January 7, 2015

by William Lee

As I tried to sit down after a long day of work to watch and recap tonight’s New York Knicks matchup with the Washington Wizards, it dawned on me why… Why do I still put myself through watching this 2014-2015 season.

A season where the Knicks officially became THE WORST team in the Association Monday night, after the Philadelphia 76ers upset the Cleveland Cavaliers. New York is worse than Philadelphia…let’s just take a moment and take that in and digest that… The Knicks are worse than a team that is purposely tanking. The Knicks are worse than a team that has set into motion a tanking blueprint that is so masterful, that it brought up conversations as to how the league should fix the NBA Draft system. That is how masterful their tanking program is! Yet somehow the Knicks…whom came into the season actually was trying to make the Playoffs (Yes…I know that seems like a long time ago…) somehow is worse than this team.

No one can truly say that they foretold the Knicks’s season to go this bad, no matter how pessimistic you are, no one can foretell that the 2014-2015 season would be the worst season in Franchise history. Evidence of this is that even the Las Vegas SuperBook predicted New York to at least be hovering around .500 with an over under for the regular season wins to be calculated at 40.5. Who knew that when the calendar year turned to 2015 that New York would still be stuck on five wins. Who knew that New York would currently be without a win going on three weeks, currently on a Franchise worst twelve game losing streak.

With all this said it is extremely hard to watch any New York Knicks games, no matter how die-hard of a fan you. The Knick’s season is going so poorly that even a well-established publication such as the New York Times goes out of their way to write a troll article asking readers where they should send their Knicks’s beat writer so that he can watch some real basketball. But sadly that is not far off from the truth, the Knicks are currently competing with a roster more resembling a Summer League team than an actual NBA professional team. Now of course it doesn’t help when you send away the only players resembling NBA talent in a salary dump trade with the Knicks shipping out J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert minutes before tipoff Monday night. And of course it doesn’t help that the team has been plagued with injuries all season long, with Carmelo Anthony, Andrea Bargnani, and Amare Stoudemire currently on the shelf with injuries. The injury to Carmelo Anthony in particular is hard to stomach, the absence of our $124 million dollar man from the games has virtually made Knick’s games unwatchable. I know there are a lot of Melo-Haters out there but, it is an impossible argument to be made that the Knicks are not better with him on the court. When Anthony is off the court the team production is a -12 as per 82games.com.

So why…and what are the reasons to even keep watching this abomination of a season that is the New York Knicks 2014-2015 season. I tried to come up with some reasons to keep turning on MSG on game night below.

1)      Watching the opposing team, unfortunately you wouldn’t get much of a feel for the opposing team, since every team looks awesome when you face the New York Knicks. New York has a top ten worst defense, giving up 101.2 points per game, with a – 8.1 +/- that is good for third worst point differential in the league. Also every team that faces the Knicks look just amazing shooting the ball, New York are the worst in the league in allowing the most threes made in a game at 9.2, allowing at a league worst percentage of 39.7%. Basically the Knicks refuse to guard above the three point line…

2)      Maybe you really have to enjoy watching the current roster players, maybe you are an alumni of a player that you are proud has made the NBA.

3)      Vise-versa you want to hate watch (always enjoyable) an alumni that has a rivalry with your school.

4)      Maybe you want to watch if any of the current players on the roster are even fitting of a bench role in a contending team in the future (LOL I know, I know…DELUSIONAL…that’s me!). But let’s see if Shane Larkin, or Tim Hardaway Jr. are worth a sixth man role in the future. Let’s see if any of the young players like Cleananthony Early can be the 8^th man on roster.

5)      Maybe you just want to watch kid’s dreams come true, like tonight for instance when Langston Galloway made his first NBA game debut.

Whatever your reasons are, cheers to you for sticking with this dismal 2014-2015 New York Knicks season. Cheers to you for keeping your television tuned into MSG, I know it is very tough to do so.