So, recently, I've spent a little bit of time looking at basketball stats, and I found some stuff of interest to the Knicks. Enjoy it.

1.  Mardy Collins is the basketball equivalent one of those beetles that feeds off of the nutrients in cow dung. 

So, I've long hated Mardy Collins. Mardy Collins is guilty of two basketball sins that immediately make me hate a player: a) he is bad at shooting and keeps doing it, and b) he is supposedly "good at defense" according to coaches, but honestly brings nothing on either the offensive or defensive end. So, there's that. I don't like the guy. But via Count the Basket, we can see how truly bad Mardy Collins is. 

Normally, I would say something hyperbolic as fuck like "there are no words to describe how bad a basketball player Mardy Collins is", because hyperbole is the shit. But in fact, there is a word to describe how bad he is: worst. Hyperbole is not necessary. According to 7 statistical categories - PER, Win Shares, Wins Produced, WARP (not sure what that is) adjusted plus/minus, net plus/minus, and statistical plus minus - Mardy Collins is the worst of the 329 players who recieved over 500 minutes of playing time. 

His average ranking was #314 out of 329, and he finished dead last in two categories, second to last in one, and fourth to last in another. In his best category, he was the 278th best player in the league. 

Shit, he's even the worst Collins in the league. Yes, Jarron was in the bottom 5 of PER, and Jason finished dead last in two, and Phil is a musician whose greatest hit was the theme song to Miami Vice, but shit. The worst Collins. 

MC Lyte: The guy who makes Jeff McInnis look like not an animated corpse that wasn't that good at basketball when he was a real human being. 

2. Eddy Curry. Yeesh. 

The next three pieces of information come from my favorite basketball website, BasketballValue.com.  (Sorry Seth.) What that site has is raw and adjusted plus minus data from every player in the league and every five man unit: when they were on the court, who they played against, and everything else, and also, tellss you how many points per possession they scored and gave up and then compares that to how well the team did when the player was not on the court. It's amazing. 

Anyway, the Knicks in an average game of 100 possessions will score 104.13 points and give up 111.45. This means that the Knicks overall plus/minus is -7.32. 

However, when Eddy Curry is off the court, the Knicks score 106 points per 100 possessions and give up 108.8, and have a plus minus of -2.8. 

Now, when Eddy Curry is on the court, the Knicks score 101 points and give up 115.75 points. The Knicks score 5 less points, and give up 7 more. The Knicks are -14.75 points with Eddy Curry on the court. That makes a net plus minus rating of -12. Which is the third worst in the league.

Holy shit. Extrapolated to the adjusted plus minus ratings, (which as far as I can tell is saying how well a player does in comparison to how an average player would fare against the same lineups, so that the most average player in the league has a adjusted plus minus of 0 - no idea how that works), Eddy Curry has a -16.08 rating, which... wait... for... it... is the worst in the league. By 3 points. 

3. Jamal Crawford surprisingly had a pretty good season

OK, now, there were no players who had positve overall plus minuses on the Knicks - meaning there was nobody who was on the court while the Knicks outscored their opponent over the course of the season. 

But Jamal Crawford was close. (Actually, Jared Jeffries was the closest - the team was only -2.24 with him on the court and he had a team high net plus minus, but, fuck him.) 

Jamal had a 10.2 adjusted plus minus, the 11th best in the league. When he was on the court, the Knicks scored 105 points per 100 possessions, but when he was off the court, they only scored 98, which is pretty abysmal. (I think the worst team in the league scores about 100.) So essentially, he was our offense, especially when you consider that he played something like 3000 minutes. The team was slightly worse on defense when he was on the court, but only by 1.1 points.

4. The Knicks had the best 5 man unit in the league. 

Some people like to say things like "you can't trust things with small sample sizes". I say you can't trust mathematicians with small penises. Touche. 

Anyway, this applies here because the Knicks awesome 5 man unit of Wilson Chandler, Jamal Crawford, David Lee, Stephon Marbury, and Nate Robinson played for about 26 seconds. 

Here is what happened in those 26 seconds, via NBA.com's boxscore of the January 2nd game against Sacramento. (basketballvalue.com told me they were playing sactown and then I did the research)

First, with 26 seconds left in the half, Isiah Thomas was struck with a lightning bolt from the god Zeus himself. This told him to put in the best lineup in basketball history, and he substituted Nate Robinson into the game for Quentin Richardson. When this happened, a Malaysian virgin was impregnated. She still has not reconciled with her peerplexed parents, but never mind. 

With 11 seconds left, Stephon Marbury drove valiantly to the basket, and was fouled by Kenny Thomas, making the layup for an and-one opportunity, cutting the lead to a slim margin of 16. 38-54. Any other 5 man unit would've rejoiced. But Stephon had bigger plans. He missed the free throw, and surely enough, Wilson Chandler grabbed the board and hit a jumper, cutting the lead to 40-54. The Kings were distraught by the majesty of the greatest assemblage of humans in the world's history. At the other end, Dahntay Jones attempted a layup, but it was futile. 

In one possession, the Knicks had scored 4 points an allowed 0, leaving them with an overall rating of 400.00. Extrapolated to an average 100 possession game, these 5 men would win every game 400 to 0. Although dozens of teams managed ratings of 300.00, only this squad reached the pinnacle of 400. 

Then Isiah Thomas didn't play those 5 guys together for the rest of the season. The world couldn't handle it.

Enjoy the poll! Remember, you must play Mardy at least 35 minutes, and eating the hammer will not kill you. (it might in real life, but we're being hypothetical.)

If you're wondering my answer, I'd probably go with starting Mardy. I considered grinding the hammer into a fine dust and sprinkling it over a bowl of pasta, but, quite frankly, I don't think it's possible. The metallic part of the hammer would be too difficult to do that with.