“Fire (at) Isiah!!!”

Me and the missus checked out our first (and probably last) Knick game at the Garden last night. Lee Jr. should be here any day now...

Easily the quietest, most despondent fans I've ever seen entering an arena or stadium. The key word here is entering. The game hadn't even started yet! The current Knick situation (for a while now) is actually worse than being a 2-18 team-- at least then you know some serious changes are on the way soon. But the Knicks do actually win every once in a while, and are so fucking delusional that they really believe they can be competitive. It's like long-term depression instead of horrible tragedy.

The pre-game featured some sort of Marine color guard with rifles marching out to center court. I fantasized that a firing squad was being assembled to execute Isiah Thomas. "They're really gonna do it, honey! The Knicks are finally getting rid of Isiah!" No such luck. Five minutes later, a 10 year-old girl was shrieking out the Knicks starting lineup.

Each Knicks has an official nickname now. This is nothing new for me-- I've had my own nicknames for these guys for years. Theirs are a bit different than mine: Steph "The Floor General" Marbury, Eddy "The Centerpiece" Curry, Jamal "The Closer" Crawford, and Isiah "The Architect" Thomas. How about David "The White Guy" Lee and Fred "Who?" Jones... what about Jerome "Six Million" James or Malik "Seven Million" Rose?

The Knicks were absolutely awful last night. Nobody (and I mean nobody) put in any sort of consistent effort in the entire first half. The only reason we weren't completely blown out by halftime was the fact that Philly was pretty awful themselves. The Knicks couldn't even hold on to the basketball-- I mean literally hold on to the ball. When Crawford and Jared Jeffries weren't bobbling the ball all over the court, they were air-mailing passes into the seats or right at Andre Miller. It got so bad that the mere mention of Jeffries's name on the PA caused mass booing, and he's the least of our damn worries.

Nate Robinson was the only watchable thing in MSG last night. Even the Knick City Dancers were a little off their game. Nate easily outscored and outhustled the rest of his team, and he didn't even come in until well into the 3rd quarter! They had just stopped selling the beer/pretzel mugs when Nate came into the game. I almost lost an arm reaching around the steel gate to get the change from my mug of Harp.

Facilities did everything in their power to keep angry Knick fans in their places. "Fire Isiah" chants were organically sprouting up all over the arena, only to be drowned out by random drum beats blasting out of the sound system. Totally insane. I'd like to see the memo issued to the audio guys in the booth by Dolan for all recent home games.

Dolan was at the game, for once. He quickly issued a statement after the game that Isiah's job was "not in jeopardy." Maybe Dolan was getting blown in a VIP box somewhere, because the game I saw had "jeopardy" written all over it.

We took the emergency stairwell out of the Garden (as we always do) after the game. Some guy was staggering down the endless flights right behind us, ranting about "getting rid of Isiah and everybody that has anything to do with him... Let Herb run the damn team again." The guy was actually talking some sense. Things have gotten so bad that we're dying to have Herb Williams coach the team.