An Old-Fashioned Clip Joint

It was such a crowded Hard Day's Night-esque mob scene pushing into Madison Square Garden from 7th Avenue last night that you'd have thought Justin Bieber was inside. Well, except for the pronounced lack of booing. The entryway coming into the box office area, flanked by the ramps leading to the A/B and C/D gate escalators, was packed tight enough that a family of sardines in from Massapequa, decked out in their tiny replica jerseys and foam tail fins, was all like, "Damn, son, you gotta be kidding me."

In hopes of circumventing the main bulk of the hoops-happy throng lodged just inside the phalanx of glass double doors, I moved straight in toward the ticket windows at the back of the foyer, before turning hard right toward the turnstiles for Gates C and D. There was a row of waist-high metal barricades separating the heaving crowd from the ticket windows and ahead of me were two foreign men wearing puffy, winter gear having a hard time with a powerfully built but decaying sexagenarian wearing the burgundy coat with dark green accents that marked him as MSG staff. It seemed that the tourists wanted access to a ticket window in order to purchase tickets for the game. They seemed to be speaking for a group of people with similar aspirations. All of these ticketless saps were mucking up my plan for skirting the crowd en route to the ticket scanners.

"There's only ONE ticket left," the old usher crowed to the utter befuddlement of the gentlemen wanting to buy tickets. "We're all sold out, 'cept for one seat."

Inching past as this conversation was taking place, I couldn't help but ask where the last open seat in the Garden was located.

"We got one seat left in section 78," croaked the rock salt voiced MSG staffer, who was assuredly a bare-knuckle bruiser in his prime. I think that he would have liked nothing more than for the slight, swarthy looking fellow who wanted to buy tickets (and really wasn't grasping that this just wasn't going to happen) to become belligerent. Back in the waning days of the old Garden up on Eighth Avenue, I'd bet this fella gleefully spilled the blood of unruly patrons on 49th Street and was a wild-eyed, last-call terror at the bars in Hells Kitchen after his shift ended. I also assume that he gleefully cast his vote for Richard Nixon the fall after the Garden moved to its current home when it felt to him like the whole damn world seemed to be shifting under his feet.

Section 78 is located near the free-throw line behind the benches. It's just a few rows of folding chairs from the court and, I'd imagine, the tickets will easily run you a few hundred bucks. While waiting to have my $10 ticket for section 416 scanned, I was talking to the same friend who came with me on the night of LeBron James' first visit to the Mecca. We talked about that game. We talked about that play in the second half when LeBron drove straight down Broadway, rose and slammed it home just like he has so many times since. We talked about how we always talk about that dunk and how it let everyone in the place know that this man child from Akron was indeed as special as Sports Illustrated claimed. And we talked about how we were already having a much better night thus far on this night because on that night we'd had to ditch the car up near Columbus Circle and hoof it the rest of the way due to nightmarish gridlock that had started on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.

Hoping to breeze up to the upper tank once through the turnstiles, we were greeted by stalled escalators in the C tower. Thankfully, as much-missed comedian Mitch Hedberg sagely said, "an escalator can never break: it can only become stairs." And as he predicted there was no "Out of Order" sign just a lot of folks double-timing it up the recently formed stairs.

The amperes of electricity coursing through the large crowd as they surged upward was thanks largely to the appearance of the Los Angeles Clippers' sort-of rookie Blake Griffin. He is nearly every bit the well-muscled physical specimen that James was in his first season. Except bigger and stronger and more powerful (but without that nearly-inimitable Magic Johnson court vision and that untrustworthy Isiah Thomas smile). His dunks are legion and already legendary.

Although Griffin had treaded the Garden boards during the 2008 Preseason NIT while at the University of Oklahoma (and I saw him dominate in the semifinal against UAB to the tune of 32 and 15), tonight was his first big boy game in the biggest room. Expectations were as high as those lobs that Baron Davis has been lofting to Griffin all season long in various littler rooms around the country.

Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started in your little room
-The White Stripes

Despite the excitement generated by Griffin, this was a pro-Knicks crowd through and through. The second-year rookie was even booed the first time that he touched the ball, showing how far we've come from the dark days when visiting players were being serenaded with MVP chants (from out-of-town fans who had been able to buy tickets just before tip-off). That being said, everyone was hoping for a repeat of the first meeting between the two clubs when the Knicks won, 124-115 and Griffin went off for 44 points, 15 rebounds 7 assists and a handful of the most ferocious dunks of the decade. Yeah, a repeat of that would have suited all of us just fine. Well, everyone except for the Knicks' sometime starting center Timofey Mozgov, who was absolutely gulagged by Griffin last time. One particular full front assault was so severe and so instantly iconic that there is already artwork dedicated to it. The rise and slam was such a personal affront that the Moz wasn't just "posterized." The poor dude was illustrated.


Looking very much like a guy with something to prove, the Moz came out dunking mighty Russian Revenge Dunks in this game. He was snatching passes in the paint as if long-lost Soviet scientists or Vincent Price's character from Edward Scissorhands had replaced his wooden hands with supple hoopster hands with opposable thumbs. Perhaps more surprisingly, on the other side of the ball, it wasn't Griffin doing the damage rather it was little-heard-from third-year big man DeAndre Jordan. Strange days, indeed. Thanks to a put-back layup by Mozgov, the 'bockers closed out the a sizzling but steak-free first quarter with a 29-28 edge.

In the second quarter, two things happened. First, a flurry of made jump shots had me thinking about Ryan Gomes for the first time since his senior year at Providence. Second, the Clippers repeatedly knifed to the paint through the Knicks' hot-butter defense. Actually, using the "like a knife through hot butter" idiom overstates the intensity of the first half defending. Those hot knives usually come out the other end of that stick of butter with some sort of residue on them, some glistening delicious buttery goodness, whereas the Clippers were getting to the rack totally clean. They were cutting through the defense like knives through ... a void.

Thanks largely to Gomes and the home team's empty space defensive strategy, the Clippers blitzed the Knicks, 30-18, in the second. There were boos throughout 400 level as the teams headed off the floor for intermission. One frazzled fellow in Row H of section 415 was doing his best to instigate a "We Want MEL-LO" chant to no avail.

Able to pull only a solitary point closer in the third, the Knicks had a long way to climb in the final quarter. But climb they did, like fans up a broken escaltor. With Amar'e Stoudemire tethered to the bench due to foul trouble, his teammates went to a full-court press. They drove to the rim and they hit jumpers. Instrumental in this spurt was back-up point guard Toney Douglas. He piloted the press and added 10 quick points in the first half of the fourth quarter. After a Douglas three pointer pulled the Knicks within 99-94, Amar'e retook the floor. He scored on the next possession, pulling the home side within three points. For a few fleeting minutes he was just as unstoppable as he had been a few days earlier against Philly, scoring the Knicks' next eight points.

