March 8th, 2010: Atlanta at New York

New York Knicks 99, Atlanta Hawks 98

The Game Notes of Doom take some time off from basketball to... watch basketball. David Lee impresses, Danilo Gallinari shoots, and referees almost don’t make our day.


I'm not a big NBA person. The acrobatic stunts don't get my pulse pounding the way I gather they're supposed to. I don't think the NBA is where amazing happens, I think it's where ballhogging happens. That all being said, if someone offers me free tickets to a basketball game, I'm going unless it conflicts with another game.

I'm not used to being up in the 400s. I've been up there before for various events- my first Rangers game, a couple of Knick games, even a couple of Liberty games back in the day when those sections were sold. But I'm spoiled by life in Liberty-land. Being up there gave me the germ of a theory; maybe NBA fans appreciate the acrobatic, explosive plays more because they're the only thing you can see from the upper deck. It's harder to see the smaller details when you're closer to the ceiling than the floor. And thanks to ridiculous ticket prices, most people can only afford to see games from the upper deck when they do go. But this is all hypothetical, and I'm not even sure my brain is working right now, so maybe I'm not making sense.

I think every tourist in New York was in our section. There were maybe five people who didn't have cameras or illegal camcorders out during the game. I would have done something highly inappropriate to the guy in front of me if he had used that illegal camera to block my view of the game.

The anthem singer and her HOLY CRAP THAT'S BRIGHT pink dress were doing very well until near the end, when she started thinking she was Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin all rolled into one. No. Just no.

Whoever does the video clips for the Knicks should be applauded. Those were some nice videos, especially the one that linked the past and the present. But I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. Tradition is to be celebrated, not ignored.

It was good for the soul when we heard "Gotta Get Up" and they showed Sista Christon on the Jumbotron. She looks good. Is it May yet?

Atlanta's uniforms are really ugly and they brought an awful lot of fans with them.

Jamal Crawford got a warm welcome back from the fans- I guess he was popular when he was a Knick? Played well enough, in any case. Jeff Teague does not seem to be the brightest bulb in the basketball box. Zaza Pachulia had at least one set of devoted fans who brought a Georgian flag with them, but he didn't play all that well- some exceptionally dumb fouls on his part.

Marvin Williams is a bigger man than I thought, and bigger than I noticed the first couple of times he went into the game. Joe Johnson started off hot, but didn't remain as important a factor as the boxscore would suggest. Mike Bibby was underwhelming, which might have been the real difference in the Hawks not quite getting over the hump. Al Horford did a lot of tough work inside- he had a lot of offensive rebounds because the Knicks weren’t crashing the boards. I remember one especially nice dunk by Josh Smith, but that’s about it. Of course, I’m now writing these notes at 12:30 the following day.

I cringed every time they did the Tony the Tiger thing for Toney Douglas- I like the kid. He’s got game. House was part of the third quarter surge that gave the Knicks the lead. Al Harrington isn’t exactly what I would call the world’s greatest defender, but he had some nice shots in the fourth. That’s one hell of a sixth man they have there.

Sergio Rodriguez looked so lost out there. I don’t know when he joined the Knicks, but my guess would have been at about 4:30 Sunday. Lost defensively, didn’t know where his teammates were. When he got the ball and was able to do things himself, he was okay. I have no idea why he was starting. For that matter, I don’t know how Bill Walker ended up in the starting lineup, but he acquitted himself well (someone’s been shooting around with Laurie Koehn, hasn’t he?). David Lee- I love his hustle, but he’s got to learn to play with fouls. Once he got the fifth, he was a lot more tentative than I think he could have been. Other than that, I really, really like him. He’s the kind of guy WNBA fans would enjoy watching. He does the right things on the floor. Gallinari- wow, what a shooting night. The PA announcer at the Garden loves putting the accent on his name, so it’s good that he went off. I’ve never seen anyone play ninja defense the way he does, though- his hands were always chopping and lashing out, but just the hands, not the arms. I do love Italian body language; it’s the only way people in the 400s can tell what’s going on.

And then there was almost a riot. The Knicks, being the Knicks, managed to choke away nine-points of a ten-point lead, and turned the ball over on the last possession. The Hawks came speeding up the court, but I swear they had a flashback to being the bad Hawks and managed to fuck up two easy shots. The third tip-in went in, but by then the buzzer had long since sounded and the Knicks had escaped. Well. Until the referees signaled that the shot was good. The arena staff were stunned. And as Mike W announced that, “As it stands now, the final score is Atlanta 100, the Knicks 99,” the arena erupted in booing, a low, ugly noise. But there’s nothing as happy as a New York crowd that gets its way.

I’m not going to make a regular practice out of going to NBA games, and I wouldn’t even if I had the money. But I’ll give the Garden credit- the last two games I’ve been to there have been exciting and come down to a shot right near the end of the game. (I went to a Rangers game a couple of months ago; I didn’t write it up because I don’t know enough about hockey to do that.)