Holy Crap

"There may have been some hustle issues in this one," according to ESPN's Matt Winer. How now, Winer? It seems like a pretty fair result to me. In reverse order, my five favorite things about the New York Knicks' absolutely stunning 104-59 loss at the hands of the Boston Celtics Thursday night.

5) It was only the Knicks' third-worst loss of the shot clock era

Look, I know it's a long season. I know there are tons of meaningless contests in any given NBA calendar, and some of them are bound to wind up blowouts. When you run those odds through decades of games and scads of expansion teams and omnipresent injuries and cocaine and the little-known (and unproven) mathematical theorem known as the Kenny Anderson Constant, you're going to come up with some ugly scorelines. Sure.

But still, when you wind up on the ugly end of a 45-point deficit, and it ain't even in the top two, it's almost more embarrassing. Which reminds me of a story from Cheddar Ben's rugby days, when he and the team were in the Dominican Republic for some Spring Breaking. There were a bunch of Canadian girls who may or may not have been underage at the same resort -- it was unclear. In any case, the bar at our hotel was an All-You-Can-Drink type of place, serving any of 20 different fruity island drinks in tiny little plastic cups. Being creative alcoholics (the most dangerous kind), we quickly decided that a goal should be to drink each item on the drink menu in order. It was surmised that a drinker might fall into a diabetic coma before finishing, but this was seen as an attractive feature of the enterprise by many members of the club.

Two nights in, our teammate -- a standup guy known as Honky Jimbo -- took down the Menu in fine fashion and proceeded to disappear into his hotel room. He didn't surface until 7 p.m. the next evening, when the team had re-decamped in the same bar. Hollow-eyed and white as the driven snow, Jim asked the bartender for a Coke, chugged it, proceeded to vomit all over the grass next to the bar, and promptly vanished again.

The next morning, once again walking around like a semi-normal human being, he was asked about how he felt. Jim thought about the question for a moment, and then answered honestly. "It was almost the second-worst hangover I've ever had," he said.

The kid was a drinker. The point being, the Knicks aren't in a good place right now.

4) Kevin Garnett played only 22 minutes

Or, the same number of minutes as Brian Scalabrine, the most unlikely looking pro basketball player of his generation. Or, a minute less than Isiah's pride and joy Fred Jones, who used his longest appearance of the year to post four assists and two blocks and miss three shots. Yippee. This game was over before the first bite of cotton candy was taken. I think I caught Garnett getting a full-body massage and facial late in the third quarter. Ray Allen had toothpicks in between his toes.

Here are the types of players averaging between 21 and 22 minutes this year in the NBA:

DAL Brandon Bass 21.8 minutes
NJN Bostjan Nachbar 21.8 minutes
SEA Delonte West 21.8 minutes
SEA Kurt Thomas 21.6 minutes
PHI Louis Williams 21.6 minutes
MIA Anfernee Hardaway 21.6 minutes
CHI Victor Khryapa 21.6 minutes

Ouch. Good to see Penny on that list, though, especially now that the Knicks no longer owe him any money. Also, it appears there's a reason the Bulls are looking so awful. Scott Skiles must be giving that guy Tyrus Thomas' minutes, a Lenny Wilkens move if ever there were one.

3) None of the Celtics' starters recorded a turnover

Of course, they weren't in the game for that long, so this has something of a self-fulfilling edge to it. But come on. That's some STIFLING defense by the Knicks there.

The C's are certainly a combination of gifted and unselfish players, but they've also only known each other for less than a year, and haven't played more than a baker's dozen regular-season games together. There's such a thing as instant chemistry, I suppose, but a little bit of pressure or effort might have forced Boston into, I don't know, one bad pass. We'll never know.

Some of us were bullish on the Eddy Curry-Zach Randolph combination heading into the season, and I admit I was one of those boosters. Others pointed out this would be the worst defensive frontcourt in the conference, and they turned out to have the stronger case. Q is a far more inspired defender, but he has trouble with guys who are faster than him, and that list expands by the second. Jamal Crawford has always been a sieve, and for all of this ability, the last time Starbury played D was against Boys and Girls in the PSAL semifinals.

Oh, and Garnett also almost posted a triple-double during them minutes. Nice.

2) This line from the AP writeup:

"And unlike the Boston area's NFL team, the Celtics didn't even try to run up the score."

Zing! Way to hit 'em where it hurts, Associated Press. The two main guys in the Boston bureau are Jimmy Golen and Howard Ulman, two solid, diligent soldiers in the beat game. They're understaffed in an extremely tough media environment, and more than hold their own. Always had a soft spot for them.

And, naturally, one of them clearly loathes Bill Belichick. More points in my book.

1) Nate Robinson hit a 37-foot 3-pointer at the buzzer to get the game to within 45

Hold on. There's just so many angles from which to come at this.

No, still thinking. Laughing, really. But still thinking.

Okay.

No, okay. Now we're good.

Don't you get the sense that Nate Robinson is kind of happy with that? I don't mean in a fleeting, "Wow, I can't believe that went in" way. I mean, I think Nate Robinson thinks that was pretty awesome. That he did okay Thursday night.

It's admittedly a Dime Store armchair psychologist cheap shot, and I have no actual basis for asserting something like that. All the same, I can't help the sneaking suspicion that these are the types of games that Nate the Great adores. He gets to take 10 shots (missing 6, of course). He gets to play 22 minutes, which isn't a ton, but it's more than his season average. And he gets to chuck up whatever he wants, including buzzer-beating Hail Marys with barely anyone still on the court.

A real basketball player wouldn't be the least bit pleased with any of those things, especially when compared to the sting of a thrashing at the hands of a resurgent divisional rival.

But that's the problem with these Knicks. It's not immediately apparent whether one of their key hustle guys off the bench is even remotely interested in winning. In fact, if you want to be a real asshole about it, you might note that they don't have a single guy on the roster who's ever won anywhere at the pro level. That showed last night.

I have to assume that they care at least a little bit. I have to assume that they have normal human desires, like the urge not to be humiliated. I have to assume they have pride, because it sure isn't visible.

That would have to count as my least-favorite thing about the game.