In December or January, an Amar'e run like this would have turned the tide. But not tonight. Not when Randy Foye matched STAT's eight points with eight of his own during that same stretch. Another candidate for a where-are-they-now? Big East edition, the former Villanova star, who nearly got his eye poked out on this court several years ago, caught fire down the stretch and extinguished the Knickerbocker comeback to the chagrin of everyone but the guy who really, really wanted to kickstart that "We Want Melo" chant. He got a lot more help in the final minute of the 116-108 loss. I even heard someone else offer to pay Wilson Chandler's airfare to Denver.

This game wasn't as advertised on any front. A very-near capacity crowd (unless some deep-pocked loner bought that single in 78) was lured into the Garden hoping to see a transcendent performance by Griffin and an appearance by a Knicks team that was serious about making the playoffs and holding off the ever-encroaching shadow of mediocrity. But we didn't see either of those things. And by the time that we were all getting wise to it, the ushers were starting to usher us toward the exits. As I descended the stairs, I had no doubt that bruising AARP member in his Nixon-era staff jacket at floor level was gleefully pushing disappointed folks out into the cold night with a bigger smile on his face than anyone outside the visitors' locker room.

Knickception: Episode 1

Scene 1: Exterior urban street, day

On a Saturday toward the end of his sixth year of grade school, a boy nabbed himself a forearm's length of fishing wire from the hardware store at the corner of 239th Street and Broadway. He'd clipped the piece off a long roll with a pair of stainless steal sheers he found on an seemingly untouched gardening display at the end of the narrow aisle and then tucked the wire up the right sleeve of the ill-fitting charcoal blazer that he wore every day to Catholic School. As he exited the store, the boy nodded as nonchalantly as he could seem at the wife of the owner as she swept the sidewalk out front. Her broom was a homemade besom broom rather than one of the push brooms for sale inside.

The gawky 12-year-old walked home briskly, but not too fast, limiting himself to just one look over his shoulder as he made his way through the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. He had never set foot in a boat, and his father's idea of fishing involved reaching around in a barrel full of icy water for the last cold Pabst, but that piece of fishing wire represented freedom. It's nine inches were the distance between his small life and the rest of the world.

When he got home, the boy slid off his well-oiled but penniless size 10.5 loafers and placed them in line with his grandfather's smaller dusty, cardboard soled oxfords just inside the front door of the clapboard row house. He walked on tipped toes down the darkened corridor, past the kitchen where his mother's ample posterior was sticking out from under the sink as she presumably dealt with another leak, to the bedroom he shared with two younger brothers. The youngest was sleeping fitfully in a a crib when he entered. Quieter still, the boy knelt at the side of his own bed and reached an arm under the mattress. He pulled out a cardboard cigar box which he had rescued from the trash on the day that his grandfather had moved in with them. His grandmother had just died, but the day seemed unusually festive.

The cigar box had a picture of the biblical character Samson on the front, whom he'd learned about in school. Inside was a pair of dice, an affectionate note he'd once gotten from a girl at school who had since moved to Long Island, a stack of baseball cards featuring local heroes like Joe Collins, Yogi Berra, Hank Bauer, Joe DiMaggio and his favorite New York Yankee, pitcher Eddie Lopat who grew up in the Bronx and starred at nearby Clinton High School. Beneath all these possessions in that box was the object that had inspired him to break the law for the first time. To that point, the worst thing he had done was to covet the bicycle of his neighbor. The object that pushed him to crime was a round brass disc less than an inch in diameter. It was an IRT token he'd won off a schoolmate rolling that pair of dice in the corner of the classroom while his teacher, Sister Mary Clarence, scolded a student in the hallway for blaspheming Casey Stengel.


The Interborough Rapid Transit had extended into the Bronx for his whole life, but just recently had the boy ventured up to the platform at the station at 241st and Broadway, just north of the hardware store and across from Van Cortland Park. Although the elevated tracks abruptly stopped in Riverdale, a map on the platform showed that passengers on the train could travel south across the river into Harlem and eventually Manhattan. One could even connect to other trains and go as far as Brooklyn and Queens, places he'd traveled to mostly for funerals and christenings. By taking that train it might even be possible to visit that girl who had moved out to Long Island after her father returned from the War.



Which is where the stolen goods came into it. After filing down the raised markings on the side of the coin that read GOOD FOR ONE FARE, he looped the fishing wire through the Y-shaped cutout in the center of the token, tying a small knot to keep the coin on his thin but strong string so that he could drop it into the coin slot on the IRT turnstile and then pull it back out so that he could re-use it for his next journey.

To be honest, he'd hardly noticed the mousy brunette before that note had landed near the inkwell at the top right edge of his desk two years earlier. And, it wasn't so much her that he missed as it was the notion that somebody was paying attention to him, that somebody was approving. Since she'd departed, the boy had endured an unwanted growth spurt which had initially left his confidence in tatters. Assuredly, no girl, mousy or otherwise, could be sweet on a skinny, beanpole like him. Especially one without a nice bicycle.

Eventually, though, his height helped him find another way to garner attention: basketball. Playing at first with a lace-up ball he'd found in a janitorial closet at school, he'd found his newfound height, although it embarrassed him in just about every other situation, made him nearly unstoppable in the gymnasium. Soon enough he was playing with seventh graders. Then eighth graders. His dexterity and fluidity slowly gained on his size as the winter thawed. Before long, he had been asked by some high school boys to play. It was the second Saturday afternoon in March when he first played with a about two dozen high school kids at a hoop tied up on a light post at Van Cortland Park. They were so much stronger than he was and pushed him around beneath the rim, but he could keep his dribble seemingly as long as he wanted. A group of boys whose parents could afford to send them to Fordham Prep adopted him as their point guard. Soon enough they were filling his head with stories about their own travels by bus and even train to play against the best players that New York City had to offer. If he kept improving, they said, maybe he too could play in such games.

The boy was immediately smitten. He returned to that makeshift court every Saturday morning whether he'd been explicitly invited or not. And by the last weekend in April he'd stolen that line of fishing wire. He also wanted to match his game against the lithe, artful blacks in Harlem, the stout, tenacious Jews on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the lean and mean Irish out in Brooklyn. He wanted to improve enough to make the basketball team at Fordham Preparatory School. And then he wanted to find a way out farther from Riverdale than a forearm's length of fishing wire and one IRT token could take him.


