The Big Grab Bag

New York Knicks 88, Miami Heat 84

Well, you can't lose them all. Especially when you're playing a team that is now 8-31, has lost 13 straight and has easily wrested the title of "most pitiful spectacle in the NBA" from the Knicks. Is there a Riley-in-Wonderland blog somewhere?

Then again, the Knicks also managed to lose to the Heat earlier this season even though Dwyane Wade was on the bench, so this is a bit rough. So a win is a win, and I don't feel like talking about it. Instead, let's go over a grab bag of good stuff from this week.

Everyone has started to recognize just how useless Eddy Curry is

• First, some nice news from Sports Illustrated, which recently polled 242 NBA players to find out who among them gets the least out of the most talent. The results left Eddy Curry - Big Useless himself - in third with seven percent of the vote. Kwame Brown got first place, followed by Tim Thomas, Curry and Vince Carter.
• The Knicks had an opportunity to win four straight on Friday but lost to the Wizards. The last time they had a winning streak that long was in January 2006.
• Some hilarious news from the Post: Someone has been having some fun with the Phoenix Suns' Leandro Barbosa. The talented Brazilian received a prank message saying that he was being traded to the Knicks and had to go see the GM. His reaction? Utter misery. "My heart was hurting," Barbosa told the East Valley Tribune in Phoenix. "I went a little crazy." In the NBA, New York has become the new Siberia.
• And finally, an interesting anecdote I heard from Mike Breen and Kenny Smith on an MSG telecast earlier this week. Apparently, the media was asking Isiah a lot of questions about Renaldo Balkman, who had contributed a lot to that short, much-heralded winning "streak." Zeke conceded that Balkman had been great, but then he was asked why he hadn't been playing him at all for so much of the season. Isiah declined to answer the question and told the reporter to ask Balkman instead. So when they went to Balkman, his reaction went something like this: "How the hell should I know why I wasn't playing? I'm not the coach - I don't make these decisions."
• The False Prophet is so bad that even Canada has started to notice.

Renaldo Balkman just can't catch a break

Next up: Celtics at Knicks at 1 p.m. Monday.
Best-case scenario: The last time these two played, the Knicks lost by 45. Something similar would be nice.
Worst-case scenario: This is just one of those must-lose scenarios. The Knicks can't afford a win against such a good opponent, so I'd like to say a win is the worst-case scenario. Then again, these are the Knicks, so let's just go with a close loss.