Final Score: Knicks 101, Bobcats 91

I will take it. I will absolutely take it. It took three straight losses, a crucial injury, a player's only meeting, and a depleted Bobcats team for the Knicks to get a convincing win, but they did it and it was beautiful. Andrea Bargnani starred at center. He found his shot for stretches in the pick-and-pop and played genuinely excellent center defense, grabbing eight rebounds and recording five blocks and deterring a lot more shots, even in frequent switches on Charlotte's nimble guards. Carmelo Anthony led the scoring with 28 points on 22 shots, including a bunch of second opportunities earned off hard work under the basket.

It was a team thing, though. It started with Mike Woodson playing some sensible lineups and carried over to those lineups giving each other room to breathe and making quick, decisive passes to find open shots (and hitting those open shots). Sound offense fed sound defense that permitted many fewer transition buckets than we'd seen previously and attended to the backboards more and more after a problematic start.

The Knicks looked like a real, functional basketball team tonight, and they did it for the majority of a 48-minute game. That means a lot right now. I'll have a bunch of notes up in the morning. For now, you're fucking right I'm gonna go celebrate my team hitting 2-3 after a win over the Bobcats.