We all know the Knicks went through a tumultuous as fuck period of roster turnover this past season. After all, it was the first year of a new GM/coach, what do you expect?

But it wasn't until yesterday I really looked at how damn much our roster changed. I was dicking around on basketballvalue.com - best site ever, by the way, and I just thought to myself: holy shit, the Knicks played a lot of people this season.

23 different guys played for the Knicks this season. Only six guys who played for Isiah Thomas are still on the team, only eight guys who came out of training camp on the roster are still there.Considering the Knicks hadn't played more than 15 guys since 2005-06, that's a huge amount of people. The 23 guys we played is good for second in the league - the Bobcats played 24 people, and started 19 of them. I would point them out as an example of shitty management, but, hey, they won 3 games more than us. So, stop laughing. 

So the first thing I thought was: holy shit, could I name all these dudes? I quickly found I could not, one or two legitimately slipped my mind. So I put this question to you: Right below here are the uni numbers each player wore, with a link to their basketball-reference.com page, which, surprisingly, only took me about five minutes to put together. No cheating by looking at the roster thing on the side of this site or at some other website. I want to see if anybody can name everybody who was on a Knick roster this year: this includes both the 23 people who saw court time with the Knicks this season, in addition to the three players who were under contract with the Knicks, but never actually got any tick. There's a poll at the bottom of the page, and tell me who you missed in the comments. 

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 25, 31, 31, 32, 34, 35, 42, 44, 50

Now, I'ma quickly discuss why it's crazy that the Knicks played so many peeps: By comparison, the Knicks played 22 guys in Isiah's first year, when he traded for Stephon, Tim Thomas, Nazr Mohammed, Keith Van Horn, and the unforgettable Moochie Norris, retaining seven of the players he had at the year's beginning, so this sort of crazy roster turnover could be indicative of some sort of paradigm shift similar to the one Isiah brought, except Isiah essentially turned a borderline playoff team into the massive sack of shit we had for his years in office, and Coach D'Antoni, hopefully, not so much.

So back to the quiz - pretty tough, huh? I mean, you shouldn't have missed more than four or five, but, still, I wouldn't have ever thought I could miss three people from a Knicks roster, but, hey, it's possible. It's just a really random bunch of people - some dudes who never played, some guys who seem like they haven't been on the team for years, a few guys you might just plain old forget were on the team, and like five guys who only hung around for one or two games.  So, yeah, tell errbody how you did. Peep the poll!

History is filled with depictions of hell, the worst possible plane of existence possible. Homer had Odysseus descend into the underworld, Dante wrote about his Inferno, and DraftExpress.com warned us that hell is, in fact, Cheick Samb's worst case scenario, something so horrible that mere words and the human imagination cannot truly describe it. But I'm here to tell you that they're all wrong.

Hell is the last eight minutes of last night's Kings-Knicks game.

I decided to give the game a check last night. Yes, there were magnificient college games on, but, shit, we were playing the Sacramento Kings. The worst team in the league, with a staggeringly awful 0-28 mark against the Eastern Conference. So, I figured we'd be up. 

We were down 27, and the first thing I saw was Nate Robinson airballing a three. The crowd was steadily booing, and although the announcers were Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier, you could barely hear them over the constant gnashing of teeth and wailing. 

I once wanted to start a blog chronicling garbage time NBA minutes. They're extraordinarily shitty, and fascinating, and I could write a book about it, but this is a recap, so I'll be brief. It's really freaky and demoralizing. Everybody just kind of stands around on d, and although there's no crowd and the game is over, the arena still plays the same stupid prompts every time somebody scores - "QUENTIIIIIIN RICHARDSON!" (pause) "Q!". So this is what I saw. 

Chris Wilcox violently slammed home two alley-oops and took off near the free throw line on an explosive jam with about 8 seconds left. Nobody was impressed. 

Cheick Samb and Wilcox played simultaneously, causing the stock of hidous braids - ticker: HDB - to rise 7 percent on the day, a lone bright spot when the rest of the market floundered. (I assume.)

For the Kings, Ike Diogu and the NBA's only part-ogre, Calvin Booth, were in, and weirding everybody out. Some people say that the sight of Calvin Booth will make a baby spontaneously cry. However, they won't cry long - Calvin will eat a whole baby in less than 13 seconds. Snakes can unhinge their jaws to swallow large food, but Calvin can actually unhinge his entire head, explaining his appearance.

The Knicks brought in Demetris Nichols with four minutes and Cheick Samb with three. I will profile what I saw of each. 

Demetris Nichols, like any garbage time player should, gunned, chucking up four shots in as many minutes, hitting one of two off-balance Hughesian 20 footers, missing a three, and finishing on a nice drive. He knocked the ball away from penetrating dribblers once or twice, but I chalk this up to the fact that no dribbler with two minutes actually expects their defender to try and steal the ball. 

Chieck Samb swatted the shit out of a shot on the way down with enough force to send it to the Knicks bench, where a mildly surprised Chris Wilcox caught it. I think if one team goes down by 20 points or more, certain rules, like goaltending, should be turned off. Also, teams should be arbitrarily awarded "Style Points" based on the diffciulty of the moves they make, until one team fills up the style meter, earning a "Gamebreaker".

Cheick looks funny running, which is what happens when your, you know, freakishly gigantic. He's awkward in pretty much every facet of the game, dribbling, shooting -- he chucked up a pretty gross 18 footer, as he is want to do - and on one possession, rebounded the ball at about rim height, bent over till his hands were about two feet above the floor, dribbled, and went back up with it, and, obviously, got partially blocked. He finished 0-2.

True dialogue:

Breen: "That's Larry Hughes' first field goal of the night. He was 0-7 beforehand"

Frazier: "Poor shot selection tonight from Larry."

