Hey, the Knicks are good again. Weird how this always seems to work—the
Knicks suck for a while, something happens, then they're good again,
then their fans get all excited, then they suck again, everyone freaks
out...rinse, lather, repeat. The "something" that happened this time was
the firing of embattled coach Mike D'Antoni, and whatever interim coach
Mike Woodson has done with them since (change their pre-game beverage
from Gatorade to Vitamin Water?), it's worked beautifully, with the team
winning each of their last four games with a +90 scoring margin.
Meanwhile, the Sixers...well, at least they beat the Bobcats by a bunch.
The Ballers were able to put an end to their three-game skid in
Charlotte, and when you look at the damage done over the course of their
losing streak, it really wasn't tragic. All three losses were to
upper-echelon East teams, two were on the road, and nobody but the
Knicks really made up ground on the Sixers in the meantime, since the
Celts were busy losing to the Kings and Nuggets and the Pacers and Hawks
both dropped a couple of their own. As long as Philly can continue to
take care of business within the Atlantic division, they should be fine.
But to do so, we'll need Evan Turner to snap out of his little
mini-funk. After a four-game stretch of averaging 19.3 points and 10.3
boards a game, Evan's play has sunk over the past three contests, his
numbers dropping to a pedestrian 8.3 ppg and 5.7 rpg. He had his best
game of the season in the team's last matchup with the 'Bockers, scoring
24 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, so here's hoping he can regain his
form before we have to start using phrases like "doghouse" and "mystery
ailment" again.
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7:00 tip from the WFC. "It was big because we lost the last three," Jrue
said of the team's win over the Bocats. "This game gave us confidence
going into the next three." Knicks, then Celtics, then our last West
matchup of the year against the Spurs—confidence will be needed in heavy
doses for sure.