Say this for the Knicks: They don’t waste time dabbling in failure. When they’re in, they’re in. When they head into the tank, they don’t circle around deliberately, like a quarter in one of those ramp-banks. They sink like stones. Weighted by anvils. Propelled by supersonic engines. Right to the bottom.
Right through the bottom.
Not just a fail, but an epic fail.
This was a season already past the point of redemption from a basketball standpoint. Now it is something else entirely. Now it is Raymond Felton, one of the main culprits of basketball malpractice this year, walking out of Manhattan Criminal Court early Tuesday evening after posting $25,000 bail, after being arraigned on two charges of weapons possession, after being issued an order of protection to stay away from his future ex-wife.
Felton will get his day in court — he’s next scheduled to appear June 2, by which point this Knicks season will be long over — and will have ample time to explain, if he chooses, why there were allegedly 18 rounds of ammunition loaded inside an FNH model 5.7 x 28 millimeter caliber semiautomatic pistol allegedly belonging to him, turned in by a lawyer representing his estranged wife, Ariane.
For now, he serves as the face of this spectacular fiasco of a season for the Knicks, whose nightly misadventures on the court have been infuriating enough, whose sideshow elements — notably J.R. Smith’s continued fascination with opposing players’ sneakers and headbands — seemed to be nothing more than harmless, if unprofessional, goofery.
Now it’s something else.
The basketball was brutal enough: 15 games under .500, miles behind the playoff race. There have been too many blown leads to count, dunks that became offensive goaltending calls, a team-wide basketball IQ lower than room temperature, more laugh-out-loud comedy than any four Harold Ramis movies. Not just a fail; an epic fail.
The bad contracts strangling the team’s future were awful enough, led by Amar’e Stoudemire’s uninsurable five-year, $100 million deal, for which they have received one All-Star caliber year, his always-fragile knee issues augmented by self-inflicted woes while goofing off in a playoff layup line (hurting his back) and punching a fire extinguisher the next postseason (hurting his hand). Not just a fail; an epic fail.
Felton himself had already been the focus of one ill-fated decision, the Knicks opting for him instead of Jeremy Lin after a contentious contract stare down, a swap that was mostly a push last year but became a one-sided millstone this year,
Lin shooting better from the field, from 3, from the free-throw line, scoring more than Felton, his team just a notch below the NBA’s elites.
While the Knicks are … well, something less than elite.
And now this.
Not just a fail. But an epic fail.
Bad enough to have a disappointing season, an empty season, one devoid of draft picks and of even one impact trade — mostly because after agonizing for weeks about dealing Iman Shumpert, Shumpert went and injured his knee about 15 seconds before the trade deadline.
Of course he did. Of course he did.
In some ways, it’s perfectly symmetrical. On June 25, 1999, the Knicks lost Game 5 of the NBA Finals to the Spurs at the Garden, 78-77. That ended the most satisfying Knicks spring in 26 years, a glorious ride from the No. 8 seed to within three games of a title, a Finals run devoid of the grinding, gotta-have-it pressure of 1994.
Five days later, with the 15th pick of the draft, they selected a little-known center from France named Frederic Weis; with the very next selection, the Bulls took Ron Artest, who between then and the time he changed his name to Metta World Peace became a lightning rod of an NBA player but also a terrific one.
Weis never played a minute in the NBA, and had his one moment of infamy when he was posterized by Vince Carter in the 2000 Olympics; the Knicks released World Peace Monday, a few hours before the Knicks’ season took an even sharper turn to the surreal.
Not just a fail, picking Weis over Artest. An epic fail. And the start of a staggering, unrelenting trend that remains a Knicks’ specialty, 15 years later. And counting.