What, Clyde? Poor shot selection from Hughes? That's the least insightful statement in world history. That's not surprising. That's just nature. Like saying "Poor running selection from the lemmings tonight." I've decided that we can no longer be angry at Hughes' shot selection from night to night, or comment on it. It's a part of nature. It will never become better, or worse. Referencing The Wire is played out and shit, but I've decided that Larry Hughes is Snot Boogie.

Except instead of stealing the money every game of dice, he shoots. And he always will, never won't. And people have been beating the shit out of him every time he does it for his whole life. But there's nothing you can do about it besides killing benching him, and, like the guy says, you can't kill Larry Hughes. It's just Larry Hughes. He's going to shoot, and that's what he's going to do, and there's nothing we can do about it. This is America.

Like I said earlier, they keep doing that dumb stadium pump up shit up till the bitter end. And about two minutes to go, they played Michael Jackson, and Anthony Anderson - star of such works as "Hang Time", "Kangaroo Jack", "Malibu's Most Wanted", and, for some reason, "The Departed" - breakdanced from his courtyard seats with frightening results, busting out such moves as the moonwalk, the "twirl-on-your-back", a split, and quite possibly the running man. That's pretty much a summary of the game. I have no idea what the final score was, and I don't care. The point is, Anthony Anderson breakdanced on the sidelines, and a team with playoff aspirations last week decided it wasn't worth it anymore.

Anyway, I don't remember what the score was, and I don't particularly care.

I was on the Knicks website about five minutes ago, because I wanted to see if they played sometime in the next few days, and something caught my eye: it was an ad saying "Download the song "Go NY Go!"", and it had a little picture of Q-Tip.

Now, back at the beginning of the year, I was psyched about the prospect of Q-Tip recording a song, but, only a few months later, I'd almost completely forgotten that such a song even existed. The Knicks stopped using it in ads, showing it during games, etc. I haven't been to the Garden all year, so maybe they're showing it there, but it's completely fallen out of usage on the tv at least. So I decided to take a quick look back at the video itself, and quickly realized why. Take a peek:

One thing you'll notice is that people in this video can be put into two distinct categories

People who play for the New York Knicks:

Chris Duhon

Nate Robinson

Wilson Chandler (who is in the video for approximately 3/4 of a second)

Quentin Richardson (who is basically out of the rotation at this point)

People who do not play for the New York Knicks, one of which is under contract but is kinda fat and has only played +/- two minutes this season and has no desire to play and wouldn't help that much anyway

Jamal Crawford

Q-Tip

Stephon Marbury

The Knicks City Dancers

Eddy Curry

Although we've all been absurdly disappointed and frustrated at times with our team's performance over the past few months, and for good reason, but think about this: three or four months ago, the Knicks PR staff thought that the people in this video were meant to represent the Knicks season.

Six of them - Q-Tip, the three Knicks City Dancers, Steph and Eddy - have combined for about two minutes of total playing time, and Jamal hasn't been with the team for months. And yet, hey, we're on the brink of a playoff spot. The players figuring most prominently in the video - Steph and Jamal - play for other teams altogether. On the other hand, two of our most important players - Duhon and Chandler - are barely in here, David Lee only comes in in the highlight reel in the background.

What does all this mean? Well, not much. Anybody could've figured that Steph or Eddy Curry would've had a reduced role this year, while other more D'Antoni-ish players would succeed. But it is really strange and funny to look back on how quickly and how dramatically the concept of who the Knicks' best players are has changed. 

Peep the poll!

You may remember a post I wrote a few weeks back urging the Knicks to sign somebody. Either that, or you didn't read it, or you did read it but it wasn't very memorable, or, lastly, you read it, and also are a goldfish, and have a notoriously short memory span. Anyway, look on the right side of the screen: it's there.

It's been 13 days, apparantly, and the Knicks still haven't signed anybody. So here I am again, saying the same shit. 

Look, y'all. The Knicks have an open roster spot. Supposedly, signing some random scrub "doesn't fit in with the plan". Quite frankly, I don't get it. I don't know how paying a d-leaguer to get tested and play spot minutes for ten days can't fit in with the plan. It does help to have a fresh body around, and if the guy is good, you keep him. If he's bad, you let his contract run out. (It's only ten days long - the ten day contract period started a few days ago.) If he's abhorrent, or if you make a trade that would require the roster spot, you can even cut him before then! For example: two of the people I mentioned in the last post were Dee Brown and ex-Knick Fred Jones. Both got signed since that post. However, neither is currently employed. Brown got signed by the Suns, and Jones got signed by the Clippers. Both got cut because Friday is the deadline for contracts to become guaranteed for the rest of the season, and because Dee Brown was decidedly shitty in his minutes behind Steve Nash or something and because Fred Jones got injured in the only game he started. (Which, by the way, I watched part of while sitting in the airport. Fred Jones getting injured and getting replaced by Mardy Collins made me weep heartily.)

So now, a few players the Knicks could sign, in addition to the people I said a few weeks ago.

Why we should sign: Derrick Byars.

You might remember Derrick Byars from when he was tearing it up with Vanderbilt a few years ago. They were in the NCAA Tournament, and he was the SEC Player of the Year in 2007. You may remember him from this post which I just found by googling "derrick byars" on the second page. Or you may remember him from this ESPN profile of his, where there's inexplicably a photo of Kevin Love where there should be a photo of Derrick Byars, and where we learn that Derrick Byars is owned in .1% of yahoo fantasy basketball leagues. Which makes me wonder how deep your league has to be to have a D-Leaguer who has never been in the NBA past training camp, but, that's besides the point.

