Quick, someone call Samuel L. Jackson!
Surely we need a Negotiator to talk despondent fans of the Knicks — and the media that covers them — off the proverbial ledge, right?
Honestly, what in god’s name is going on around here?
Let’s be perfectly clear. If you polled Knick fans and Knick journalists alike at the start of the 2010-11 campaign, you would have found near-universal sentiment that the team would be lucky to win 40 games and contend for a playoff spot.
And guess what? That was perfectly fine with everyone.
You see, a decade of ineptitude has a way of tempering the typically unreasonable expectations of even New York’s most rabid fans.
So what’s changed?
Absolutely nothing, but if tabloid journalists and sports-talk pundits ruled the world, Carmelo Anthony and Mike D’Antoni would be scheduled for purification on the morrow — Braveheart style — for their failure to deliver a championship. This season!
The fact of the matter is that the Knicks’ pre-Carmelo roster was headed nowhere fast. Sure, they were younger, more entertaining, and more homegrown than the current batch of misfits, but they were just as deeply flawed as their replacements are.
So what, exactly, are we left with? A team that is 99% certain to make the playoffs, an outcome that anyone in their right mind — or anyone with a desire to see playoff basketball in The Garden — would have signed up for back in October.
Thanks to the fine folks at PlayoffStatus.com for above table
So before anyone goes postal, let’s remember that despite the Knicks’ incessant futility, they tend to bring it against upper-echelon opponents. And that’s just the type of foe they’ll be squaring off against in the first round, whether it’s Boston, Chicago or Miami.
1 Comment
I am guilty of getting my expectations too high, but I admit that its not exactly because of the Melo trade but because of being a fan and always hoping for the best. But there is another dimension to this “too high expectations” thing. I think at least half of the fans that are frustrated right now are not that way because we aren’t the #3 or #4 seed and are beating every contender out there, but because the Knicks have been losing games against terrible teams that would’ve been won not with chemistry but with a little more effort and desire.
We know we are in a tough transition and things won’t go peaches and creme, but we expect fire and fight throughout the game, even if they end up losing. But many of the games this team has lost against lowly teams, they have come out of the gate with no energy, no effort on defense and once they make a comeback they fall short. And for losses like last one against the Celtics, it hurt how they seemed to quit, how they folded and let Boston take the game without a real fight. Had they really tried, even a loss would’ve hurt less but at least we knew they put up a fight in the last quarter instead of dropping dead and letting Boston toy with them.
You don’t see much improvement in this team even after a month of playing together. Again, I think many of us don’t expect them to really win a championship and blowout Boston, but real effort for 48 consecutive minutes a game, is that too much to ask for? Had we done it, we wouldn’t be 7-9 since the trade.