Decades later when he was approached while he thought he was eating the signature bone-in ribeye steak at Mo's in Indianapolis by NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver with the opportunity to travel places that he'd only dreamed of, literally, it took him just a moment to agree to the scheme. A short while later, when told he'd need to pick some sort of totem to carry at all times, he decided just as quickly.

Donnie Walsh's totem would be that jerry-rigged 1950s subway token.

Amar'e Carries Knicks After Walking With Them

With the Knicks having lost 10 of their last 14 games, an anonymous Knicks player was asked if he believes in Amar'e Stoudemire before the conclusion of the Knicks' home-and-away series with the Philadelphia 76ers:

One night I dreamed I was breaking down the court with Amar'e.
Many highlights from my season flashed across Gardenvision.
In each scene I noticed footprints on the court.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.
This bothered me because I noticed
that during my slump,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Amar'e,
"You promised me STAT,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my season
there have only been one
set of footprints on the court.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?"

Amar'e replied,
"The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you."

Game 1: There
In Friday night's game in Philadelphia, the Knicks saw a potential game-tying runner from Shawne Williams rim out at the buzzer. Shockingly, Williams, the league's most accurate long distance caller, passed on an open, corner three before cutting to the rack.

The 98-100 loss dropped the Knicks to 25-24 on the season and raised the 76ers to within two games of the 'bockers in the standings. Particularly disheartening was that the Sixers outscored the Knicks 27-16 in the fourth quarter to grab a game that was seemingly already secured by a solid Knicks' third quarter effort.

Heading into the final quarter all was well in blue and orange and Non-Star point guard Ray Felton had rediscovering the form that had everyone thinking he'd be named an All-Star for the first time in his career. However, an excruciating scoreless stretch, a few key buckets from Walking Dead extra Elton Brand, who may have officially earned recurring role status with a back-from-the-dead, 33 and 16 game, and that late Williams' miss gave the 76ers a message win.

The Message? "Objects in Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear."

Public perception of the Sixers and the Knicks may still be driven by their disparate starts to the season, but they are both on the same stretch of road from here until the postseason. The Sixers' dismal start is behind them. Just like the Knicks' November-into-December surge. And Philly is gaining.

After the road loss, Stoudemire told the assemblage of digital recorders held in front of his face, "We had a chance to win, we should have played with more energy. Once we came back and took the lead, we let down. We've done that before and we've got to correct it."

Game 2: And Back Again
And, boy, did he ever come correct in the Knicks' 117-103 revenge win yesterday. The performance delivered by Amar'e Stoudemire during the Super Sunday matinee is what franchise-caliber basketball players do: They step up and they carry their teams to must-have victories. They dominate. Stoudemire matched his season-high point total with 41, and he did it by making 17 of his 21 field goal attempts while going a perfect 7 for 7 from the free-throw line. This performance was so economical it could balance the US budget.

The Knicks posted three 30-point quarters in this game after being held to just 16 in the fourth quarter of their come-from-ahead loss two days earlier. A large part of the consistent effort was the ever-increasing production of Amar'e. He started strong and finished stronger: scoring 10 points in the first quarter, 9 in the second, 10 in the third and 12 in the fourth. And, perhaps in hopes of getting even stronger still, Amar'e hit the deck for a few push ups before stepping to the line late in the game.

An Imperfect Circle

"I'm truly sorry for the disappointment and negative attention I brought to my family, my teammates, coaches, the Rooneys and the NFL."
-Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on April 13, 2010

"I don't put a blame on anybody except myself. I feel like I let the city of Pittsburgh down, the fans, my coaches, my teammates. And it's not a good feeling."
-Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger on February 6, 2011

Better Know A Knickerbocker: A Shawne Williams Story

As I wrote recently, a key factor in the Knicks' win over the Miami Heat last week was the defense played on LeBron James. With Chris Bosh sidelined due to an ankle injury, LBJ started at the four, allowing the Knicks to defend him LBJ the a bevvy of 'bockers measuring 6 foot 7 and up instead of Wilson Chandler (or Quentin Richardson). Going back to his very first game at the Garden, I don't know if I've ever seen him so tentative. He held the ball, not knowing whether to face up or back his defender down. Invariably he seemed to make the wrong decision. Some of his errant shots can likely be chalked up to my booming chants of DEE-FENSE him having a rare off night, but a lot of the credit goes to my booming chants of DEE-FENSE the guys defending him.

Among the handful of rangy defenders that matched up with James, comeback kid Shawne Williams distinguished himself. Previously used as a shooter off the bench, Williams was shockingly poised and stone faced, not leaving his feet for ball fakes or laughing at James' free-throw line witticisms, and strong, not letting James overpower him in the paint or freight train through him on the perimeter. After the game, when asked about Williams' performance, Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni made it clear that he was not surprised.

"If you know Shawne's background, I don't think he's going to be intimidated. That's not going to be a problem," Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni said with a laugh. "He's coming at you. And I like that about him."

D'Antoni's words proved fortuitous, as just one night later Williams was ejected for getting embroiled in a scuffle with Marvin Williams of the Atlanta Hawks (no relation) in the waning moments of the Knicks' momentum-halting loss last Friday night.



The Hawks' Williams shoved our Williams in the back and he just wasn't going to let that aggression stand, man. Sort of like the time, he got in Ron Artest's face when the Knicks went to Los Angeles earlier this season. Not once in the history of Artest-related violence, has anyone looked as nonplussed to have Ron Ron's hand around his throat.



As D'Antoni said after the win over the South Beach SuperFriends, this dude ain't going to be intimidated by nobody, Queensbridge or no Queensbridge. Although the Williams-Williams brouhaha is more recent, I think that Artest bump-and-choke speaks even more to D'Antoni's point. That was Williams' first start of the season, and his first start since March 26, 2008 when he was a second-year player with the Indiana Pacers. Yet, here he was in Los Angeles, playing the world champions, and making it clear not even halfway through the first quarter that he wasn't taking any shit from anyone. And he certainly wasn't going to let a hard foul against one his teammates pass lightly. When the so-called baddest dude in the game tried to push past him after being whistled for a foul, Williams brushed Artest's arm off his chest and got in his face. And ... wait for it ... cue the hand to the throat.

This sort of behavior can be sold as fearlessness or recklessness. As a Knicks fan, I want to buy the former. But I don't doubt that those who have followed Williams' tumultuous career have good reason to think it's the latter.

Most Knicks fans first heard about Williams before this season got underway during training camp. He was competing with the not-nearly-as-good son, Patrick Ewing Jr., for the last spot on the roster. Williams earned the spot, but remained shackled to the Knicks' bench in the early going. He didn't get any run until the 'bockers 18th game of the season at Detroit, it was the second night of a home-road, back-to-back stretch in which the second game went to double overtime.