But yeah, you probably remember him from Vandy. Anyway, I read a post about potential ten day contract signees on nba.com, and Derrick was #1, because at the time he was shooting .528 from three. That's .528. Which is over half. Now, obviously, the defense is a bit stiffer in the league, but coddamn, the hoop doesn't get any farther. His percentage has come back down to earth a bit, down to .507, but for a 6'7 small forward whose arsenal is not limited to shooting and who also is the primary scorer on his d-league team, meaning defenses are probably trying to stop him, to shoot over .500 at any level is pretty ridiculous. So sign Derrick Byars. Perhaps he can fill the "Unheralded guy who was a star at an SEC school and played in the D-League" role which Kelenna Azubuike has been filling for the Warriors for like three years now. 

Why we should sign: Salim Stoudamire

Salim was a Hawk for a few years, and was most recently seen failing to make the Spurs roster over such luminaries as Anthony Tolliver and Jacque Vaughn, and he barely got PT last year with the Spurs. But here's my argument. Anthony Roberson and Salim are essentially the same human being. Both are tiny three-point gunners who essentially do nothing else. Both sleep in the nude, and both spend most of their time off the court training their collective roosts of homing pigeons. So what I say is that we bring in Salim and have him and Anthony Roberson battle to the death, since Roberson - although he is shooting 34 percent, which is higher than I thought it was - has been mediocre or worse in his appearances, and has probably gotten less playing time than I would've thought a gunner in a D'Antoni system would get because of his poor performance. 

On the downside, Salim is a vegan, and I hate vegans. Shit, man, I'm cool with vegetarians. I know many vegetarians. But vegans need to shut the fuck up. I mean, dude, do you want us just not to milk cows? Huh, Salim Stoudamire? It's udders will explode! Just drink some motherfucking milk for once in your life. I bet you think you're so cool. 

Why we should sign: Shaun Livingston

You know the Shaun Livingston saga. A pretty sweet point guard out of HS playing for the Clippers who had the grossest knee injury of all time. Anyway, he got cut by the Heat today. I say we give him a shot. I liked him pre-injury, because he's one of them tall point guard types, and, for the love of Jebus, I feel bad for the dude.  

Remember when we had Dermarr Johnson? A highly touted, headband-toting, overly tall and skinny guy for the Hawks who got into a terrible car accident? Well, when he was injured for a few years and people wondered whether he'd make it back, the Knicks signed him, headband and all, because we saw potential. And dammit, we nursed him back to health. Othella Harrington gave him backrubs that sometimes lasted weeks. Lenny Wilkins occasionally breastfed him. And he regained his health, played a handful of games for the Knicks, and went on to have a pretty sub-par career afterwards, playing like, for the Nuggets and getting cut a bunch of tiems.

Shaun Livingston can be our latter day Dermarr Johnson. I rest my case.

So, look, Knicks. Sign somebody. Trust me. It'll make everything better. Or at the very least, it will give me one more player to reference in ten years when I challenge one of my friends to an "obscure ten years ago knicks"-off. Which is all I really care about. So get on that shit. And peep the poll!

Look, y'all. The amount of times the Knicks have had an open roster spot in the past few years are countable on one hand, even for people missing one or two fingers. Now is one of those times. Now, Alan Hahn tells us repeatedly that signing someone fast doesn't fit in with the Knicks' long-term plans, that Walsh and co. are looking for innovative options to fill that spot, maybe a 2 for 1 trade, or to use up Cuttino Mobley's retirement exception, but I, quite frankly, could give a crap. In these hard economic times more than ever, some random tall dude could use a few thousand dollars far more than James Dolan, and it is in this spirit that I call on the Knicks to just sign some random tall dude, just for a few days, just to make me, and said random tall dude, happy.

First off, we need a man in uniform just to eat up minutes. Sure, we could've used it more during the bleak days post-trade when we were all weeping about Jamal (MARDY COLLINS WE WON'T FORGET YOU) and didn't even notice that Al Harrington and Chris Duhon were averaging 73 minutes per game, but, shit, we need it now too. With Danilo Gallinari (back), Jared Jeffries (nobody knows), Nate Robinson (wasn't his groin acting up a bit a few games ago?), somebody had a cold, Eddy Curry (fat), Stephon Marbury (ego), Anthony Roberson (whooping cough), and Malik Rose (sophisticated herpes), I'd like to see the Knicks add somebody. I've done some thinking, and here are people the Knicks can and should sign, and a brief argument as to why.

Why we should sign: Patrick Ewing Jr.

Here, I see two major reasons.

First reason: Patrick Ewing is a good basketball player. He hustles and is superathletic, and is probably one of the better in game dunkers I can think of. He got on You Got Dunked On twice during the preseason, an impressive task for anybody, made Gus Johnson cream his khakis once, which, quite frankly, not that impressive, and, out of all the possible options, he's the only one who has played in D'Antoni's system - this preseason - that I'd like to sign. And he's playing for the Knicks D-League team, the Reno Bighorns. (Like the Texas Longhorns, but more related to the death of General Custer. And sheepy.)

Second reason: he is the son of Patrick Ewing and has arms and legs. One of the main things I look for in a 15th man is coolness. And is there anything cooler than being the son of an ex-Knick? And it's not like we're talking about Lavor Postell III or Cezary Trybanski, Jr. (although my sources close to Little Cezary tell me he's considering a career in basketball, is also considering a career in pierogi farming, or getting rich off of a memoir entitled Growing Up Trybanski: Living Life in the shadow of Poland's Second-best Basketball Superstar.) We're talking about Patrick Ewing, Jr. Not to mention that he's also good at basketball.

Now, Alan Hahn also tells us that the Knicks plan on signing Junior with Stephon Marbury's spot, but, why wait? I say we spring quickly and get that man a jersey. Unless he'd like to wear #3. In which case we can wait.

