Lakers 127, Knicks 96: "WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE"

I have a quibble with the way the term FARTDOG has spread. My quibble is: When people ask each other what FARTDOG stands for, the response is usually "Friendly Alliance of Really Terrible Defenders of Opposing Guards." While that sounds most correct, I insist that it should be "for," not "of". As we've discussed before, the Knicks defense doesn't just permit opposing guards to go off, it promotes their efforts. It is a charitable organization, and it rarely fails to uplift.

The Lakers are not a good offensive team, even though they shoot threes well. They are, in fact, a bad offensive team, ranked 22nd in the league in efficiency (before Tuesday night, at least). How bad are they? Bad enough that they shot 5-18 with 5 turnovers in a 14-point first quarter against the Knicks' sluggish defense.

The Lakers are bad, and they looked bad until FARTDOG intervened. FARTDOG turns players into stars, and then it turns them into gods. It started with a 12-2 run to erase New York's lead-- a couple blown assignments and open jumpers, some poor pick-and-roll coverage. Basic bad defense stuff. But then the Lakers gained momentum, and when you have FARTDOG momentum beneath your wings, anything is possible. Here are some things that FARTDOG produced after the first quarter:

- Robert Sacre, who can barely feed himself, executed a flawless Dream Shake to score over Tyson Chandler.

- Chris Kaman ripped a one-legged Dirk Nowitzki baseline jumper like it was nothing. Like he does it all the time, which he does not.

- J.R. Smith came a beat late closing out under a screen and Jodie Meeks banked in an elbow three.

- My notes say the Lakers shot 15-20 in the second quarter. This doesn't seem possible, but they went on to score 51 points in the third quarter on 19-26 shooting in the third quarter, so I believe my notes.

- Yeah, I just checked. That really happened. And it doesn't even stand out because...

- ...the Lakers scored FIFTY-ONE FUCKING POINTS IN THE THIRD QUARTER. That is the most the Lakers have ever scored in a quarter. That is the most the Knicks have ever surrendered in a quarter. Again, if the Knicks had simply not fielded a team in the third quarter, Los Angeles might have performed worse.

- The one time the Knicks actually closed out on a shooter, Nick Young got a four-point play.

- Xavier Henry missed a free throw, then stole his own rebound out from under Amar'e Stoudemire's nose and threw down an and-one dunk.

- Kendall Marshall tried to hand the ball to a ref, but it suddenly changed direction and flew through the net, then bounced in such a way that it dropped through the net again.

- Nick Young laughed and gold coins sprayed out of his mouth. Each coin is worth one million dollars.

- MarShon Brooks turned into an angel. He tripped, but before he could fall, he sprouted wings and ascended through the roof into the night sky. He lives in heaven now.

- The Knicks, faced with tons of Laker three-pointers, tried to play zone for some reason.

- Ryan Kelly recorded a horrorcore album between the third and fourth quarters. Pitchfork gave it a 9.2 and called it "transcendent."

- Wesley Johnson spit and his saliva congealed into a mound of soft, pleasantly tangy cheese with notes of lemon peel and cedar. One pound of the cheese is worth fourteen Nickyoungcoins.

- In a remote fishing village in Iceland, a dog spoke to a boy. The boy asked the dog if it wanted to go outside, and the dog said "yes, I do" in Icelandic, then farted. The boy wept. The dog wept, then began writing its first novel.

- Mermaids exist now.

- A volcano erupted on Jupiter. From the eruption emerged a new kind of life form-- an organism best described as a rapidly evolving shadow, an absence of light that dissolves objects in its midst, assuming their most adaptive qualities. Since I started writing this sentence, the life form has consumed Saturn, designed a base-7 system of mathematics, pioneered time travel, and developed a method of selectively altering pockets of gravity throughout the universe to change the course of natural history.

- The Lakers shot 18-28 from downtown on the night.

FARTDOG is the greatest thing to happen to every team but the Knicks. You could reasonably ask, like BJabs did, what the problem with the Knicks is, but maybe there is no problem. Maybe they're not here to win at basketball. Maybe they're here for a greater cause: to save the rest of the league and maybe the universe. 11 more games.