The second time that most Knicks fans heard about Williams was likely 10 days before that game in Detroit when he got into a fight with fellow reserve Bill Walker during a practice in San Francisco. According to Alan Hahn at Newsday:

"Bill Walker caught [Shawne Williams] with a hard foul early in a post-practice scrimmage here at The Olympic Club on Thursday, Williams got up and went right after Walker, furious with the overzealous foul. The players had to be separated and Williams had to be restrained by two teammates, including Eddy Curry, as he clearly wanted a piece of Walker, who glared back. It took a few minutes for his emotions to cool and when the game resumed, Walker went right next to Williams to guard him again. But the remainder of the game went without incident.”

Whether by fisticuff or by finesse, D'Antoni started calling Williams' number after that game in Detroit. After getting on the floor just long enough for a cup of coffee in the next game against the Nets, Williams found himself playing key minutes at New Orleans less than a week after his season debut. He went 3 of 4 from three-point range and 5 of 7 overall with four boards, an assist, a steal and a block in the key road victory. Williams was then a flawless 4 for 4 from deep in the Knicks' next game against Toronto. He followed that up with a stellar 3 for 4 in the game after that against Minnesota.

Out of the blue (and orange), Williams had established himself as a key member of D'Antoni's tight rotation (perhaps not coincidentally at Walker's expense) and one of the most accurate long-distance marksmen of the young season. Although Williams' emergence occurred during Amar'e Stoudemire's powerhouse run of 30-point games, when opposing defenses were sagging into the paint any time STAT was on the floor, there was no denying the sweetness of his stroke or his steely, rebar-reinforced confidence. All of a sudden, Knicks fans (notably, my brother) were asking, "Where did this guy came from?"

Memphis, Tennessee. Born and raised.

Williams arrived on campus at the University of Memphis in the autumn of 2005, a year in which the River City had ranked No. 2 in the FBI's violent crime rankings. On the court, the Tigers looked promising under head coach John Calipari. Williams joined a team stocked with talented players, including Rodney Carney, Joey Dorsey, Darius Washington and Chris Douglas-Roberts.

Memphis reached the semi-finals of the preseason NIT in November 2005, earning a trip to Madison Square Garden. Williams exploded for 26 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists in the semi to lead his team past UCLA. In just his third collegiate contest, the freshman was 7 of 7 from the field and 5 for 5 from three-point territory, impressing Bruins coach Ben Howland.

"We knew he's a very good player," Howland said. "At least three of those 3's were from NBA range."

Fellow Memphian, and then Knickerbocker, Anfernee Hardaway was in the crowd when Memphis took on Duke in the finals of the tournament. That Duke squad featured seniors Shelden Williams and J.J. Reddick. Williams netted a team-high 15 points and 8 boards in 23 minutes, but Duke prevailed by three points after he missed a three in the waning moments. Although Coach K's Blue Devils were crowned champions of the preseason NIT, it was Coach Cal's precocious homegrown prodigy who was the breakout star.

Four games into his college career and Williams was already getting national pub. Needless to say, Dicky V would proclaim him a top-flight "Diaper Dandy." He would eventually be named the Conference USA Freshman of the year as well as take home MVP honors at the Conference USA Tournament, where he averaged 18 points and nearly 7 rebounds. Memphis entered the Big Dance with a school-best 30-3 record. They were awarded a No. 1 seed and advanced to the Elite Eight before falling to that same UCLA squad that Williams had bested at the Garden in November.

Not only did Memphis' Tigers climb the NCAA polls during the 2005-2006 season but the city itself ascended to the top spot in those FBI violent crimes rankings. After being a pistol-packing bridesmaid a year earlier, Memphis was No. 1 with a bullet in 2006. Among the statistics being buried in Memphis was someone who had been sitting in the crowd at the Garden for that preseason NIT final against Duke. No, not Penny. Williams' older brother, Ramone, was there that night, and he would be gunned down within a year's time. When Williams found out that he had made the Knicks this year, he couldn't help but think about how the Garden was the last place that his brother saw him play.

Having already toyed with the idea of going straight to the NBA after high school, it was no surprise when Williams entered the 2006 NBA draft after his standout freshman season. Another city kid, Pacers GM Donnie Walsh, made him the No. 17 overall pick in a draft headlined by Italian center Andrea Bargnani, Texas' Lamarcus Aldridge, LSU's Tyrus Thomas, Gonzaga's Adam Morrison, Washington's Brandon Roy and the pair of standout seniors from Duke.

In his first professional game, Williams scored 13 points on 6 for 9 shooting. The rookie was long, strong and supremely talented. Many of Williams' highlights from his early efforts with the Pacers were compiled by someone tagged as Patrys15 on Youtube. When selecting the soundtrack to mixtape, Patrys15 chose Cypress Hill's "Street Wars." Here are some of the lyrics:

"As a kid, I was known, son of a thug
Snub-nosed .38 in the glove, who can relate with us?
Never had an easy life, shit's way out
Clips spray out, fools pay out or play out
Any scenario, been there, done that
Gone where some of y'all niggaz, couldn't come back
Been through the hottest parts of hell
Came back with a hard shell and, hard as nails"

That video was posted shortly after the 2007-2008 season, Williams' sophomore NBA outing. The song choice had no doubt been inspired by the reputation that Williams had been earning off the court. I'm going to assume that fellow members of the 2006 draft class like Bargnani, Roy and Reddick don't have a Cypress-scored highlight reels or a brief biographical videos titled Strictly for the Streets (A Shawne Williams Story) posted by persons with handles like GangstaWalking. Shortly before that '07-'08 campaign got underway, Williams was busted for pot possession in Indianapolis. One passenger in his car at the time of the arrest was also nicked for possession, while the other passenger was found to have a stolen handgun. In February 2008, a murder suspect was arrested shortly after leaving Williams' home in Tennessee.

The few newspaper stories that I can dig up about Williams's troubles intimate that he lived the stereotypical Iversonian lifestyle in which some friends from South Memphis had come along with him to Indy, keeping the recently-minted millionaire neck deep in trouble. An attempt had been made to scrape those BFF barnacles off Williams during his senior year in high school when he had been sent out of Memphis to attend a prep school in North Carolina (where his prep team went 40-0 that year). Likewise, when it came time to choose a college, the coach at his first high school in Memphis, felt that Williams would be better off if he left his hometown in order to escape the folks he'd grown up with. This opinion was quite unpopular in a downtrodden community that wanted to keep Williams local for reasons likely selfish and supportive.