Why we should sign: Demetris Nichols

I know what you're thinking: Am I just going to list every guy the Knicks have cut out of training camp the last few years? No. Just those two.

But Demetris Nichols is all sorts of awesome. You may remember Demetris from his starting role on the undefeated 2007 Vegas SummerKnicks, and although rumors are that Nate Robinson, Randolph Morris, Renaldo Balkman, Wilson Chandler, and Demetris still get together to drink champagne every year when the last undefeated Vegas Summer League team loses its first game, it would be nice to see that camaraderie at MSG, in garbage minutes. Now don't get me wrong: I love Demetris Nichols, so much so that I once discussed him during a college interview at a college I didn't apply to, but, on the other hand, he's a purported gunner, and I have twice seen him airball threes in NBA games. So that's not good. But we still should sign him.

Why we should sign: Dee Brown

Ever since that game where Chris Duhon played all 48, I've thought to myself, "we could use a pair of point guard legs, just in case, down on that bench." There are a glut of moderately employable basketball players who fit that description, all of whom I would be glad to sign: There's Blake Ahearn, fresh off a tour of duty with the Spurs, Jared Jordan, but I sure as hell am not profile another ex-preseason Knick, Damon Stoudamire, the ex-Jaliblazer who I'm sure you are all acquainted with, and Smush Parker, who once drove a car called the "Smushscalade" and really awkwardly was cut from the Heat last year, and is just generally awkward. But of these, I'm a Dee Brown fan, for these reasons: he's pretty fast, and that would fit D'Antoniball, and, also, he has a mixtape, which, wouldn't you know, is embeddable off of his website. Take it away, Dee! 

<embed src="http://web.splashcast.net/go/so/1/c/WRBH8959ZD/s/SBKS7256PI" wmode="Transparent" width="400" height="300" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /><table width="400" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4"><tr><td><a href="http://web.splashcast.net/add/?code=WRBH8959ZD" target="_blank"><font face="Arial">Add Dee Brown Channel to your page</font></a></td></tr></table>

I really doubt that works, but, if it doesn't, just go here to enjoy his musical stylings. 

Why we should sign: Rod Benson.

We just should. 

Alright, I'm done with this exercise, but there's other people we should sign. For example, I feel we should sign Fred Jones, seeing as he was one of our better players last year, and is just completely unsigned right about now, and I feel sort of bad  but, hey, then I'd be writing about primarily people who have already played for the Knicks, and that would just be all types of boring and uninteresting, so I'm not going to do that. So, there, I'm done. Why do you have to be so damn needy all the time anyway?

Hey! A poll!

Although I may be the only person who noticed it, judging from the game thread, the New York Knickerbockers played a basketball game. All be told, it was pretty gross: the Knicks were out-played, out-manned, out-shot, out-run, out-rebounded, out-hustled, out-defensed (word?), out-strategized, out-blocked, out-stolen, out-ball-movemented, out-Walter Herrmannded, and, most importantly, out-healthied by the Detroit Pistons. Pretty much the only thing the Knicks bested Detroit in was our serious out-ejectioned category. But we'll get to that later.

First off, can someone calculate our Kelly Tripucka win percentage? Gotta be close to -.015 percent.

So the Knicks suited up nine fellas for tonight's game. Two of them were new acquisitions Tim Thomas and Al Harrington, one of which was Jerome James, and one of which was not Stephon Marbury. Towards the end, when the Knicks were down a lot, I almost wanted them to play Jerome, because, like, he's getting payed mucho dinero, and I'd at least like to mock him, but D'Antoni stuck with his 8 man crew for all 48. Seeing as this was the first time I'd seen two of our newest players in action on the 2008-9 Knicks, here's what I'd say:

Al Harrington: looked flat, and was quite awful. Yes, Al led us in scoring with 25, but took 24 shots, most of which were short. He spent a long time not playing for the Warriors post-trade request, so it's understandable. As someone who was obsessed with the Warriors while Matt Barnes wore orange and... whatever they're secondary color is, I can wholeheartedly attest to Al being a good player. But he's still a little bit off.

Tim Thomas: Tim is a good shooter, don't get me wrong, whereas I am not, but Thomas has a similar shot to me, in that he has an equally similar chance of hitting the shot as he does completely bricking it in such a fashion that he looks like a friggin awful shooter. He hit one three off the heel, and I think one was a banker off right rim, which was just hideous. But when he hits it, it's a swish. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I still kinda want to challenge Mardy Collins to a 3-point shootoff style competition, just for poops and giggles.

I kind of said it earlier, but the Knicks straight up got dominated. There was no facet of the game in which the Knicks were better. We went on a brief run to cut the Pistons' lead to single digits late in the third, but it was kind of a joke. Even after Knicks baskets - when you'd expect a D'Antoni team to be somewhat alert - the Pistons were pushing the ball and scoring with ease. So pretty much nothing went well. It was a really ugly game.

MSG issues of the evening: First off, Gus Johnson repeatedly referred to Allen Iverson as "Ivo". This is not one of Allen Iverson's nicknames. I would've accepted "The Answer", "AI", or, like, "Allen", or "Iverson" but Gus kept going to "Ivo". Which might be a good nickname for Mark Iavaroni or something, in retrospecct. The other MSG issues were in the "crowd shot" category. The weirdest was approximately 45 seconds of footage of 12 year old black girls linking arms and singing along to Billy Joel's "Piano Man" out of a timeout, before finally revealing that the words were put on the scoreboard, but for most of the time, I was just freaked out, and the other - and this is according to a friend I just spoke to who also watched the game, I didn't see this particular incident myself - was that apparantly out of another timeout, MSG showed a Knicks fan sitting in the stands - as they often do - but instead of the commentary crew offering a comment like "good to see a fan on the road" or "hey, the knicks have support all across the country", all that happened was that Kelly Tripucka just said the words "Knicks fan" and then nobody said anything for like 20 seconds. 

