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.

Fredo and the Knicks

New York Knicks 89, Detroit Pistons 65

As Fool's Gold Wins go, this one was a doozy. Come on, 24 points over a 28-10 team? The Pistons looked more like the Knicks on Sunday night than the Knicks can usually manage. They so rarely seem to have the energy these days for a true show of shittiness.

I can't focus on this game too much. The ball movement was goddamn impressive at times, and the Knicks committed almost no turnovers. On the other hand, the fact that Detroit couldn't have sunk a jump shot even if the hoop was 10 feet across had nothing to do with the quality of New York's defense.

Instead, I'm gonna throw this out there:

"Defensiveness and denials filled the air Saturday afternoon, which made it pretty much like any other day recently at the Knicks' trouble-filled training center. Nothing changes here except the Knicks’ winning percentage and their mood, which are plummeting in tandem."

That's Howard Beck's lede in the Times on Sunday, one of those typical between-games articles about nothing in particular except the state of the team. But here's my question: Couldn't that be the lede of almost every Knicks article over the past two months?

There's a beautiful monotony and regularity to all this ballyhooed losing. Yeah, the occasional bit of iron sulfide pokes and - poof! - a win emerges. But for the most part, it's the same disappointment, absurdity, mediocrity and siege mentality day after day. I wonder if at some point the players will start getting cabin fever or something and gradually lose their minds.

But the most interesting article in the Times this week came from the metro section of all places. Did you miss it? The title: "Madison Square Garden's 'Godfather,' Without the Respect."

Yup, it's our good buddy James Dolan, the Evil Gnome, Tim Curry's Mini-Me, the man with the jowls. And now he's got a new nickname.

The article, about the recent controversy over MSG's property tax exemptions and the possibility of their being revoked, compared the Dolan family at length to the Corleones. And James Dolan got smacked with the Fredo tag.

When you get compared to the infamous Fredo Corleone, here's what it means: You're weak, stupid, ineffectual. You're the oldest, but everyone understands you can't be depended upon. You can't lead or prepare for the future. You can't protect or control your family. You are bitter, jealous, pathetic, a black sheep. Your younger brother Sonny is crazy and nut, but he's better than you because he has balls. Your wife's a drunk, you can't face the music, you sleep on black satin sheets and you know all this shithole dives in Havana.

They might not look alike, but James Dolan and Fredo Corleone have a lot in common when it comes to management

Of course, this isn't the first time the Corleone family has come up in basketball. Shaq famously compared the three sons of Don Vito a few years back to his three big co-stars over the years. In his analogy, Penny Hardaway was Fredo, Kobe Bryant was Sonny and Dwyane Wade is Michael.

(As an aside, has anyone noticed that the Knicks have at some point picked up all the over-the-hill washed-up stars of those mid-902 Magic teams. Penny, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott - all came to the Knicks at the end of their careers and ate up money and bench space. So you know what that mean: Shaq is next. Can't you just see Isiah trading away his next two first-rounders for Shaq just when the big man is entering a sharp decline. By the way, the Magic started playing as an expansion team in 1989. Their first franchise victory ... that's right, over the Knicks.)

So that's what we've come to - James Dolan is aptly being compared to the worst mobster in the history of organized crime, but the tangential connection to Penny Hardaway seems like a big compliment. After all, Hardaway had a few good years before completely falling off the map. Dolan - he's stunk like a fat rat since the day he took charge.

Next up: Wizards at Knicks at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Best-case scenario: The Knicks follow a 24-point win with a 48-point loss, and Dolan rips off his face to reveal a resurrected John Cazale underneath.
Worst-case scenario: A winning streak, Yikes!