Get them lottery picks, I suppose. The Knicks hung around against a feisty Atlanta Hawks team, but collapsed in typical fashion down the stretch to give it up in Atlanta. Game notes:

• Kenny Smith doesn't know shit about bowling. First, he couldn't say how many pins there were, and then he said that he knew that the best strategy was to just "throw it as hard as you can".
• Bob Wischusen (the play-by-play guy for this one) commented that Josh Childress' fro protects his head like a helmet. Maybe this is the answer for Gerald Walace?
• While we're on hair, David Lee needs a snip ASAP.
• Towards the end of the first quarter, David Lee picks up his second foul and...Eddy Curry sits. In case you still thought Isiah didn't have favorites.
• Zach Randolph was an absolute monster in this one. Other than a couple misses down the stretch, he was on fire, attacking the basket and ruthlessly snaggling rebounds. He finished with 29 and 17 and played pissed-off throughout. Really makes one wonder why he can't be even a little active on defense.
• Bob Wischusen pulled out a nice, frightening stat: in 54 games played, Eddy Curry has hit double digit rebounds TWICE.
• I like Kenny Smith, but giving him a full 48-minute basketball game to talk is a bit much. At halftime, he pulled out the fact that the Knicks would need 4 big stops in the second half to beat the Hawks. Why 4? What does that even mean?
• Kenny also spent a full 3 minutes discussing the thought processes of Fred Jones and Josh Smith after Smith blocked Jones' dunk attempt. Apparently, Fred was thinking that he should go up for a dunk because he was once a dunk champion and still has some nice hops, while Smith was thinking that he was too smart to try and go for the block, unless Jones was gonna attempt a dunk, in which case he would try to get the block, but hopefully block it out of bounds for fear of a rebound. If this sounds ridiculous, that's because it is.
• Spike Lee's brother is named David.
• If I ever meet Earl Monroe, I'm gonna yell "HEY! You're Earl the Pearl Monroe!".
• This game got pretty ugly down the stretch. Check this out. The score was stuck at 91-90 for over a minute and a half towards the end. That took a lot outta me.

Ultimately, it was a decent, somewhat energetic performance by the Knicks in which they just came up short. Nothing to write home about. They're in Orlando tonight to face the Magic, and I'll have a preview up shortly.