Further on the Billy Joel subject, The Palace at Auburn Hills has some serious music selecrtion issues. I'm pretty sure they played the Hava Nagila at the end of the first half.

I mentioned ejections up above. This was a mighty poorly officiated game, and I'm not sure how to say it. There was a moderately bullshit clear path foul on the Knicks, an overwhelmingly bullshit flagrant on Amir Johnson (who's a friggin monster, by the way - blocked about 43 seemingly uncontested layups tonight), a bunch of pretty bullshit calls, and Wilson Chandler got ejected for a) punching a ball in frustration after arguing a call and b) really I'm not quite sure.

I also mentioned injuries up above. Of the ten active to play Knicks, one, Nate Robinson, sustained a groin injury prior to the game, one, Jerome James, is Jerome James, and three, Q, Wilson, and Al Harrington, appeared injured at some point of the game. We were this close to having to recruit one of those Billy Joel lovng tweleve year olds to put on a jersey and man the point.

About the point, a lot of one-on-one play tonight, which was disconcerting, especially when most of these one plays involved Al Harrington short threes. 

I comment on awkwardly pale white people all the time, so I don't feel uncomfortable saying that if there was an opposite of albinism, it would be called "Tim Thomas syndrome." 

Also in the "I have nothing to say" category, a host of Pistons seemed to get pretty much every offensive board. One of these was Kwame Brown. I rest my case.

I freakin love garbage minutes, and this game was chock full of em. The Knicks alloted about two of them to Malik Rose, which was disappointing as a fan of garbage minutes, but the Pistons did not disappoint, bringing in Walter Sharpe, of whom I did not note anything, Will Bynum, who I saw playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv last year and did quite literally nothing of note, and Walter Herrmann, who's a gunner/defender, and of whom Gus Johnson said, and I quote "you will never see someone with larger hands". 

Anyway. A depressing evening. I plan on attending Jamal Crawford's homecoming Saturday night, and perhaps, if, again, nobody watches, recapping, and perhaps being moderately coherent/humorous, as I failed to be in this post, but, we shall see. Anyway, enjoy your thanksgivings, and, in short, the Knicks, as of 2008-09, are completely poopyhole-fucked. 

By the way, Wilson Chandler and David Lee played pretty well.

Anyway, like I said: poopyhole-fucked. Goodnight.

At the risk of posting things way too often, I come bearing wonderful news: The Knicks are once again embracing their mid-90's anthem, "Go New York Go New York Go", and have apparantly filmed a music video which will probably be debuted at their home opener wednesday. For those of you in need of a refresher, here is a 2004 edition of the song. One view should convince you that it's among the best songs of all time.

This song is one of the many things which our recent teams have lacked. Instead, we were subjected to that "Take Me Home" song. In a major improvement from "Take Me Home", which featured the underwhelming presence of Doug E. Fresh the Knicks have gotten Q-Tip to be the latest rapper to grace "Go New York Go New York Go" - a song which was once very briefly my ringtone, before it got overwhelmingly annoying - with his velvety tones. Let's revisit Mr. Fresh's verse on "Take Me Home":

"TO MY WEST SIDE CREW, MY EAST SIDE CREW, TRUE NEW YORKERS WEAR ORANGE AND BLUE" - Doug E. Fresh

If you're familiar with Q-Tip's work at all, you know he can do better than that. For those of you not familiar with A Tribe Called Quest, but who have seen the skit Knee High Park from Chappelle's Show, you're probably thinking, "oh, that's why that guy is famous", and you probably aren't very interesting. If you're familiar with neither of these things, we will never get along.

If you follow the very first link at the top, you'll see that Q-Tip stood in front of a green screen besides a few Knicks. The photos are amazing and make me eagerly await the video.

Cool!

Slightly Awkward!

Jersey-popping!

Gangsta smile! I can almost hear Mardy thinking "I'm too sophisticated for this rap shit, man."

I think every other player should be green screened in front of, like highlights of basketball, or like a court, or like New York landmarks, except they should greenscreen Mardy Collins in front of like a weather map tracking a high pressure front over North Dakota.

Cuttable! Consider that video I posted yesterday my statement that the Knicks messed up by cutting Junior - I hope he at least gets in the Go New York Go New York Go video, at the least, because I don't think Malik Rose and Jerome James will fill in for him very well in music video form.

Does Danilo Gallinari not have armpit hair?

Vote in the poll, y'all.

In a move that could be considered the second most intriguing acquisition of a rookie son of an ex-Knick player in weeks, the Knicks announced that they've signed Dan Grunfeld to help fill out the training camp roster.

Donnie Walsh has clearly shown that he's willing to play into the nostalgia of Knicks fans: first he traded the specter of Frederic Weis for Patrick Ewing Jr., son of an all-time great Knick, but the way I see it, this is just a blatant attempt to remind Knicks fans of the glory days of Grunfeld's time on our 2008 Summer League team, but goodness knows that there's no way in hell that Grunfeld reprises the pivotal role he filled on that highly successful squad, who, at 2-3, had one of the best winning percentages in recent Knick history. In short, Dan: hang up the cleats. We can't keep living in the past. Brian Greene isn't walking through that door, and our team can't afford distractions like you at the cost of rebuilding our franchise. Retiring wouldn't lessen what Dan Grunfeld did for us in the past, but hanging on too long just might.

We also signed some fellow named Allan Houston, but that's neither here nor there.

Apropos of nothing, but fuck it. I had a near death experience today.

