knicks

The Knicks, Improbably, Are Back at .500

Amazingly enough, it has actually only been six years that the Knicks were at .500 or better eighteen games into the season; the 2004–05 team, the one coached by Lenny Wilkens and the one that ended up 33–49, was actually 17–17 on January 9, 2005, before a seven-game losing streak took care of that business. Thanks to a wild 125–116 double-overtime victory over Detroit yesterday, the current version is 9–9. It was perhaps the most proverbially “guttiest” win of the year for the Knicks, who were missing Ronny Turiaf and Toney Douglas and thus required more than 50 minutes apiece from Amar’e Stoudemire, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, and Landry Fields. Stoudemire finished with 37 points (his most as a Knick) and fifteen rebounds, and Felton somehow didn’t die by the end of the game; he looked like he was about to collapse from exhaustion on at least four different occasions. We are not going to get ahead of ourselves. We are just going to say that only one of the Knicks’ next six opponents has a winning record. Okay, fine, let’s get carried away: The last time a Knicks team was four games over .500 was April 18, 2001. Let’s shoot for that.

The Knicks, Improbably, Are Back at .500