But those hometown ties were never severed and Williams increasingly found himself running afoul of the law and his NBA employers. With his friends continuing to get into trouble in Indianapolis, Williams was traded to Dallas on the eve of the 2008-2009 season. His career continued to implode with the Mavericks. Ultimately, he was exiled from the team with pay during the '08-'09 season because Mark Cuban's American Airlines Arena Plumbers and local law enforcement didn't like what they were hearing.

Likely as no surprise to the front offices in Indianapolis and Dallas, Williams was indicted on drug charges in early January 2010. Dallas promptly traded Williams to the New Jersey Nets, who waived him on the same day that he turned himself in to local law enforcement. Williams had been nabbed as part of a seven-month investigation in Memphis known as "Operation Lockdown." Memphis police spokesperson Karen Rudolph said that the investigation disrupted a "significant" drug trafficking organization. Facing eight counts of drug charges, he pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors, including possession and conspiracy to possess hydrocodone, a codeine-based cough syrup. For those of you not plugged into the drug scene in the south, codeine is the key ingredient in "sizzurp" or "purple drank." Perhaps Lil Wayne's "Me and My Drank" would have been even more apropos for that highlight video.


With his career in tatters and his freedom in doubt, Williams was hauled in front of Judge James Beasley Jr. in Memphis, who like just about everyone in his hometown knew all about his talent and his trespasses.

“You’ve got one skill, one God-given ability, and you’re doing everything you can to throw it away,” Beasley Jr. told Williams, according to The Commercial Appeal.

Despite paying him a salary of $2,416,067 last season, the Nets didn't want anything to do with him. Not only was he repeat offender but he'd also let himself go physically. And while there may be some leeway in the Association for All-Star outlaws, there is none for fat felons. To make matters worse, Williams was charged with driving with a suspended license over the summer. A passenger was caught with marijuana and a handgun.

When there seemed nowhere to go but back to Memphis, Charlotte Bobcats coach Larry Brown, a friend of Williams' college coach, invited him to participate in the Orlando summer league with the Bobcats. He got enough run and showed that not all his talent had atrophied to earn an invite to the Cats' training camp. He also got an invite from the GM who had drafted him in the first place. Perhaps feeling like he owed Walsh after his flameout in Indy or thinking that Charlotte was too close to his cohorts in Memphis, Williams turned up at Knicks camp to fight for the last spot on the roster.

Speaking with Dime shortly after breaking into the Knicks' rotation in early December, Williams reflected on his path back to the NBA. "I had to make a life change. I had to leave everything alone that I was doing and the people I was hanging with. I mean, I knew I wasn’t doing the right thing because I wasn’t in the League. I needed that time to be my myself and just focus on basketball.

"I know people out there have probably written me off, but I have people who haven’t written me off," he said. "I have a good supporting cast. I’m not gonna get into saying too much, I just have to show by my actions — how I walk and how I talk. I just wanna go out there and play ball. Judge me for playing basketball."

For the time being, I'm willing to play along. Judged solely on his on-court contributions to this team, Williams has been a godsend for a Knickerbockers squad that has been short on guards and bigs thanks to irrellevancy of shooting guards Kelena Azubuke and Roger Mason, Jr. and centers Eddy Curry and Timofey Mozgov. With his rare combination of size and range, he's not only tailor-made to address this roster's shortcomings but he's also a perfect fit to spread the floor in D'Antoni's offense.

It's not too often that a team can scoop up a player with lottery-pick talent who has yet to celebrate his 25th birthday. And when you do, you can be sure that the player comes with as many off-court issues as on-court assets. If he can manage to walk the straight and narrow on the wide streets of Manhattan than it would seem that he could make it anywhere. If Williams can keep sinking shots and playing with controlled ferocity (and survive the inevitable trades that shake up the roster) then perhaps his career retrospective on Youtube could eventually be backed by Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."

Bieb Ain't A Part of It

As you may have already heard elsewhere around the Interwebs, teen pop sensation Justin Beiber, who sports fans may remember for A) inspiring New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's 2010 hairdo and B) sporting both San Francisco Giants and Texas Rangers gear in some bizarre music video that FOX forced on us during the 2010 World Series was mercilessly booed at Madison Square Garden last night during the Knicks loss to the visiting Mavericks.

Although I'd like to think that I'm hip to what the kids are listening to on their Iberries and Facespaces, I don't think that I'd come face to bangs with the Bieb until that World Series promo video. I'd heard the name before that, mostly in reference to Brady, but was, and actually still am, unfamiliar with it is exactly he does here.

In any case, getting shown on the big screen can be tricky business. Just a few weeks ago, Ethan Hawke was greeted with an apathetic silence during the Knicks-Suns MLK day matinee. It was awkward for him. Awkward for us. Just weird all around. A New Yorker whose wife played soccer on a team with my sister at Chelsea Piers, Hawke was at the game with his kid, and, unlike Bieber, he probably hadn't had the courtside seat booked by a publicist in some attempt to raise his profile among males aged 24-39.

Although Frank Sinatra sang "if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, it's up to you, New York, New York," I'm pretty sure that this kid will probably keep doing just fine for himself without making it here. By doing whatever it is that he does.

Knicks Can't Grab Ball, Can't Beat Mavericks

There are nights when sports are a complicated, convoluted business, when the best team doesn't win and when there seem to be very viable substitutes for hard work. On these nights, off-the-court issues might infringe upon a game or an officiating gaffe might give one team an unfair advantage over another. But, on most nights, sports make sense. The better team wins, hard work pays off. Boston fans are self-righteous and Detroit fans are self-loathing. Water is wet, the Internet loves cats and everything is in its rightful place. That each team can succeed based on its own talents and effort speaks to something in our character. Which is why the "any given Sunday" ethos of the NFL makes it the reigning sporting king.

On most nights and in most games, the simple act of possessing the ball goes a long way toward deciding winners and losers. This is why the tikka-takka style of Barcelona and the Spanish national soccer team is nearly impossible to beat. It's why NFL teams generally try to run the ball when facing top quarterbacks. And it's why rebounding the ball is so crucial in basketball. Fittingly, rebounding is an action related to effort (which is a key to winning). In other words, Charles Oakley and Michael Cage are the American Dream. Ah, but I digress.

In an end-to-end game like basketball, the ball changes hands over and over again. While stealing the ball from the opposition during the run of play and drawing offensive fouls are among the other ways to gain possession, rebounding missed shots is far and away the most frequent way of getting and/or keeping the ball because league average field goal percentage this season is .456.