Today, I was leaving my hotel lobby to head up to my dorm room for the first day of our school year, and as I stepped out the elevator, I saw a short, snivelling man. White. Jewy. Glasses, grey hair, cloven hooves for feet. The stench of sulphur was strong. You know the man, we all know him.

It took him about half a second to maneuver around me into the elevator, but I wasn't sure it was him for a few seconds either. When I realized it was who I thought I was, I wanted to turn to him, point to my Knicks roster shirt which I was wearing and am wearing right now,, and say "HEY! YOU SNIVELLING RAT BASTARD, SEE THIS SHIRT? THIS IS YOUR FAULT! STEVE FRANCIS BECAME ZACH RANDOLPH, AND THAT'S WHY WE HAD THE SAME FUCKING RECORD THIS YEAR AS WE DID WHEN YOU WERE THE COACH, YOU FUCKING EGOMANIACAL GREEDY BASTARD!" and walk away, but I knew that is what he wanted me to do. I tried to stare into his little beady eyes, but he simply walked right past. It was a foolish decision on my part, for if we had locked eyes, goodness knows I would have died immediately. I consider myself very lucky to be here right now.

Anyway, I went on with my day, but I am sure this was an awful omen for the year ahead. Not sure what he was doing here in Chicago, being the head coach of the Bobcats and all, but what matters is that I'm safe and alive.

There comes a time in any commenter or bloggers life when they must name themselves. Some, the weak among us, choose to simply use their first name. Others choose inside jokes, or references to athletes. Me, I chose a compound. The second half, you may note, is the second syllable of the word "orgasm", and quite frankly, I've considered dropping it from time to time, since it kind of gives off this aura of offensiveness which I try to save for the actual content of the things I write. The first half is the last name of Phoenix Suns SF Matt Barnes. 

But why? Why devote my name to him? Why devote my website to him? He's a marginal Knick at best. A jury of my commenting peers didn't deign him to be amongst the best 5 Knick scrubs of all time until Seth rigged the vote, a surprisingly strong move for a guy without the cojones to come up with a fake name. (Yeah, I said it.) Why am I obsessed with a mid-rotation guy who plays 3000 miles away from me? Why did I spend the past two years staying up all night watching Warriors games, even before they became America's darlings by knocking off the Mavericks? Kids, sit down, I have a story to tell.

It was October of 2005. Gas cost $3.80, George W. Bush was the President, and Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" topped the charts, and Knicks fans like myself basked in naivete. We had won 33 games the year before, and were on the upswing, having shed all types of dead weight: The Thomases, Kurt and Tim were gone, bust Mike Sweetney had been dealt, and Allan Houston and Jerome Williams' only cast salary cap shadows on our squad, in came three first round draft picks in franchise savior Channing Frye, Nate Robinson, and a late first round castoff named David Lee who'd probably ride pine. Also, we had last year's 3 point shootout winner, Quentin Richardson, and a budding center prospect in Eddy Curry. Most importantly, interim head coach Herb Williams had been replaced by a real coach. Brace yourselves, because I'll only type the words that form his name once: Larry Brown. A championship winner and hometown boy. Shit seemed good. 

And I remember sitting there, on opening night, we were on the road in Boston, and our starting lineup popped up on the screen. Marbury, Quentin Richardson, Matt Barnes, Antonio Davis, and Eddy Curry. Matt Barnes? Who in the fuck was Matt Barnes?

Matt Barnes, it turned out, was a heavily tattooed small forward who had made the team out of training camp, with previous stints in Sactown, Philly, and the Clip show, with no success anywhere. Not only had he made the squad out of training camp, but he would go on to start the first three games of the season.

The Knicks lost all three.

Matt would go on to play sparingly in six games over the first two weeks of the season, and his playing style was astoundingly awesome. Matt Barnes hustles, but does so in a method that seems astoundingly disconnected from the rest of the world. For example, on defense, he'll just randomly swing his arms in every direction possible, like he's trying to mug the shit out of someone who happens to be in some sort of force field, and sometiimes, he'll take the ball out of the backcourt and run top speed, gesticulating wildly like he's on a fast break even if it's like, completely not a fast break. These are the ways Matt Barnes plays basketball, and this is how I first realized that Matt Barnes is addicted to crack. 

After playing a little bit under 100 minutes of crack-induced running, sprinting, yelling, Matt was cut in early december. Whatever Matt had shown in training camp, apparantly, was so absent in those 100 minutes, that Larry Brown decided that Barnes had no place, even on what was clearly becoming the most mismanaged, most fucked up teams in the history of the game, a team that would win a grand total of 23 games. My friends and I started asking: why in the fuck did we cut Matt Barnes? It clearly wasn't basketball related, because this team sucked so damn bad, and Barnes had only played 100 minutes. It had to have been something off-court. What could he had possibly have done that was so bad? Perhaps, we decided, he had attempted to kidnap Larry Brown and sell him to passers-by for 39.95 with which he hoped to purchase crack. Perhaps he had been distracting practices by showing up three hours early, peeling scrap metal out of walls somehow, and offering to suck George Glymph's cock for three dollars. Whatever it was, Barnes had attained legendary status. The guy who got cut from a team so bad that Jackie Butler appeared a shining light. A team that traded for he-who-shall-not-be-named, as if that would improve anything. When we cut Matt Barnes, it became clear that something was horribly wrong, and that for the world to be good again, another team would have to embrace a player, regardless of his crack smoking roots.

