turnovers. His 45 turnovers are the most in a player's first seven career starts since individual turnovers were first recorded in 1977-78.