Dammit.

The Knicks suffer a hard fought loss.

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Game 13: Heat 115, Knicks 113

This one was tough.

It was tough because it was Miami, and it always hurts to lose to those guys.

It was tough because the team fought so hard, especially in the second half, on the road, undermanned, attempting to sweep a home & home, which is never easy even at full strength.

It was tough because a win would have helped gloss over a lot of unfortunate realities that we do, sadly, need to discuss in more detail thanks to the result.

And more than anything, it was tough because the Knicks were thisclose to escaping with one of the more improbable victories we’d have seen in a while.

Down 10 with three minutes to go, New York closed with a furious 11-3 run that gave them the ball with just over 20 seconds remaining. After a missed pull up two from Deuce McBride, Karl-Anthony Towns pulled down an offensive rebound and was fouled immediately went back up for a shot that was blocked at the apex by Kal’el Ware, resulting in a goaltending call that the refs reviewed and overturned.

After the Knicks got possession on a center court jump ball, Deuce missed another game-tying attempt, this time on a running lefty layup high off the glass, which was followed by another KAT rebound, and then the game ended when Towns rimed out a fadeaway 12-footer a few seconds before the buzzer.

It was an imperfect end to an imperfect basketball game that nonetheless featured some big time efforts across the board. We’ll get to those in Stars of the Game shortly. Zooming out, the Knicks nearly stole this one despite an ice cold shooting night from deep (9-for-36; 25 percent) where the attempts were good for the most part, as Mike Brown stated afterwards. Tough to be too mad at that.

Alas, a loss is a loss, so let’s run through the four main issues from last night, which I’ll grade from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) on my personal frustration scale…