Tuesday, March 29, 2005

 

Uhhh. 3 West Coast Games, 3 Straight Losses

Well, the euphoria of mopping the floor with Boston has faded. Three straight losses on the road to west coast teams will do that. But what can you do? The Knicks sometimes don't get calls at home. One can barely expect them to win games out west.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

 

Knicks at the Key

Last night was the Knicks sole appearance out in Seattle this season. It's been a while since I've taken in an NBA game. But with the NHL on strike, Catfish and Edward taking on the role of uber-Knicks-fans, and my near miraculous fantasy hoops season last year, I've slowly begun to drift back into the NBA fold. And what better way to dive back in completely than a Friday night ESPN-televised game during Sweet 16 weekend.

I left work at 4, catching the commuter bus from my office in Redmond to downtown Seattle. Getting off the bus at the south monorail stop, I shared the monorail station elevator with a French-speaking family on vacation which might have been a more interesting story if the elevator ride was more than 2 stories. The north end of the monorail, my destination, was the Seattle Center, home to Key Arena, the Space Needle, and the new bar Sport, where the Seattle 'fantasy' crew had been hanging out watching the NCAA tournament.

The timing was good. Theher got there just as I was standing outside the restaurant with my back to it wondering where it was. It was my first venture to this new bar. With individual TVs at each booth, it's the first sports bar in Seattle to have reached the point that many suburban bars on the east coast reached several years ago. Not surprisingly, the place is doing well, as theher and I had to share a seat for about 5 minutes until another one was found.

The fantasy crew had been there since 4 after a day of work that consisted of emailing each other about the possible outcome scenarios of our 8 player - 8 team pool, of which I'd already been eliminated after Georgia Tech and Cincinnati bit it last weekend. In one scenario, at the end of the tourney, two of the participants could end up tied. It was decided that in that event, the tie breaker would be a game of beer pong, making me wonder whether I should just suggest that next year, we say 'fuck the brackets' and just have an 8-person $240 beer pong tournament.

After watching the Big Ten send two more teams to the Elite Eight, it was off to the Key. The game started off with an uncalled flagrant foul by Stephon Marbury and a short Sonics run. Ray Allen, who I'd read was supposed to miss this game, played a solid game from start to finish. The Knicks made some runs, the Sonics pulled ahead a few times, but the lead never went above 10 the whole game.

Tim Thomas, whose bright orange shoes successfully prevented him from being shot at by other hunters in the area (hey, there were a lot of Wisconsin fans at the bar down the street), sank a three at the end of regulation to send the game into overtime. For some reason, neither Tim nor Kurt Thomas has their first initial on the back of their jerseys, so the riled up Sonics fans in the men's room before the overtime period were arguing over whether it was Tim or Kurt. They agreed it was Kurt.

All in all, the NBA is still somewhat kind of fantastic, and I have to admit that Mr. Starbucks has done a good job with the game experience. They now have breakdancing kids along with the cheerleaders during the breaks, and the halftime show was a dodgeball round-robin between several branches of the armed forced who've recently returned from Iraq (the Air Force was victorious). The mascot, Sasquatch, though, needs to lower the power on the potato gun that shoots T-shirts into the crowd. He had to bounce them off the roof of the arena into the upper-deck to keep from sending some poor fan to the same fate as Maude Flanders.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

 

Yeah the Knicks Rule

... and Yeah the Celtics Suck !!!

Tonight's game was the best. Paul Pierce sucked, Antoine Walker sucked, Doc Rivers sucked and the Knicks kicked ass.

Trevor played a tremendous game - he was making outside shots and had a couple of huge dunks. Further more, Malik Rose had a big shot block - the kind where you swat it off the court entirely - and then within the next couple of possessions, Trevor had one also.

But most of all, Jamal did it again. He was moving towards the basket, saw his chance, and did an alley-oop to himself off the backboard and slammed it home. Awesome. Totally Awesome.

 

F the Celtics

You heard me. F*** 'em.
Snow or no snow - I'm not gonna miss my chance to boo.

Monday, March 21, 2005

 

Snake-bitten

Unbelievable.

No Tim Duncan for the Spurs at Knicks game tonight.

That makes it 1 out of 2 for LeBron, 0 for 1 for Duncan; Van Gundy is ruining Yao Ming and we were snowed out of Kobe's appearance.

At least we got to yell at the Liar, and will get another chance to heckle C-Webb.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

 

I think Herb just lost his job

I can't believe the Knicks blew another game to Miami at home. Uhhh.

Basically, the long and short of it is this: Herb Williams, or whoever is coach, needs to come up with a game winning play out of the final timeout. Last night, even after blowing a 15 point lead, the Knicks still had the ball with only a few seconds more on the game clock than the shot clock. They did nothing after the timeout, again, and Dwayne Wade beat them, again.

I like the job Herb has done, but last night he needed to do more.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

 

Winter and Crawford's dunk

If the snow causes me to miss one more Knicks game, I gonna be really pissed.

But how about Crawford's dunk the other day? We saw him do it on a breakaway a few weeks ago, but it was after the whistle and did not count. But it was amazing to see him do in in traffic, in real-time. As Edward pointed out, give credit to Mo' Taylor for pulling the defender out of the way, allowing the whole thing to happen.

Seattle's in town on sunday, Go Knicks!

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

 

3 in a Row and 4 out of 5 (and 5 out of 7)

Go Knicks!!!

Kobe and Co. got hot at the end of regulation, with everybody making 3 pointers. Had the Knicks lost, I'd have a lot to gripe about here. But the Knicks got down 4 points in Overtime, then toughened up on D and made their free throws. Way to avoid collapse Knicks. They looked shaky, but they held on, and that is worth a lot.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?