ORLANDO, Fla. — They have been dying bit by bit, piece by piece, week after week, game after game. They have suffered a thousand cuts, inflicted a thousand indignities on themselves and the most fervent followers of basketball New York. And always there was a belief — or a delusion — that there was time.
Time to find themselves. Time to right themselves.
Time to salvage something out of this horrid season.
But this is where that stops. This is where it ends. There are 27 games left, and the Bobcats and Hawks are starting to look like Secretariat up ahead in the distance, and there are other teams in the way, too, and the Knicks keep losing games like this to teams like this.
“This time of the year,” Tyson Chandler said, “every loss is like five.”
Carmelo Anthony’s math was even grislier.
“Everything is 10 times more magnified,” he said, “and tougher to accept.”
Five times, 10 times, 25, whatever: The fact is a team engaged in anything other than a playing-out-the-string season has to finish off a team like the Magic, especially when it’s up 14 points late in the third quarter.
The fact is, a team with any kind of ambition about elbowing its way into the playoffs has to stop being a bountiful gift for the Internet, an endless supply of GIFs that keep the people rolling in the aisles. If it isn’t Andrea Bargnani at the rim, it’s J.R. Smith lined up for a free throw. If it isn’t a group shot of a stupefied bench …
Well, it’s Chandler goaltending his own dunk.
Yes, the Knicks have provided plenty of images for a scrapbook from hell to detail and explain this season, but there may never be anything like what we saw with 1:07 left in the first overtime of this 129-121 double-OT loss to the Magic. That was when Chandler took a feed from Raymond Felton and dunked the ball behind his head, for what should have been a 115-113 lead …
… only …
… only …
… only …
Only the ball had barely passed through the bottom of the rim, emphatically, when it hit Chandler on his head — It. Hit. Him. On. His. HEAD! — and popped back out the top of the rim, and if Chandler plays H-O-R-S-E every day for the rest of his life, he’s going to have a hard time duplicating that.
Dick Bavetta made a circular motion with his forefinger: offensive goaltending. And by all accounts, it was the right call because since nobody had ever seen anything quite like that before, there weren’t a lot of experts on hand at Amway Arena to debate the point with him.
“[Bavetta] said if the ball does go through the cylinder and hits a player’s head, it’s automatic offensive goaltending,’’ Chandler said softly, later on, looking like he was unsure whether he was more stunned at the play or the call or a little bit of both. “I thought the rule was different, but I guess I’m wrong.’’
That play was more than a picture of the Knicks’ season, though, more than a microcosm, but very much of an explanation. Like so many other games the Knicks have squandered this year, the play shouldn’t have happened because overtime shouldn’t have happened, because the game should have been salted away long before.
But the Knicks were lackluster on defense — Mike Woodson estimated his team played “six minutes of defense the entire game” — and they allowed Victor Oladipo to make his strongest case yet for Rookie of the Year — 30 points, 14 assists, nine rebounds and the game-clinching dunk — and they managed to turn what should have been fourth-quarter garbage time into a cuticle-and-fingernail buffet.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, week after week, game after game. There always has been something with these Keystone Kops Knicks, slapstick beyond belief, banana peels all over the floor, laugh-or-else-you’ll cry nonsense everywhere you turn. This is where it stops. This is where it ends.
Twenty-seven games remain. May they pass quickly.