I was gifted tickets to the Cavs game at Christmas and looked forward to going to the game for a hundred reasons. It was nice to go and truly great fun for another hundred reasons.
This review of the game will be unlike any you've read before so fasten your seatbelts, I can't help myself.
This season has been so bad for the Knicks that they've tried hiding the location of Madison Square Garden. It was actually a little disorienting to locate it. Take a look:
Where the hell is it? I think they are trying to make sure the front office stays as remote as possible from the place.
Anyway, we got in and during pre-game a military detachment shows up on the floor and all I could think is "Finally!, they're going to just have the front-office escorted out of the building forevermore."
But. No. It was a color guard there to prevent the singer of the national anthem from changing her mind and running out the building screaming.
The woman who sang the anthem had a cadence of high notes that were absolutely ear-splitting and she seemed to enjoy it. The audience seemed to think this was good singing but all I could think of was that I pitied her eventual life-partner because whenever she gives that person an earful they will sorely regret pissing her off.
But I digress.
I did not remember the Garden being as virtual as it is now. The screens above the court are just massive. And in the section we were in there were screens along the balcony edge. The in person experience rapidly evolving into an immersive virtual bath of artificial light.
I also had forgotten how god-damned loud the real games are. The carney noise of organs, pedestrian hip-hop, and who-fouled interjections ensure no contemplation of the moment will be remembered in quiet solitude.
Before the lineups get announced the video screens feature player after player who may in fact get play time from Thibodeau. Curiously, each picture is tagged with the same meme, "Don't sleep on [whoever]". As I just said, sleep is out of the question when the Garden walls are rattling but something about this meme struck me as curious.
When we were walking into the game a number of fans were discussing their gambling picks. "I have so-and-so under 20 points and such-and-such with 15 rebounds, and...". It occurred to me that gambling has so permeated sports that memes such as "Don't sleep on..." are subliminal triggers for gamblers to add a bet or two before the game starts.
The Knicks had been eliminated from any chance of making the playoffs just 24 hours or so beforehand and I had hoped that that would mean that the Knicks would play some of the players who needed more exposure. The announcer's voice bellowed: "Starting at point guard for the NEW. YORK. KNICKS...[be still my heart] ALEC [sigh] BURKS..."
ok
Its unclear why so many players were unavailable for this game. Maybe they overwhelmed the Honor Guard and fled. Who knows.
The game was close for the first half. Quickley did play and the seventeenth player on the team, Ryan Archi..mumble...mumble also played. Kind of a scrappy guy. He's no Ron Burgundy but fun to watch anyway.
At halftime I needed to stretch my legs and we walked out among the crowd to get the blood circulating. I stopped at a not-buzy-at-all vendor booth because I spied a "In Thibs We Trust" t-shirt. I asked the vendor if he sold many of those these days and he replied, "I'd sell them all if I could". I asked him if they were on discount yet and he laughed heartily and replied, "No, not yet... but maybe soon."
Cosmically co-incidentally, it happened to be 'Kids Day at the Garden. Boys and girls all over the place. You can still say stuff like that at MSG, thank god.
During a break in the second half of the game there was a karaoke break in which all the kids sang a Disney tune called "Don't say Bruno". The kids knew all the words by heart. I had never heard it before and asked my wife what it was about and she said it was a song about a character who nobody talks about because bad things happen. I could swear they were singing "Don't talk about Thibideau".
Things started going downhill for the Knicks by the fourth quarter and I reassured Kathy that the Knicks "just had to" fall behind by twenty or thirty points to make it a close game at the end.
By now the music turned to "Don't Stop Believing".
And the organ player, desperate for something up lifting started an organ cadence that took me back decades to my childhood when I went to Yankee Stadium [the old one]... [close your eyes]..
[you can open your eyes now] then some music that sounded like circus music...
by now the Cavs were just toying with the Knicks. In one sequence 7 or eight crisp passes, one behind the back and Cleveland scored spectacularly.
Miles of video screen in the building and no replay.
Damn.
The Knicks used to play like that. A long time ago. Thibodeau is about brutish, grind it out until everyone drops basketball. Phil Jackson's vision of rebuilding made sense to me. This doesn't.
The Cavs center. A guy named Brown. Second start ever in the NBA had a double-double against Mitchell Robinson, our center who expects a big paycheck. Nobody gets embarrassed these days.
When I got home, I watched Knicks Fan TV (KFTV) with the "Franchise". It's become a ritual for me. A fan call-in show run by some very savvy fans who tell it like it is.
Keep Randle? Trade Randle?
When I saw how beautifully Kevin Love complemented those young Cavs I thought, Randle for Love... I'm there.
Thibodeau. Back again.
We need a Point Guard - no shit Sherlock.
A caller calls in. "There are no traditional point guards anymore". Tell me about it.
To be a Knicks fan is to suffer.