There were 11 games last night on the NBA schedule, and the team with the rebounding edge won 10 of those contests. The outlier was the Houston Rockets' last-second triumph over the Utah Jazz. In that game, Houston was scorching from behind the arc, sinking 11 of 22 three-point attempts while the Jazz, playing without Deron Williams and Andrei Kirilenko, went a ghastly 1 for 11 from deep. The undermanned and inaccurate Jazz edged the Rockets on the glass, 44-39, and came within one stop of winning the game. But Rockets shooting guard Kevin Martin scored on a driving, falling desperate layup with 6.9 ticks to play to tie the game. Jazz forward/center Al Jefferson was whistled for a foul on the play, and Martin hit the free throw for the win. Fittingly, the errant Jazz missed a deep jumper for the win. And then rebounded the ball as time expired. Even without two of their top players and no accuracy on the night, the Jazz still nearly won, thanks in large part to their rebounding edge.

Like the remaining nine losers on the night, the Knicks were out-boarded by their opponent. Dallas grabbed 54 caroms while the Knicks managed a relatively paltry 34. To make matters worse, the Mavericks pulled down 10 offensive rebounds to the Knicks' five. A welcome 34-point outburst in the first quarter ensured that the Knicks were close heading into the intermission, but the affair was decided just a few minutes into the fourth quarter, when the Mavs led 90-73. During that decisive second-half stretch, the Mavericks secured 19 rebounds and the Knicks gathered 10. Despite the solid offensive work of Danilo Gallinari, Toney Douglas and Amar'e Stoudemire, the home team wasn't able to keep pace because they just couldn't grab the ball.


With Ronny Turiaf and Timofey Mozgov being unreliable (for very different reasons) and Eddy Curry and Anthony Randolph being irrelevant (for mostly different reasons), the Knicks' pool of rebounders is shallow. And while Landry Fields has emerged as a superb rebounder at the two spot, the 'bockers' inability to control the glass is something that they'll have to overcome by way of trade or increased diligence if they want to translate this era of good feelings into some tangible success.

Holding Steady

As if reciting her lines from a Noah Baumbach script, the twenty-something brunette gal behind the bar at Spike Hill, the Irish pub on Bedford in Williamsburg, informed me that she hadn't owned a television in, like, four years when I asked her if we could tune the television in the corner of the bar to the in-progress Knicks game. I told her that me and my brother would like to watch the game all the same and, after restating her lack of television understanding, loudly, for the sake of the waifish, western-shirt wearing couple at the end of the bar, she handed me the remote. Thankfully, the bar has DirecTV. Which meant that we had to look no further than channel 634.

While I have been known to pilot a ramshackle, co-ed fast break on blacktop in Greenpoint during the summer, I don't make a habit of traveling to Kings County to watch hoops. And I wasn't really there last night for basketball. I had traversed two rivers to catch The Hold Steady in concert. The Brooklyn-based (but not raised) band was playing two sold-out shows at the cozy Music Hall of Williamsburg (which was called Northsix back when the band first played there several years ago) as a warm-up before crossing the Atlantic for a run of UK shows before then heading down to Australia to feature prominently in some large festivals.

When the boys return from abroad they'll be playing at the much larger Terminal 5 in Manhattan. From there, one only imagines that they continue on to larger and larger venues until calling it quits. For all people not actively meh-ing everything in the comments section over at Brooklynvegan.com, these MHOW shows were a big deal. They smelled of rich mahogany and sold out within a matter of minutes. Me and one of my brothers were lucky enough to have a pair of tickets. Which is what brought us to Hipster HQ in the first place.

According to our tickets, the doors to the venue opened at 8 pm, which was approximately the time that we embedded parked the car in a snow bank on N. 5th Street between Bedford and Driggs. It was nearly halftime when we ordered our first round of PBR tallboys (when in Rome...) at the bar. Having no interest in seeing the opening band, we ordered dinner and another round of drinks as Charlie Villanueva staked the Pistons to a two-point lead heading into halftime at the Garden.

"Let's just see the score at the end of the third quarter," I said as the second half of the Knicks-Pistons game got underway and the second round of PBRs gave way to the third. "As long as we get to the show by 9:30 then everything should be fine."

Based on several memories and on zero research, it feels like the Knicks have hosted the Pistons on a Sunday thrice per season each season ad infinitum; and that most of those games were matinees in which the Knicks beat (or at least covered the spread against) superior but lackadaisical Detroit clubs who looked like they'd spent the night enjoying New York's many clubs. For years, Rasheed Wallace was prominently involved in this tradition. In fact, I even took my mom to see just one such game on her birthday a few years ago. Yeah, I'm a selfish wretch with a railroad mind. Let's just move on.

Unlike those half-remembered games from seasons past, the Pistons didn't come into the Garden to observe the Sabbath meekly. These lower-level Pistons knew they could win this trap game (Knicks were coming off Miami and Atlanta and perhaps looking ahead to Dallas). Familiar nemesis Ben Gordon was shooting from distance, Tayshaun Prince was still marauding from midrange and even Tracy McGrady was displaying functional court vision. Just a few weeks ago, the Knicks lost this exact game to the Sacramento Kings. But last night Amar'e Stoudemire and Danilo Gallinari fought to hold the line. The teams entered the fourth quarter even thanks to a STAT put-back flush just before the buzzer.

"Alright, let's just see how the first few minutes of the fourth quarter go, I said after 9:30 had come and gone. If either team gets out ahead then we'll hustle over there. It's possible that the opener is still on stage."

Gallinari outscored the Pistons 10-5 in the first few minutes of the fourth quarter, and it looked like the Knicks had taken control of the game. And when you add in the additional six points that Gallo's teammates scored during that same stretch, it really, really looked like this one was in the books. But then Prince and Gordon drained a few quick threes to keep the game within reach heading into the last five minutes.

"It's still a ballgame if Gordon is shooting like this. Remember that buzzer beater he hit against us on MLK Day when he was with Chicago?" I asked my brother was we ordered our last round of beers and asked for the check. "They don't call him "Madison Square Gordon" for nothing. We might as well stay 'til the end. Right?"

At this point, there was no arguing. The concert was running a distant second to the Knicks. Sort of like the Pistons. Had we been out at a bar in Brighton Beach when Mozgov sank a baseline jumper for the final bucket of the game, I'd imagine the Ruskie ex-pat patrons would be hooting and браво-ing over their ice-cold vodka and steaming hot pelmeni. But we weren't and nobody at Spike Hill noticed but the two of us as we were slipping arms into coats and wrapping scarves around our necks. We didn't leave our table until the final buzzer, and waltzed up to MHOW at nearly a quarter after 10. The flyer on the ticket window indicated that The Hold Steady was scheduled to have already started their set. Oh well.

