New York Knicks: Mea Culpa

To read more thoughts from Jason on the Knicks, continue to check here or on his site, http://www.malajas.com/knicks.  

Wow, what a terrible game.  I was fortunate enough to have a prior commitment and TiVo'd the first game of the Knicks-Miami series.  This allowed me the luxury to fast forward through the last two and a half quarters of the game.  I guess I was a game off.  I thought game 2 would be a blowout, not this one.  It did not help that Carmelo came out flat, starting 0 for 5.  They were in it and only down by a few points for the beginning of the game.  That is, until the referees took over and had a series of bad calls, culminating in a flagrant 2 call on Tyson Chandler that was later rescinded.  A flagrant 2?  I looked up the definition of a flagrant 2 on NBA.com:

A flagrant foul 2 is unnecessary and excessive contact. This usually has a swinging motion, hard contact, and a follow through.

I do not feel that what happened falls into any of these categories.  The referee overreacted to Lebron's overreaction. Is there not a a psychiatric class we can send referees so that they can block out the raucous crowd?  It is just amazing how cognizant they are of who the home team is.  I am not saying that the Knicks would have won this game, but if you are calling touch fouls, at least call them both ways.    As I stated, this was a tough one to predict and deemed it a 50/50 game, with it being the Knicks best chance of stealing one.  Alas, it was not to be.  The Knicks did not show the resiliency of a championship caliber team when things were not going their way.  However, I think they will bounce back.  Carmelo will go off tomorrow and not make the same mistakes he had in the first minutes of game 1.  Woodson will get them more focused on defense, despite the loss of a great defender in Shumpert.  I still have faith in the Knicks and they will get better.  Hopefully in time to keep the game interesting.

PREDICTION:
Since game 1 was the blowout game and not game 2 as I had predicted, I will revise my thoughts accordingly.  Because of what happened on Saturday, game 2 will be a lot closer.  They will be playing from behind for most of the game, but the referees will let them play a little more and it will be more physical.  Unless Carmelo scores at least 30 points and gets everyone else going, the Knicks will be heading back to New York down 2.  This will probably not happen and Miami will win this one, even if I do not want it to be so.

Comments for some of the other game 1's in the league:

• Derrick Rose is out for the rest of the season.  Looks like the march to the finals has now been gift wrapped for the Heat.  Another reason why the referees should be fairer.  At least give teams the chance they deserve to compete and give fans something to watch.
• Great finish in the Mavs-OKC game.  I felt bad for the Mavs because I thought they deserved that one, but they blew the lead.  I thought it was fitting that Durant's game winning shot had to bounce around a few times before going in.  He is a great player but still has a little more to go before making the transcendence.
• Another terrible referee call that took away from what could have been a great finish.  The Celtics were on their way until that referee took the steam away and threw out Rondo.  Rondo was dumb for doing what he did, but it was a series of bad calls that led to that point.

One interesting stat is that the winners of the first game has won 78.2% of the series.  This does not bode well for my Knicks.  Nor the Celtics or the Clippers who appear to be getting blown out at the moment, two other teams I like.  Let us all hope the game 2's make all the series a little more interesting.