Knicks Lose to Bucks 117 - 113

It's been almost a decade since I've had as sickening a feeling as tonight's contest in Milwaukee caused.  I think it brought me back to the days of Scott Layden.  For the first half of the game the Knicks were as uninspired a basketball team as could be.  The Bucks, a basketball challenged franchise were given the opportunity to play like the Spurs.  It's as if a tiny bell was ringing in heaven for Jason Kidd's team to make some hoops.

By the second half of the game - and I must admit I was falling into a coma so the details are fuzzy - it was Milwaukee's turn to well, fall victim to what looked to be a psychological allergy on the part of the Bucks to want to keep the ball or do anything useful with it.  The Bucks managed to slowly and almost cosmically co-incidentally welcome the Knicks back into the game one slow two point conversion at a time.  Even Mike Breen, who had drifted away from paying attention seemed surprised at the score changing in the Knicks favor.

The rally if we can call it that had all of the ambient effect of a psychotropic drug experience as filmed by Fellini.  Sure enough something out there in Milwaukee was causing the most improbable convergence of scores since the last such event in Milwaukee.  The twenty-six point deficit was cut to just two points with under two minutes to play.

I couldn't quite tell what the hell was going on but I trusted my instincts and braced for Lucy to run out on the court and steal the ball away from our Charlie Browns.  We did lose.  Some sequence of fumbling the ball around that even the announcing team couldn't quite figure out turned it over.  hardaway who didn't have to foul anyone, fouled someone.  There was a final scramble in which Prigioni got kicked in the nuts and bada-bing, bada-boom Lucy ran off with the basketball.  But not before Hardaway got the last hopelessly-never-gonna-hit-the-rim shot off.   It seems every time the ball touches Hardaway's hands a voice inside advises him to let it fly. We lost.

I can't get myself to call it a heartbreaker. It wasn't.  It actually is a boilerplate for the frustration I've had with the Knicks for many, many years.  I'm beginning to narrow it down to Carmelo Anthony - not because he's a bad guy or whatever.

It's just that Cleveland has LeBron, the Spurs Duncan, Miami has Bosh all of whom seem to have a personal vendetta with losing.  With Melo's Knicks, regardless of coaches, it's like "WHATEVER".  Last year when our record was this bad, Melo would say, "We better start thinking about turning this around.  Whatever."

This year he puts on a new hat after the game. Whatever.

This was a bad loss. Another year in which the hole being dug is rapidly looking like a basement.  I like to watch underdog New York teams.  I remember Billy Martin's Yankees, young Phil Simms and the Giants, the Mid-nineties Yankees - Jeter, Williams, Mariano - all before they became champions.

I'm squinting hard to imagine these Knicks winning a ring.