Although Mozgov's 23-point, 14-rebound explosion was the take-away from the game for most, it was more a "man bites dog" headline for me. I thought the real story was about Stoudemire entering the game with a sore knee, going down in a heap while the game was still in doubt and gutting his way to a stellar 33 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal and 1 block with just 2 turnovers. Likewise, Gallinari came through with 29 points on just 12 field goal attempts. He hit big shots all night long and was aggressive, getting to the line for 11 free throw attempts (and sinking all of them).

With Dallas coming to town at midweek and then what should be a tense home-and-home series with the 76ers looming at the weekend, this is the sort of "meaningless" game - in terms of hype and ratings and national appeal - that means everything when you look back at the end of a season. Had the Knicks dropped this and and then gone on to lose a hard-fought game to Dallas then they're quickly mired in another losing streak. Had they dropped this and then lost to Dallas and split with Philly then they'd have dropped 10 of their last 15.

With 25 wins before the All-Star break, these Knickerbockers just need to keep coming. Keeping moving forward a quarter at a time and lock up the wins when they are available. Just get to 40 wins, somehow, and we should get to attend a home playoff game for the first time since Tim Thomas seemed a useful rotation player. Last night the Knicks did those things with gritty, relentless efforts from STAT and Gallo. And some unexpected help from the Moz, who, to his credit, was everything that any of us could have hoped he would be when he was signed by Donnie Walsh. For one night. Despite the frigid temperatures gripping the region, his hands seems to have miraculously thawed out after appearing to be rock-solid frozen since his arrival in the New World.

When we emerged onto the balcony at MHOW, the stage was clear and the houselights were still up. Maybe the band had also been watching the Knicks game. They did sing the national anthem at a Twins game once, so it's very possible that at least one of them fiends for hoops the way that so many of the characters in their songs fiend for various pharmaceuticals. When they took the stage a few minutes after our arrival, there was no keyboard or keyboardist to be seen. For some, the big story about these two intimate shows was that the band was officially and irrevocably without pianist, keyboardist and mustache wax connoisseur Franz Nicolay, who had moved on to pursue his many other musical and artistic ventures. Having cited the Muppets and the Band among his key influences, he's not someone whose departure should be taken lightly. His boozy but earnest barroom piano is largely responsible for the group's E Street majesty and Bandesque rusticity. In a moderately bold move, The Hold Steady opened the show with Stuck Between Stations, an anthemic rabble rouser with one Nicolay's signature piano lines. The guitars came roaring in like whatever hemi-powered hotrod Springsteen was driving in "Born to Run;" lead singer Craig Finn started singing about Sal Paradise and began his manic, surprisingly dandy-ish, stage antics; and the crowd became one roving blissful blackout, noisy, drunk and flailing. Yeah,it seemed like these guys would be just fine.

The First Annual Corey Hart Invitation

Recently felled by LeBron's Instant Karma severe migraine headaches, Miami Heat shooting guard and band-aid spokesmodel Dwyane Wade donned a pair of tinted glasses for last night's Knicks-Heat donnybrook at the Garden.

The pair of shades that he was initially planning to wear - in hopes of limiting the impact of the brights lights on his eyes - were deemed too dark by the NBA. It was stated that they would give him an unfair advantage. Mostly, in awesomeness.



Thankfully, the Knickerbockers took the floor for the opening tip with a bespectacled player of their own. Recently minted All-Star Amar'e Stoudemire has been wearing protective lenses ever since he suffered a detached retina during the 2008–2009 season while he was still in Phoenix. With a captain from each side wearing shades for this indoor night game, WWOD? dubbed it the first-ever Corey Hart Invitational shortly before the opening tip.

The Knicks brightly opened the C.H.I. with an ally-oop slam by Wilson Chandler and soon got out to an early lead thanks, in small part, to Danilo Gallinari taking a charge at one end and then driving baseline for a slam at the other. Gallo's crowd-pleasing swashbuckling aside, the driving force behind the initial Knicks' rush was Amar'e. Pure from 17, driving layup, and then a three from the corner.

He was abusing 35-year-old Lithuanian center Zydrunas Ilgauskas with a severity that made me think about sending a distress signal to Vilnius on his behalf. Maybe Marko Ramius could commandeer a submarine to save his countryman. But before I had could begin the hunt for Ramius's cell phone number, Heat coach Mark Spolestra, gave Z the hook like a stuttering standup at the Apollo, sending in Jo-el Anthony, the last son of Krypton.

Although Amar'e quickly scored on Anthony, extending the Knicks' lead to 13-7, the Heat finished the first quarter with a flurry. First Wade and then Mike Miller threw long ally-oops to LeBron James on the break. He seemed to reach up to Row G in section 414 to grab the overthrown pass by Miller and stuff it home. These furious flushes were straight from Sega-era NBA Jam and illustrated the physical majesty of this Heat club once they get running downhill.

Amar'e, Landry Fields and Shawne Williams combined for 19 of the team's 23 points in the second quarter. Yet no number of swooping layups by STAT could undo the pyshic damage of those on-the-break-oop LBJ dunks in the first quarter. Those four points lent an air of menace to everything the Heat did and left the Knicks seemingly trailing from ahead.

It seemed a fait acommpli when the visitors took a slim two-point margin into the intermission. Heck, I even felt glad the Knicks were so close. The supposed Miami missing link, Miller, was the first player out to warm up before the third quarter. When the ball was rolled out again, though, Wade and Amar'e picked up where they left off, battling. For their part, the rest of the Knicks managed the trick of missing loads of just the sort of open shots that they would seemingly need to stay in a game with this team.

Slowly, at first, the game began to turn as Heat extra James Jones dropped in a few threes with his lightning quick release. And when Amar'e picked up his fourth foul in a futile attempt to stop another Wade foray into the paint things began to turn more quickly. Check that, the game didn't so much "turn" as it was grabbed by both shoulders by Wade and shaken briskly. Damn near to death. Turiaf replaced STAT and Wade, at some point, switched his scopes to infra-red.

As he drove and dished and drove and then looked to dish but then drove again, rumors spread through Section 323 of the Garden that Wade's sunglasses offered him a T-100 optical enhancement of the playing surface. His shots were laser-guided and driving lanes were mapped according to Skynet algorhythms. Great Sweetwater's Ghost, he might have derailed every Long Island Rail Road train several floors below at Penn Station had he been allowed to wear his first-choice of shades. The NBA office was correct. Wade is a menace.

