I DVR'd a broadcast of the legendary 1999 opening round death march to Baatan by the first and eight seeds in the East, the Heat and the Knicks.
Games 1-2-3-4 saw one team dominate the other.
Game 5 went back and forth, back and forth, a real tenacious nail biter, right down to that memorable Allan Houston basket and fist pump.
Patrick Ewing played heroically, given how hurting he was. I know by the time we got out of the East and went on to play the Spurs in the finals, he was gone, though I don't honestly recall the how and why.
What was interesting was the starting lineups.
Heat
Mourning
PJ Brown
Mashburn
Majerle
Hardaway
And they had the likes of Terry Porter and Tim Weatherspoon coming off the bench.
Knicks
Ewing
Kurt Thomas
LJ
Houston
Ward
Sprewell was first off the bench, LJ sliding over to PF.
Then Camby, Chris Childs
Two sets of short rotations. Rick Brunson got a bit of daylight when CW and CC got into foul trouble.
Was a reminder that even given his offensive limitations, Charlie Ward was a good facilitator and a ferocious defender. Likewise, Childs, whose offensive portrait in the near field was a little more effective. Never had the PG of our dreams, and JVG stubbornly refused to task Spree with PG responsibilities, even though he often initiated the offense.
One of the great undermanned, overachieving Knicks teams. And it was eye opening to see who effective Camby was coming off the bench at C-PF. And while injuries plagued him throughout his career, trading him and the pick that could've yielded us Hillario or Stoudamire, endures as one of worst moves in the history of a franchise. After a transitional recoup year with Denver (funny how often Denver has fucked us in the ass on big trades), MC had four very effective years with the Nuggets, where he was a defensive force, averaging 3-4 blocked shots a year.
Now is the point where Kiid steps forward to diss Camby's playoffs peformance in 1999-2000, when his mind was clearly not on the game (on a sister who had been sexually assaulted, thank you very much), and to stand up for McDyess, who blew out his limbs one day after mocking Camby for his injury woes in the press. McDyess did indeed come back, post-Marbury trade, to be an effective role player, much in the manner of how Ron Harper did, in coming back from likewise debilitating injuries, as a defensively oriented specialist. Likewise was just observing on Basketball-Reference.com how Jamal Crawford was hitting threes at a .455 clip for D'Antoni when Donnie Douche bag offloaded him for Al Harrington and Zach Randolph for Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley in his brilliantly crafted scheme to attact LeBron and Chris Bosh...
To be a Knicks Fan is to SUFFER.
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