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The Wrong Side of History
(25th January, 2010)
In basketball media guides, they are among a series of categories known as ‘Superlatives’, which contain the best and worst of individual and team records.
The game that was played at MSG on Sunday afternoon would be listed in such a category, for the New York Knocks was on the wrong side of history. That’s what 128-78, in favor of the Dallas Mavericks, will do. A 50-pont butt-kicking, particularly in front of the home crowd, is strong enough to make young children weep and grown-ups search for answers that just aren’t there.
“Nothing was good today,” coach Mike Daytona mused.
“They played a very aggressive defense,” Wilson Chandler said in a barely audible voice.
“Not only didn’t we play well, but they played as well as they could. It was the perfect storm,” David Lee philosophized.
The loss was the worst game on any Garden floor, eclipsing the-then Charlotte Hornets’ 111-68 romp on Martin Luther King Day, 2002. It was the Knicks’ largest margin of defeat since losing by 45 points to the Boston Celtics, in a nationally televised game during the 2007-08 season.
To think the Mavs were capable of something like this without Jason Kidd, who reportedly was back in Dallas with his very-pregnant girlfriend, is unfathomable.
To think the Knicks are still considered a playoff team is equally unfathomable.
The media was reminded, once more, that it was just one game of 82 –which translates into one more lost opportunity to close in on the eighth-place Chicago Bulls.