Redemption
The Knicks have an opportunity to re-take control of the series. Here's why they will.
Good morning! Tonight is the biggest Knicks game at Madison Square Garden since…two days ago? 32 years ago? One of those for sure. Hope to see everyone on the KFS YouTube channel for what promises to be an eventful watch-along.
Oh yeah…the league was too cowardly to retroactively upgrade the Wemby non-flagrant, because of course they were. Count me as unsurprised.
Redemption
I got up yesterday morning with the intention of writing a full comprehensive breakdown of what went wrong on Monday night. I got about three words in and realized I didn’t have it in me, for three reasons.
First, the worst mistakes - the turnovers - were so blatant that my analysis would be limited to “seriously, guys?” I’m also not about to channel my inner-Kenny Atkinson and lament how at least half of these 10 consecutive 3-point misses to begin the fourth quarter…
…were great looks. The reality of facing a Wemby-led defenses is that you often have to live by the three and die by the three. The Knicks have lived far more often than they have died in this postseason, so one bad stretch, albeit at the worst possible time, does not give us the right to complain.
The second reason I want to go in a different direction today is because, the more I thought about it, this game can be best summed up by a classic New York sports quote from yesteryear:
The Spurs came out playing to win Game 3, perhaps emboldened by losing the first two games at home and saying “fuck it.” The Knicks, on the other hand, played not to lose. They were hesitant. They were indecisive. They were tight. They were nothing like the team we’ve been spoiled by for the last month and a half. As a former teacher who knows the feeling of getting observed by the principal on day when you don’t have anything close to your best stuff, I’m not going to subject the Knicks to that same indignity.
The last reason I’m not going hard on the film today is more empathetic in nature. For 46 days, these Knicks were largely infallible, and then for one night, they made a few too many mistakes. Moreover, for as frustrating as it was to watch them in the moment, we can’t disassociate those mistakes from the petri dish they were created in, and I can only imagine how much the officiating has thrown all of these guys off their game. Its not an excuse, but it is at least a partial explanation.
(Zach Zarba, please: be the change Knick fans hope to see in the world)
Anywho, in the spirit of positivity and not completely forgetting that this team just had the second longest postseason winning streak in NBA history, today I’ll go through all five starters and give one stat-based reason for optimism moving forward (and maybe offer a bit of helpful advice here and there), starting with…