Even with his second-choice eyewear, he came at the Knicks as relentless and natural as the tide. He scored 14 points in the quarter and the Heat's edge ballooned to nine entering the fourth. The Knicks hopes teetered on the edge of the abyss between quarters three and four. If the Heat's lead got any larger there would be no coming back, not with the way the team had been shooting.

Trailing but not tiring, the Knicks opened the fourth quarter pushing. Toney Douglas and Fields both broke off long rebounds. As they picked up the RPMs the crowd raised the decibel level. More importantly, Wade was no longer getting all the way to the rim. He was being challenged and/or fouled in the paint. The shots stopped dropping, and then so did the free throws. As he faltered, Gallo grabbed the reins of the game. His three-point shot with 5:20 remaining gave the Knicks the lead, 77-76, seemingly for the first time since Allan Houston's '99 game winner.

With the Knicks out in front, LeBron finally showed what he can do at his cynical marauding best. He gathered himself at the equater and flew to the rim on the next possession. He was playing for the foul all the way. Williams obliged and LJB sank both free throws. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. James scored four of the Heat's next six points in the same fashion. After featuring fierce defense throughout, this game was going to be decided by shotmaking. And, with one of the game's best closers making amends for a mediocre night, bettors in the stands were offering Heat -3 to anyone who would take it.

Trailing the NBA's most hyped squad, 84-83, with less than a minute and a half to play, the Knicks came up with two of their biggest makes of the season. Gallinari again put the Knicks back in front with another treble; and then, after a mercifully missed James Jones jumper (LBJ drove and then kicked it to JJ), Fields hit the message bucket of the game. His easy stroke for another three pushed the lead to five points and told everyone on the floor and in attendance that the Knicks weren't giving this one up.

Coming out of the ensuing timeout, the GardenVision screen above the court played its "Get Loud" montage, with footage of a grinning Gallo imploring the crowd to raise the volume. For the most, part no one paid much notice. We were already loud, and we were preparing to unleash the full strenght of our voices in a D-FENCE chant. This wasn't no Nets game when the loudest noises were dictated by the JumboTron. We were doing just fine on our own. And after sputtering on offense all night, so were the Knicks.

LeBron scored four more points in the final minute but the Heat would never regain the lead thanks to four Felton free throws. As Felton stepped to the line for the last charity toss of the game, the delirious crowd chanted, "BEAT THE HEAT BEAT THE HEAT."

In Defense of LeBron James
For a guy who has the highest active career average in the Garden and whose teams haven't lost to the Knicks seemingly since hightops were made simply of rubber soles, canvas and metal eyeholes for laces, LeBron looked completely out of sorts last night. While Wade rampaged downhill like an avalanche, LBJ pounded it on the perimeter like he was Zach Randolph.

In recent meetings between the 'bockers and LBJ, New York has thrown out strong oversized two-guards like Wilson Chandler and Quentin Richardson at him. They've bodied him and hounded him around the perimeter. They've pressured him on the ball and tried to deny him when he didn't have it. And he's driven to the lane when they crowded only to confidently catch and shoot from distance when they inevitably backed off.

Last night, he didn't know if he was coming or going, driving or shooting. One minute, he was trying to face up on the much smaller Ray Felton and then later trying to back down the taller Shawne Williams.

With Heat power forward Chris Bosh sidelined by an ankle injury, James started at the No. 4 spot and this allowed the Knicks to throw all their rangy forwards at him. When Turiaf first checked into the game, Amar'e even shifted down to power forward spot and d'ed up James for a few trips.

While I won't pretend to know what LeBron was thinking, I will say that it looked like he was spooked. Or, at least, rattled by the size in front him. He wasn't assertive until the waning moments of the game. Until then, he always paused when he got the ball, and this wasn't the Chesire grinning toe-tap pause he sometimes takes before swishing in a three from deep. These pauses were not strategic. It looked like he didn't know what to do. It looked like he heard the crowd and then forced a bad shot in an attempt to show us what was up. But instead of taking control of the game away from the Knicks (and from Wade) he was bricking shots at the end of the shot clock. He was facing up and swinging eblows int the faces of smaller players, and being whistled for it, instead of backing them down. It looked real bad, and I've never seen that from James against this team.

Notes, Observations and Things Best Left Unsaid
-Of the many shots missed during the game by home players, Wilson Chandler missed more than his share. After opening the game by flushing home an ally-oop he tallied just a few more hoops. I couldn't help but feel like his offense was thrown off by the spanking he was taking at the other end from Wade.

Quote(s) of the Night:

"We're just as real scrappy team. That's how we play. That defines us on the defensive end, trying to outscrap every team that we play."
-Knicks forward Shawne Williams, who played poised, physical defense on LeBron James throughout the second half of the game.

"If you know Shawne's background, I don't think he's going to be intimidated. That's not going to be a problem," Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni said with a laugh. "He's coming at you. And I like that about him.

The Knicks: A Business, Man

With the South Beach SuperFriends arriving in town yesterday (by way of what I would imagine is a candy-apple red Lear jet fueled by shoveling various No. 23 Cleveland Cavaliers jerseys and old faxes from Pat Riley's files into an on-board furnace), many casual hoops fans will turn their attention to Madison Square Garden this evening. The Knicks-Heat tilt will be broadcast nationally on TNT and I presume that the team of howler monkeys behind the Worldwide Leader's "Heat Index" may even fling feces from their seats at press row during TV timeouts. Tickets have long since sold out and important advertisers are geeked up for their spots to run during each of the aforementioned commercial breaks. Money will pour hand over foam fist into various coffers and cash registers. Many of which will be blue and/or orange.

At first blush, it would seem that the visiting Heat are the fount of this briskly flowing revenue stream while the Knicks are merely some lucky pigmentless deepwater fish with muscles too atrophied to fight the current. And, to a certain extent this will be true tonight, because perhaps TNT isn't bringing this game to homes in fly-over country if the Sacramento Kings are in town. But a recent report from Wall Street prayer book Forbes reveals that the New York Knickerbockers have more fiscal might of their own than many may have guessed.

According to Forbes, the 'bockers are the most valuable franchise in the National Basketball Association, worth a cool $655 million. The No. 2 franchise on the list was the Los Angeles Lakers. The defending champs carry a price for $643 million. Good for them.

While I have nothing but disdain for the younger Dolan (and I guess for his father for leaving him in charge of the family store), I do feel some perverse, pointless pride in this ranking. Like some sort of "I told ya' so" glee after listening to people say the Knicks were irrelevant for the past several years and for insisting that so-called majesty of the franchise, and its home, mattered only to old fans. The Knicks apparently also matter to some very important people at JPMorgan Chase.