Anyway, Matt has moved on to bigger and better things. As you may have seen, he was on that really big Warriors team that became famous a few years ago, and now is considered a well-known enough NBA player that people make mixes of Matt Barnes, trust his haircutting advice, and write gay porn involving him. However, as the world's pre-eminent Matt Barnes expert, scholar, blogger, and gospel-spreader, I urge you: look past the shit he's done and the mild success that he's had. The true way to acknowledge Matt Barnes essence, being, and all that other good shit, is to look at those 6 games from a season of shittiness, where some poor crack smoking fuck just trying to make his way in the NBA world got caught up in one of the biggest clusterfucks of a season in the history of the association.

A wistful day for the New York SummerKnicks. As you've surely heard (the title might be a good hint) , the NYSK's storied 6 or so game winning streak in Summer League play has come to a close. But I urge my depressed comrades to focus not on our crushing defeat at the hands of the ruthless Ian Mahinmi powered SummerSpurs, but rather look back on... the good times. 

I'm surprised the Spurs have a summer league team because of their roster's general makeup of a championship-shitting geriatric ward, with little room for the unprofessional motherfucks who populate the D-League and the summer league. Anyway, quick thoughts from players on the summerspurs (I really hope the whole universe adopts the "Summer(teamname)" method of referring to teams): Ian Mahinmi is a french guy who was drafted a few years back and played like 8 minutes this year for the Spurs, Kenny Adeleke went to Hartford, and he and I have one mutual friend on facebook, and George Hill is some random guy they drafted from the omnipresent IUPUI.

Gus Johnson is not in Vegas. In his memory, here is the video for the song "Freaky Gurl" by Gucci Mane:

You will be missed, Gus. Anyway, two years ago, they sent Clyde and Mike Breen to Vegas, last year, they sent Clyde and Gus, and this year, they sent Clyde and Mike Crispino. If my projections hold true, next years announcing crew will be Clyde Frazier and an anthropomorphic pile of cow shit. Mike Crispino takes Vegas Summer League action and makes it MORE boring. By the way, the theme of Clyde Frazier's getup tonight is "racial harmony pumpkin". It's half black, half white, and has orange collars and one orange sleeve. 

Danilo Gallinari is out. Another victim of the pillaging force of Robert "Tractor" Traylor, who knocked him down and bruised our fragile italian. Later, Renaldo Balkman will twist an ankle trying to block a shot, and be out for the game, which kind of was a turning point after which the Spurs went on a run. He came back in on crutches. For some reason, he was helped off the court by the Knicks trainer and Jerome Williams, whose post-NBA career of randomly being around a team on which he spent a grand total of one season and was kind of popular amongst the fans is going swimmingly.

I paid practically no attention to this game, so, if you hadn't noticed, 90 percent of this shit will be vaguely tangential, but kinda related to the Knicks, but really just a rant. In other news, our camp group went to a zoo today, and I strongly suggest that the next link dump animal be the tapir. Them fucks is awesome.

A lot of people are saying that the signing Anthony Roberson is Stephon Marbury's death knell as a Knick. I disagree. It's Mardy Collins death knell. Think: Mike D'Antoni is our coach. Mardy Collins is a slow, defensive minded, oversized point guard with a silky 25 percent three point touch, who, in his defense, can turn a few assists here or there, but, on the other hand, IS THE WORST PLAYER IN THE LEAGUE. Roberson is a pg with a great shot who probably hasn't made in in the league because he's a bit too small. Mike D'Antoni is our coach. Who makes the roster? Boy, do I hate Mardy Collins. He goes 1-8 from the field (his one shot was a fadeaway from the free throw line that is ugly enough to prevent me from getting an erection for the next three days) and 0-3 from beyond the line. Roberson had 12. Mardy Collins was a decent idea for a pick at the 29 spot or wherever he got him - a big point guard who distributes and plays d. But he hasn't panned out. He looks to shoot a lot despite a complete dearth of shooting ability and, to be honest, isn't that good a defender - he fouls a guy for a four point play. I don't think he deserves to make our roster. I hope his career as a bitchier Eric Snow turns out well.

They did a really unrevealing interview with Anthony Roberson

Friend-who-is-friends-with-Renaldo-Balkman quote of the day: "Dan Grunfeld facebook messaged me today." Apparantly, he's injured and will not play in the next few days, and apparantly is friends with my FWIFWRB's brother and just tells people that.

Zhang Song-Tao is on our roster. Also, there is a player on our squad named "Antione Johnson". I'm wondering whether this is a) another way of spelling "Antoine" b) a Dwyane Wade or Jhonny Peralta situation or c) his name is pronounced "Antione", however you would say that. 

Clyde and Mike completely fail to grasp how to pronounce "Mahinmi." It's "Ma-een-mee". They pronounced it so that it rhymed with "Tahini".

Q-Rich does a really nice piece from poolside at the Winn at halftime, where he reveals he has about 30 nicknames for Wilson Chandler and only one for Paul MIller. I hope it finds its way onto youtube or something, it was good. You should've watched. Cockmonger.

Gregg Popovich is sitting in the fourth to last row of the arena, focusing intently on the court, with a full moustache/beard. It's disturbing. 

So, anyway, the Knicks pretty much sucked this game. Our best player was either Paul Miller or Anthony Roberson, which is a bad fucking sign. They scored 12 in the fourth quarter, and were stuck between 60 and 63 points from about the 8 minute mark to about the 1:30 mark. Then, Delonte Holland - nicknamename "The Tunnel" - hit two shots in the last minute and did a sweet and completely unnecessary shake and bake move, and the Knicks were down by 18 for a long time. 

In conclusion, Mardy Collins can be fucked by a narwhal, and I hope he is. His jumpshot goes about 20 feet in the air and clangs iron with such force that it cannot possibly go in. Farewell, sweet SummerKnicks win streak.

Sorry, there is no poll. Suck it. 

So, recently, I've spent a little bit of time looking at basketball stats, and I found some stuff of interest to the Knicks. Enjoy it.

