Knicks v. Wizards

At my first-ever Knicks game, I was not entirely surprised by the booing of Isiah Thomas (I'd heard that people blamed him for the team's poor performance in recent years), but the fans went further than that. They booed most of the players as well. The second player to step out onto the field got applause, and maybe two others got applause tempered by boos. It must be tough to have people in the NY metropolitan area as your fans. The one or two visiting Mets players in the audience got booed too (damn Yankees), with only a little bit of scattered applause. In fact, the only players who really got wildly enthusiastic applause were the visiting Giants players. (One of them held up his little kid over his head, which was much more popular than Michael Jackson's famous balcony scene. I think people had more confidence that the Giants player was strong enough, and focused enough, not to let go of the kid.)

Vendors hawked their wares as the players warmed up by shooting hoops or lying on the floor.


With multiple balls in the air, the pregame warmup was a bit surreal. Of course, professional basketball itself is a bit surreal - with larger-than-life players whose size only becomes clear when they interact with people of ordinary height.


The Knicks were ahead the entire game, and even managed to win. But it was a painful process in some ways. By the second quarter, they had a 22-point lead.



The tumblers were pretty cool too:


But the Wizards didn't give up. They kept inching up on the Knicks, narrowing the gap to only 5 points. One of the things the Wizards did right was to make sure they sank the vast majority of their foul shots. Certain other teams might do well to pay attention to this phenomenon and seek to understand and replicate it for themselves.


The Knicks rallied again in the 4th quarter, and pulled ahead again until the fans were able to heave a collective sigh of relief.

I understand this game was the kick-off to a three-game winning streak. Rumor has it that if they keep it up for another 6 or 7 games, they'll have more wins than losses.