What just happened?

I was setting up for a big football Sunday. The Minnesota Vikings and the Philadelphia Eagles was the most important game to me over the weekend as it held tremendous consequence to the Giants chances of repeating as NFC – and eventually Super Bowl – champs. The 4:30 start meant that I would have to sacrifice watching the second Knick game of the new year. And since the Knicks’ first game of the new year was another dissappointing loss to a bad team (the Pacers actually have a worse record than the Knicks!), I figured a game against the powerhouse Celtics wouldn’t be worth watching anyway.

And they f*cking won. How did this happen? I’ve watched the Celtics play multiple times this season and there’s no way the Knicks should be beating this team, especially with the way they (the Knicks) have been playing of late. But somehow they pull it off.

Like I said, I didn’t catch the game but from watching the highlights and looking at the box score it looked like the Knicks had a good game on a night when the Celtics were just off. Wilson Chandler exploded for a career high 31 points, they shot 40% from beyond the arc, and only turned the ball over 10 times. The Celtics, on the other hand, were six of twenty-five from three point land and only two players scored double digit points. The craziest stat of the game, though, is that the Celtics’ 88 points was the fewest allowed by the Knicks this season! I don’t care whether the Celts were feeling it or not, it’s impressive to hold that team under 90 points when they’re healthy (although Garnett did sit out the fourth quarter with an injury). Okay, so if Garnett played they would have, in all likelihood, broken 90 points. But for the Knicks to hold any team under 100 points this season is an achievement, much less the Celtics. (By the way, the Knicks have only done that 9 times out of 32 games this season.)

Does this game mean that there is hope for the Knicks this season? I’d answer with an emphatic “probably not”. In the Eastern Conference, though, a reasonably bad record can still get you into the playoffs. So I wouldn’t completely rule out a playoff berth just yet.

(For the record, I’m going to watch Tuesday’s game against the Thunder. If the Knick lose that game, I’m not watching them for a week. It seems like everytime I turn on a game they always lose – as soon as I turned on the game against the Bobcats, it looked like the Knicks were gonna blow it. And then I don’t watch a second of the game yesterday and they beat the Celtics, freaking unbelievable. I’m praying this possible jinx does not transfer to football next weekend…)