1.  Mardy Collins is the basketball equivalent one of those beetles that feeds off of the nutrients in cow dung. 

So, I've long hated Mardy Collins. Mardy Collins is guilty of two basketball sins that immediately make me hate a player: a) he is bad at shooting and keeps doing it, and b) he is supposedly "good at defense" according to coaches, but honestly brings nothing on either the offensive or defensive end. So, there's that. I don't like the guy. But via Count the Basket, we can see how truly bad Mardy Collins is. 

Normally, I would say something hyperbolic as fuck like "there are no words to describe how bad a basketball player Mardy Collins is", because hyperbole is the shit. But in fact, there is a word to describe how bad he is: worst. Hyperbole is not necessary. According to 7 statistical categories - PER, Win Shares, Wins Produced, WARP (not sure what that is) adjusted plus/minus, net plus/minus, and statistical plus minus - Mardy Collins is the worst of the 329 players who recieved over 500 minutes of playing time. 

His average ranking was #314 out of 329, and he finished dead last in two categories, second to last in one, and fourth to last in another. In his best category, he was the 278th best player in the league. 

Shit, he's even the worst Collins in the league. Yes, Jarron was in the bottom 5 of PER, and Jason finished dead last in two, and Phil is a musician whose greatest hit was the theme song to Miami Vice, but shit. The worst Collins. 

MC Lyte: The guy who makes Jeff McInnis look like not an animated corpse that wasn't that good at basketball when he was a real human being. 

2. Eddy Curry. Yeesh. 

The next three pieces of information come from my favorite basketball website, BasketballValue.com.  (Sorry Seth.) What that site has is raw and adjusted plus minus data from every player in the league and every five man unit: when they were on the court, who they played against, and everything else, and also, tellss you how many points per possession they scored and gave up and then compares that to how well the team did when the player was not on the court. It's amazing. 

Anyway, the Knicks in an average game of 100 possessions will score 104.13 points and give up 111.45. This means that the Knicks overall plus/minus is -7.32. 

However, when Eddy Curry is off the court, the Knicks score 106 points per 100 possessions and give up 108.8, and have a plus minus of -2.8. 

Now, when Eddy Curry is on the court, the Knicks score 101 points and give up 115.75 points. The Knicks score 5 less points, and give up 7 more. The Knicks are -14.75 points with Eddy Curry on the court. That makes a net plus minus rating of -12. Which is the third worst in the league.

Holy shit. Extrapolated to the adjusted plus minus ratings, (which as far as I can tell is saying how well a player does in comparison to how an average player would fare against the same lineups, so that the most average player in the league has a adjusted plus minus of 0 - no idea how that works), Eddy Curry has a -16.08 rating, which... wait... for... it... is the worst in the league. By 3 points. 

3. Jamal Crawford surprisingly had a pretty good season

OK, now, there were no players who had positve overall plus minuses on the Knicks - meaning there was nobody who was on the court while the Knicks outscored their opponent over the course of the season. 

But Jamal Crawford was close. (Actually, Jared Jeffries was the closest - the team was only -2.24 with him on the court and he had a team high net plus minus, but, fuck him.) 

Jamal had a 10.2 adjusted plus minus, the 11th best in the league. When he was on the court, the Knicks scored 105 points per 100 possessions, but when he was off the court, they only scored 98, which is pretty abysmal. (I think the worst team in the league scores about 100.) So essentially, he was our offense, especially when you consider that he played something like 3000 minutes. The team was slightly worse on defense when he was on the court, but only by 1.1 points.

4. The Knicks had the best 5 man unit in the league. 

Some people like to say things like "you can't trust things with small sample sizes". I say you can't trust mathematicians with small penises. Touche. 

Anyway, this applies here because the Knicks awesome 5 man unit of Wilson Chandler, Jamal Crawford, David Lee, Stephon Marbury, and Nate Robinson played for about 26 seconds. 

Here is what happened in those 26 seconds, via NBA.com's boxscore of the January 2nd game against Sacramento. (basketballvalue.com told me they were playing sactown and then I did the research)

First, with 26 seconds left in the half, Isiah Thomas was struck with a lightning bolt from the god Zeus himself. This told him to put in the best lineup in basketball history, and he substituted Nate Robinson into the game for Quentin Richardson. When this happened, a Malaysian virgin was impregnated. She still has not reconciled with her peerplexed parents, but never mind. 

With 11 seconds left, Stephon Marbury drove valiantly to the basket, and was fouled by Kenny Thomas, making the layup for an and-one opportunity, cutting the lead to a slim margin of 16. 38-54. Any other 5 man unit would've rejoiced. But Stephon had bigger plans. He missed the free throw, and surely enough, Wilson Chandler grabbed the board and hit a jumper, cutting the lead to 40-54. The Kings were distraught by the majesty of the greatest assemblage of humans in the world's history. At the other end, Dahntay Jones attempted a layup, but it was futile. 

In one possession, the Knicks had scored 4 points an allowed 0, leaving them with an overall rating of 400.00. Extrapolated to an average 100 possession game, these 5 men would win every game 400 to 0. Although dozens of teams managed ratings of 300.00, only this squad reached the pinnacle of 400. 

Then Isiah Thomas didn't play those 5 guys together for the rest of the season. The world couldn't handle it.

Enjoy the poll! Remember, you must play Mardy at least 35 minutes, and eating the hammer will not kill you. (it might in real life, but we're being hypothetical.)

If you're wondering my answer, I'd probably go with starting Mardy. I considered grinding the hammer into a fine dust and sprinkling it over a bowl of pasta, but, quite frankly, I don't think it's possible. The metallic part of the hammer would be too difficult to do that with.