Knicks Weekend Recap
The Knicks have been having a despicable season so far, and the three games between Thursday and Sunday gave them a great chance to show some progress. The team began the season with extremely high hopes, having extraordinary star power. However, they have underwhelmed to say the least, with a depressing record of 3-13.
On Thursday night, they played their interstate rival, the Brooklyn Nets, for the first time this season. The Nets have had a similar story, as they entered the season with a redesigned and stellar team but only have a record of 5-13. Even though both of these teams are simply bad at this point, one had to come out on top. The Knicks were able to dominate throughout and they actually looked like a team rather than just 1 or 2 good players. Carmelo Anthony filled up the stat sheet, scoring 19 points, pulling down 10 rebounds, and dishing out 6 assists. Shooting guard Iman Shumpert had his breakout performance of the season with 17 points, which were mostly from behind the arc. Iman hit an impressive five three pointers on the night. Each Knick player recorded at least 2 points in the game, resulting in a final score of 113 to 83 in favor of the Knicks.
The Knicks returned home for Friday night’s game against the Orlando Magic. Again, this was great opportunity for the Knicks as the Magic have also performed poorly this season. While High School West graduate Tobias Harris is on the Magic roster, he did not play on Friday due to a foot injury.
Friday night’s game against the Magic had almost identical results to Thursday night’s game against the Nets. Once again Carmelo Anthony had a great game with 20 points, 11 rebounds, and 4 assists. Instead of Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith had his breakout game. Smith, like Shumpert in the previous game, scored 17 points and hit five three pointers. Once again each Knick recorded at least 2 points. The final score of the game was Knicks 121, Magic 83.
Entering Sunday afternoon’s game with the Boston Celtics the Knicks were the most confident they’ve been all season, which was necessary considering the Celtics are better than the previous two teams. The Knicks, coming off of two straight 30 plus point victories, expected a much different outcome from Sunday’s game then what actually happened.
The Celtics dismantled the Knicks, taking a huge early lead and they never letting up at all. The Celtics started off the game on a 20-1 run, and they held the Knicks to just 11 points in the 1st quarter. It seemed like the Knicks didn’t even show up for the game as they were only able to compile 73 total points while giving up 114 points. The Celtics beat the Knicks by 41 points, in the most lopsided victory of the NBA season so far. However, in this humiliation, Amare Stoudemire put in his best performance of the season, scoring 17 points off of the bench.
While the Knicks entered these three games with an awful record, they were able to pull out two big wins against two less than stellar teams. However, against the slightly better Celtics, they were obliterated, indicating that some large improvements have to be made.
