I watched the third quarter tonight and found myself wondering about the structural integrity of a standard basketball game. Things usually fall apart in the third. It is the time of night when the hope of the first half meets the reality of the score clock, and usually, the score clock wins.
We are now 1-9 against the top four teams in either conference. This is a statistic that sounds bad because it is bad. It is the kind of number that makes you want to go sit in a parked car and just look at the dashboard for a while.
The Physics of the Collapse
The Knicks have beaten us eleven times in a row now. It is becoming a tradition, like a holiday you do not actually want to celebrate but your aunt makes you go anyway. People say if we just added a superstar, maybe everything would change.
I am not sure if that is true. Adding one piece to a puzzle that has several missing pieces just gives you a slightly more confusing picture. We are young and inconsistent, which is a polite way of saying we do things that do not make a lot of tactical sense.
A Lack of Contact
There was a moment where Mikal Bridges was allegedly not fouling Immanuel Quickley. I looked at the footage. In the same way that a falling piano is not technically touching the ground until it is, the contact seemed inevitable yet ignored.
The referees have a difficult job, but so does the person who has to clean the glass at the aquarium. Both involve looking at things through a blurry lens and hoping for the best. Tonight, the lens was particularly smudged.
Falling From the Sky
During the game, there was an Adidas parachute airdrop. Small packages falling from the ceiling while the lead evaporated into the air. It was a lot of motion for very little gain.
Basketball is mostly just a series of things unraveling. You start with a plan, then the third quarter happens, and suddenly you are looking at a 1-9 record against good teams. My uncle says we should trade everyone for draft picks, but I think we should just try to play the fourth quarter first next time.