Well, they were going to lose eventually. Why not do it in the most hideous way possible? The Knicks had nothing going this evening. They dropped passes. They committed silly, unforced turnovers. They missed lay-ups, free throws, three-pointers, runners, jumpers, floaters, hooks, and whatever other shots there are in basketball. Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire provided occasional spurts of scoring, but everybody else-- Jeremy Lin, Tyson Chandler, the whole bench-- was completely inept in pretty much every respect. Especially when the Raptors went to a zone defense, New York would just go minutes without finding a decent shot. The Knicks actually cut the Toronto lead to three at the first half buzzer and one early in the third, but that momentum disappeared QUICKLY.
In a way, this felt like the reverse of the Philadelphia game. Both teams played some terrible offense, but the Raptors gained an edge by outworking New York, making fewer unforced errors, and pulling their offense together at the right times.
Taken all together, it was a pretty unpleasant evening. And, as usual, it happened on a Friday, so the awful basketball was compounded by intermittent shots of Robert Randolph gleefully diddling on his pedal steel. WHY MUST YOU TEASE US, ROBERT!?
Nights like this one happen, like Tomahawk Stomp said in the thread. What I'm most interested in now is how the Knicks recover tomorrow night against the Pistons. It's imperative to shake this one off and recover against the Pistons. Letting a loss like this one start the ball rolling down hill would be baaaad news (and also completely typical of this team, at least pre-Woodson). We shall see.