After coming out the gates like a tranquilized elephant - awkward, lumbering, yet still dangerously out of control - in the first quarter the Knicks were able to hold on for a win last night at the Garden. It was a rambling performance that had little cohesion to it. But it was a win, the club's second of the young season. I'll take it.
As mentioned, it was bad early for the Knicks. It was uglier than Bobcats second-year forward Jared Dudley. The Knicks missed their first six shots, not scoring a point until almost four minutes had come off the clock. When the score was 10-6 in favor of the visiting Charlotte Bobcats, Dudley had equaled the score of the Knicks all by his lonesome. The former Boston College standout's early point-scoring highlights the confusion of this Knicks squad at the outset of games. They don't know what they're doing. On offense. Or on defense. Dudley is a player who is half the physical specimen that someone like Wilson Chandler is (both were rookies last year) but he is at least three times as smart a basketball player. He saw the first-quarter holes in the Knicks interior defense, identified the soft spots around the perimeter and methodically took advantage. As a team the Bobcats had four layups/dunks before the Knicks even had three field goals.Trailing, 8-2, before most fans (who were coming, which wasn't many) were even in their seats, Randolph kept the game from getting out of hand by rolling off 6 points on three consecutive Knicks possessions. Z-Bo's assertiveness woke his teammates up to the game they were in and clued them in to the way it would need to be played. They would need to create their own shots and aggressively look to shoot. They needed to do this because Chris Duhon was not going to get this team into any cogent offense. And, he was'nt going to unlock the defense with his passing and penetrating. He had zero assists and zero points in the first quarter.
Duhon was present and accounted for but totally absent after the opening tip as the Knicks didn't break the ten-point mark until almost 7.5 minutes had gone by in the quarter. You can say all you want about Stephon Marbury's abilities as a facilitator of an offense but there is no way that he ever lets a team go so cold for so long. Eventually he puts his head down, curls the ball in the crook of his elbow and goes hard at the rim to get some points. Aside from Allen Iverson there has been no little man better at going to the rim like this over the past decade. Duhon, on the other hand was as passive as could be while the Knickerbockers floundered in the first quarter. Wilson Chandler and Nate Robinson both made their own breaks on offense to compliment Randolph's scoring and keep the score close against the 'cats.
The Knicks managed 19 points in the first quarter. The Bobcats outdid them with 20. Neither team was exactly a house afire. In a remarkable stretch, however, during the second quarter one player did catch fire and gave us a show worth the discounted price of admission. It all started when Nate Robinson hit a three-point shot to start the scoring in the second session.
Robinson, who was a rookie in the Association when Larry Brown coached the Knicks, scored 19 points all by his little lonesome in the second. And these were 19 out of the first 21 points the Knicks put on the board. He was all over the floor. And had the assist (to David Lee) on the lone bucket during the sprint that wasn't his. He was 5 for 5 from behind the arc. He was pushing the tempo, getting shots up early in the shot clock. He got a tip-in bucket off of a David Lee miss and even hit the heat-check three pointer from the left corner that 24 out of 25 players on a hot streak miss. It was like he was playing a real life version of NBA Jam. The Garden was all oohs and aahs. And euphoric admiration for what we were watching from the 5 foot, 7 inch guard out of the University of Washington. When his run peaked (but before we knew it had), Robinson had 24 points compared to the Bobcats team total of 26. The littlest man on the court other than Larry Brown was awesome. You just knew that he was going to sleep well in his tiny little race-car bed after a performance like this. It couldn't last forever and eventually he missed a shot. And then a few more and then committed a foul and a turnover. The Knicks, though, held a 40-26 lead when Nate finally cooled off. And, there were still over eight minutes to play before halftime for the Knicks to run away and hide with the game.The Bobcats persisted tortoise-like, though, as the Knicks kept forcing the ball to a cooled-off Nate and the cooled-off Nate kept taking shots that only a hot Nate would hit. D'Antoni eventually pulled him since the team couldn't help but focus on him, even though whatever magic was in his shot had dissipated. When Robinson was pulled there was great applause and even some grumblings and rumblings about "how could he pull him?" But D'Antoni had to. The thrill ride was over. It was back to the end of the line. So, here the Knicks were again. With nothing working on offense. There was no plan other than somebody take the ball and score. Nate's explosion was entirely and amazingly of his own doing. It wasn't the result of D'Antoni's game-planning or Duhon's point-guarding. It was all Nate. It was an entirely individual effort, with 15 of the 19 points he scored in the quarter coming on three pointers. Most of which were quick or contested.
The Bobcats, meanwhile, methodically worked the inside-out on their offensive end while the Knicks counted on jump shots to fall after Nate cooled off. Former Dukie Duhon managed three assists in the second quarter, compared to his goose egg in the first, but they came on 26-foot, 23-foot, and 19-foot jumpshots, respectively. The first two were hit by a torrid Nate while the last was hit by Zach. The Bobcats outscored the Knicks, 21-10, to close out the quarter and the game was tied at the half.
The third quarter looked more like the first quarter insofar as no one player just took it over and made it get his name tatooed on its arm. The Knicks put up 30 points while the Bobs managed 25. Charlotte had a six-point edge halfway through the quarter and the Knicks had a five-point edge at the end. It was a quarter of runs. The crowd was getting as into it as they're going to be on a damp November Wednesday with Charlotte in town. Crawford and Chandler propelled the Knicks while Emeka Okafor (who definitely had some local fans in the crowd from his UConn days) and Gerald Wallace did the same for the visitors.
It was a meandering game entering the fourth quarter. Neither here nor there. The Knicks meandered their way out front but then the Bobcats meandered their way right back into it. And, then Zach Randolph - just like he had in the first quarter - asserted himself when the Knicks offense was floundering. He scored 13 of the team's 20 points in the deciding frame. Those were the first 13 of the quarter. Because the Knicks started the period the same as the first one. With nothing going. Yet Z-Bo's ball hawkishness not only kept the team afloat (like in the first) but it staked them to an nine-point bulge with less than six and a half minutes to play.
With a bad team on the ropes in their home gym the Knicks then went on to reel off two whole points in the next six minutes and sixteen seconds. Which was nice. Inevitably the Bobcats caught up, coming within a single point after a Jason Richardson layup with ten ticks remaining. After an-almost-steal by the Bobccats, Jamal Crawford hit two free throws to ice it. Game over.
It wasn't pretty. And, two individual runs - Nate to start the second quarter, Zach to start the fourth - obscured the fact that this was a poor, poor showing against a poorer team. But, a win is a win is a win. I'll take it. The team is 2-2. And, .500 is the magic number this season. Let's hold tight to that mark as long as we can.
Here's what the papers had to say:
The News
The Post
The Times
Newsday
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