ATLANTA — How bad? This bad: The Knicks won’t even get you out of February, and that’s almost impossible to believe given the level of expectations attached to this team, given how poor the conference they play in is.
How bad? This bad: Every time you think the Knicks have exhausted the possibilities of horrendous basketball they kick it lower, steeper, uglier, and every time you wonder if they have reached the ceiling of team-wide dysfunction they push it higher, stronger, deeper.
How bad?
This bad:
The basketball portion of the season is done, the competitive chapter of the calendar ceded across the East River, where the Nets are officially the only team still in the business of trying to build something out of this season. The Knicks? You might say they’re addicted to losing now, because that’s sure the way it looks.
“We just keep giving away leads,” Carmelo Anthony said. “We keep giving away games.”
This time the lead was 17 early in the third quarter over the free-falling Hawks who have their own share of problems, and it was still 10 with 1:40 left in the third when Anthony picked up his fourth foul. By the time he was rushed back into the game 1:38 into the fourth, they were down four on the way to another desultory loss, 107-98.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
“Night in and night out it’s the same results,” said Tyson Chandler, who did his share, grabbing 23 rebounds. “We have a chance to win a ballgame. And we don’t.”
The thing about bad teams and terrible seasons, of course, is that after awhile the dreadful basketball is barely a story line anymore, just a regular part of the workday along with wake-up calls, team buses and pregame meals. What happens to bad teams are days like this one, when two days after failing to make a move at the deadline that could make them better, they chose to buy out two players who certainly left them thinner on the second night of a back-to-back, the last chapter of a four-games-in-five-nights grind.
Why send Beno Udrih and Metta World Peace home Saturday pending buyouts, when they easily (and logically) could have done so Sunday and not played short-handed? These and other puzzling questions are perpetually unanswered around the Knicks, and so we are left to enjoy the social-media stylings of Daniel Artest, World Peace’s brother.
On James Dolan: “The worst owner in sports.”
On Mike Woodson: “Trash.”
And here’s the thing: it’s actually refreshing to see a little anger surrounding these Knicks, a little fire, because by now every postgame scene looks the same: a lot of zombie looks, a lot of thousand-yard stares, and what is becoming an increasingly passive acceptance of a season that has gone from catastrophic to catatonic in a hurry. And there are still 26 games to go.
“I’m going to keep coaching and keep pushing,” Woodson said. “I’ve got to get them over the hump, get them out of the funk that we’re in.”
The problem is, this stopped being a funk weeks ago, and has become a full-blown malaise, one Anthony could sense on the court as he watched the Knicks fritter away a sizable lead for the fourth straight game on this road trip that ended 1-3 and easily could have been both 4-0 and 0-4.
“Our body language out there …” he said, shaking his head. And then: “Same thing, different day.”
Only this was the day when the construction crews arrived to start the dismantling, when World Peace and Udrih — two veterans who were supposed to provide a semblance of the wisdom and leadership that departed when Jason Kidd, Rasheed Wallace and Kurt Thomas did — were cast away, dueling reminders both of a poorly conceived roster and a season that quickly spiraled out of the correctable reach of such small, important elements as leadership and poise.
How bad? This bad: This is just the start. This is the prelude. There will be a new coach to hire. There will be an incumbent superstar to woo, and every loss that mounts makes that task seem more and more implausible. There is a roster to rebuild with little cap space and no first-round pick.
“This is the business of basketball,” Anthony said, talking about his exiled teammates. It’s not going to be the last time he thinks about those six words.