Warriors 92, Knicks 78: "This game is yucky."

The quotation in the headline comes from Lord Smackington, who picked a pretty apt adjective to describe what we just saw. Yuck. This recap will probably not be especially long or serious because it's quite late and I just can't bring myself to review what I just witnessed in much detail.

Take the jump!

Here is a list of things that sucked in tonight's game:

- Toney Douglas. On one hand, he missed a ton of shots. On the other hand, those missed shots constituted some of the best passes he made all evening. 'Twas another terrible game for Toney, who has failed to execute in pretty much every realm thus far.

- Landry Fields after the first quarter. Early on, Landry looked remarkably confident off the dribble, and even drove baseline for an exceedingly vicious viscous dunk. Later on, he reverted to being wan, sheepish Landry, passing up good shots in favor of hideous ones and firing off ill-advised passes at a semiautomatic pace.

- Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire's offensive games, both of which were ball-dominant, isolation-heavy, and rarely produced baskets.

- The Knicks' defense, particularly in the second half. As Clyde pointed out, all it took was a rudimentary off-ball screen or backdoor cut to throw the Knicks into a state of flailing, delirious pandemonium.

- The Knicks' rebounding. 47-31 in favor of the Warriors. (Amar'e was weirdly active on that front, making a concerted effort to track down 10 boards. Imagine if he'd played the way he normally does.)

- Tyson Chandler. Bad, useless fouls limited him to 22 minutes in which he was pretty much silent.

- Josh Harrellson. Guy hasn't looked like he's ready to contribute anything off the bench, though he's still got to overcome his nerves before we pass too much judgment. No dribbling, though, Josh. I feel pretty comfortable pounding the gavel on that one right now.

- 4-21 from downtown. Less than ideal.

Folks are understandably freaking out over the loss, and I'm grumpin' pretty hard myself. That said, it's the second game of the year, and losses like this one happen, even to teams that will end up being pretty good (look around the league). THAT said, the Knicks' starting backcourt hasn't dropped even a single glimmer of a hint that they have anything useful to offer, and the frontcourt has demonstrated only intermittently that they can operate without the assistance of their guards. The Knicks, even when they fail to execute a team offense, are capable of winning on isolation play alone, (they've already done it once) but tonight's game is a reminder of what it looks like when Plan A (basketball) and Plan B (Meloball) both falter. Not good. It's early and the sample size is small, but, like, it's pretty much cemented that Toney Douglas isn't going to be finding cutters any time soon. (He will, on the other hand, start hitting his jumpers at some point. First he needs to start taking better ones.)

Anyway, other stuff:

- Mike Bibby's defense was as horrid as advertised-- it sometimes looked like he was playing zone while everybody else guarded a man-- but he was the lone Knick to toss a few decent assists. He looked unterrible for stretches of the third quarter.

- There were a bunch of Knick debuts in this one! Steve Novak came in and drilled a corner three that seemed important before we learned that it was all for naught. Jerome Jordan came in and drilled a jumper that unfortunately got beaten by the halftime buzzer, but also showed off some surprisingly nimble defense feet and notched a few points in garbage time. Jeremy Lin got to spin in front of an adoring crowd and, well, that's all he really need to do.

- Renaldo Balkman did the following things: Brick a jumper at the top of a pick-and-roll with like 30 seconds left on the shot clock, lead a fast break and somehow end up with an assist despite throwing his pass directly at a Warrior, dunk in and around Ekpe Udoh's mouth.

- Is "that shit Klay" a thing? It will be.

- And hey, if you don't like cursing, the Warriors' second unit backcourt could be "that Ish Klay".

- Did I mention that Stephen Curry didn't play for the Warriors? No? Okay, then I won't.

- Melo kept getting hit in the chest with unexpected passes and Monta Ellis, who shot terribly in the first half, just dropped the ball out of bounds at one point. As a few people said, it seems likely that those two split a can of paint thinner or something before the game.

- Semi-interesting stat revealed by Mike Breen: Of NBA coaches, Mark Jackson has the most NBA playing experience. Eh. It sounded more semi-interesting when Breen said it.

- Mentioned this in the game thread: Herb Williams needs glasses, no? Why so squinty, Herb?

- I didn't anticipate this, but this is all I think of when Steve Novak enters the game.

- "Golden State Warriors" really sounds like a D-II college team, doesn't it? This just dawned on me today.

- Ish Smith shot a ball all the way over the basket.

- Amar'e reportedly told Tina Cervasio that his new goggles give him "king's vision". Based on tonight's game, I'd guess that king is...JOHN OF BOHEMIA THAT'S RIGHT I GOT KING JOKES GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY!

Really, though. I'm done with this awful, awful game and am going to try as hard as I can to forget it ever happened. Sorry, Brandon Rush.