FanPost

Knicks Wiz Sideline Recap

I just got home from the Knicks-Wizards preseason game and I thought I would try to give you guys a recap of the game. I know that Seth will be providing an excellent recap (as always), and I don't want to step on any toes, so instead I am going to offer some anecdotes that may not have shown up on TV.

During the pregame warm-ups Stephen A Smith was hanging out by the Knicks bench. At first he was just munching on ice from one of those large coke cups while watching shootaround. Then Amar'e and Melo came over and kept him company until just before the national anthem. Stephen A had no interest in anything Wizardly.

For those of you that are pulling for Shurna in the rookie survivor's pool I have some encouraging news. The team got into their pregame huddle and then they shoved Shurna into the middle of the circle. Shurna started to get the whole team riled up Drew Brees style. Tyson and Melo were loving it.

I took advantage of the fact that most DC sports fans were at the Nats game and I got some pretty cheap tickets a few rows behind the Knicks bench. I was excited about having an unobstructed view but right before tip off two large men sat down in front of me. I was disappointed for a second until I realized it was Allan Houston and Glen Grunwald. The ten year old boy in me and the statistical nerd in me were battling for control of my attention, so I just sort of went cross-eyed and stared that the space between the two men for longer than I would care to admit.

Kurt Thomas is an intimidating man.

JR really looked like he wants to shed the role of career 6th man and crack the starting rotation. He actually passed up an opportunity to attempt shooting a 3 over a double team. Even more impressive he was hustling and bustling for every rebound. I admire the effort, but us Knicks fans in the stands held our collective breath when it looked like he might break his neck after flipping over two Wizards.

During one of the timeouts they showed a hilarious video of the Wizards mascot terrorizing people on the sidewalks of DC. Mike Woodson was trying to diagram something, but Melo, Amar'e and Copeland were transfixed on the jumbo-tron.

At one point Prigioni was attempting to box out Brian Cook, but Cook just grabbed him by the waist and threw him to the ground like a rag doll. It sounded like Melo calls him Papi.

Copeland looked pretty overwhelmed by the whole game. He was beating himself up pretty bad by half-time. It was nice to see Melo go over and try to cheer him up as they walked back to the locker room.

It was really encouraging to see so much talking on defense. Novak and Tyson were by far the loudest.

Early on the in the second half Kurt Thomas had to inbound the ball, but there was some rich dude still walking back to his courtside seat. Without much hesitation KT just shoved guy into his seat, and followed it up with a nasty scowl.

There was another fun in-bounding incident in the 4th quarter. The ref tried to hand Prigioni the ball, but Pablo was not paying attention at all and just spastically backhanded the ball into the stands, where it nailed someone in the head. Prigioni tried to apologize, but he just muttered something about muscal cars.

During the 4th quarter Amar'e wandered over to the scorers table with a pack of gum, and then just started tossing out individual sticks of gum to people sitting in the first 2 rows behind the table. Even the few Wizards fans in the building were thrilled.