The Post Up: It’s Hard Out Here for a Knick.

By: Holly MacKenzie
Whenever I see Isiah all I can think is “oh how the mighty have fallen”, and then I picture him in Hoop Dreams when he was so amazing and idolized and it makes me feel cheated. I don’t know why, or of what, but it just sucks. I don’t even know what to begin to say to describe the Knicks/Celtics game last night. I don’t want to write the recap, I don’t even want to see the boxscore. It was a nightmare to watch and I can only imagine how it felt to play in it from the Knicks side. I just felt so damn bad for the guys on the bench. At one point you see Steph with his towel over his head and Q beside him, just shakes his head in disgust. Yeah, he was running his mouth earlier, yeah a lot of this they have brought on themselves but what a damn mess. I feel bad for the fans because it is so sad to see a franchise fall so far. Pierce on the bench looks up at the scoreboard as incredulously as I did. I just feel like a huge fight is going to break out at one of these Knicks games. Since they have already imploded, the only thing left to do is explode. Unless of course, they can’t be bothered. Bottom line, something needs to be fixed and soon.

Edit: When I went to check out the boxscore from the game to write up this recap, the stats were all from the 3rd quarter as if even yahoo sports was so frustrated they couldn’t continue to pass along the horrible stats. Seems appropriate.

I was pleasantly shocked to see the Lakers come back from 17 down to end up defeating Denver by 28, marking a 45-point swing in the game. Sasha Vujacic’s 19-point 4th quarter was brilliantly bizarre and when the crowd starting cheering “MVP” for him as he was at the free throw line I could only shake my head. You know you are in LA when… I still can’t believe the Lakers scored 45 points in the 4th Q. Those are Suns type numbers. I was thrilled to see Crittenton get some burn, even if it was only 5 minutes. In those minutes he managed to score 7 points, grab 3 rebounds and dish an assist without any turnovers. Up those numbers. We want to see more of the kid.

I didn’t get to catch the Houston/Golden State game, but I was thrilled to see the Warriors continue to roll. Yeah for Stephen Jax and Don Nelson’s craziness that seems to work. I wish I would have seen Al Harrington shut down Yao, and I am going to make Golden State a priority from here on out.


Boston 104 New York 59

There really isn’t a lot to be said about this game. Boston came out from the opening minutes and annihilated the Knicks every single step of the way. While the Celtics had five players reach double-figures the Knicks had only one and it happened at the final buzzer. They also just managed to surpass the franchise low for points in a game as Nate Robinson hit that half-court shot to get into double-digits. For the game, New York’s highest scoring quarter was the 4th when they scraped together 18 points. In comparison, the Celtics had only one quarter where they scored less than 27 points. Boston had the luxury of resting their starters and did so with Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce all sitting out the entire 4th quarter. Pierce and Allen each finished with 21 points while Garnett added 8 points and 11 rebounds in limited minutes. Eddie House had 15 and Glen Davis added 13 for Boston. For NY, Robinson ended with 11 points, and Jamaal Crawford had 8. The Celtics out-rebounded New York 51-35, they outshot them 46.8% as compared to 30.3% from the Knicks and they connected on 12 three-pointers while New York managed only two in the game.

LA Lakers 127 Denver 99

While the Lakers got down by 17 early, they managed to pull themselves out of the hole in the 3rd quarter and outscored the Nuggets by 8 in the period to take an 81-75 advantage into the 4th. It was in the final 12 minutes where LA excelled as Denver fell apart. The Nuggets gave up 46 points in the period as LA exploded offensively, led by Sasha Vujacic and his 19-point quarter off of the bench to bust the game open and lead LA to the 127-99 victory. The Laker reserves continued to come up big, outscoring Denver’s bench by a score of 63-29 and LA did so well with the second-unit in the game, Kobe Bryant got to sit out the entire 4th quarter. Despite playing only 24 minutes, Bryant was the game’s leading scorer, finishing with 24 points. Besides Vujacic’s 22 off the bench the Lakers also got 14 points from Luke Walton and a 12-point, 13-rebound double-double from Andrew Bynum. Denver was led by Carmelo Anthony and his 23 points while Allen Iverson had 21 points and Linas Klezia scored 15. Anthony was ejected in the final minutes of the game for a flagrant-2 foul on Vujacic.

Golden State 113 Houston 94

Since the return of captain Stephen Jackson, the Golden State Warriors have looked and played like a different team than the one who opened the season 0-6. They have played so well in fact, that with their 113-94 victory over Houston they became the quickest team in NBA history to come back from an 0-6 start to post a winning record. Since losing their first six, the Warriors have gone 8-1 in their last nine games. In the contest last night, the Warriors got the usual contributions from Jackson and Baron Davis (19 points and 27 points, 8 assists), but they also got a huge contribution from Al Harrington as Harrington stifled Yao Ming and prevented him from dominating the game, disrupting Houston’s offensive flow. While the 1st half of the game was close, the Warriors used a 15-2 run in the 3rd to go up by as many as 19 points. They were able to coast to the victory from there as Houston was not able to cut the lead down into single-digits, despite getting a 19-point effort from Mike James off of the bench. As a testament to Harrington’s defensive efforts, Yao finished with only 10 points. McGrady struggled as well, finishing with 11 points on 5-4 field goals.