I’ve just crossed the threshold of the Warriors’ locker room, and the first thing I see is Klay Thompson pissing on an orange and blue foam finger. This, one half the Splash Brothers later claims, was ripped off the helpless hand of a sobbing five-year-old fan.
Ruthless, yes, but a breed part and parcel with Golden State’s maraudic march.
“Get that action!” Draymond Green eggs his teammate from a corner locker, whipping his dick around like an unknotted lasso. “More like Badison Square Garbage!”
Such was the din of destruction that befell the New York Knicks Sunday night, with the Golden State juggernaut rolling to a 116-95 par-for-the-course thumping in front of a caustic capacity crowd. This despite a meager 13 points from All-Everything sharpshooter Stephen Curry.
Thompson led all scorers with 34 points on a planet-compacting 14-18 from the field, including 5-6 from distance. Green, meanwhile, tallied his league-high ninth triple-double of the season, finishing with 20 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, and no fewer than 50 pounds of Knicks splayed like Pollack flicks across the floor.
But it was how the Warriors’ power forward manhandled Kristaps Porzingis (14 points, seven rebounds) that left perhaps the most throbbing smart in the minds of Knicks fans present and couch-sunk alike.
“He was definitely a challenge to guard,” Prozingis wrote on a grease board while attached to locker-room ventilator. “Draymond is pretty intimidating. At one point he told me he once ran over a mailman when he didn’t deliver his Morris Peterson autograph on time, so after that I was pretty scared.”
Scared. A word that can be both cliché and—for 29 other NBA teams—the absolute best explanation possible.
After co-authoring one of their worst quarters of the season in the game’s opening frame, Golden State didn’t take long to find their oft-regaled rhythm, executing cuts and dives in a frenzy that flustered their air-grabbing foes. Down two after one, the Warriors were up six at the break, 17 after three, and barely looked back.
“That’s a hell of a team they got out there,” lauded Carmelo Anthony, who finished with a team-high 24 points and 10 rebounds—a star-steady output in what was otherwise a ceaseless offensive siege. “And Arron [Afflalo] sucked pigshit tonight.”
Anthony’s gripe underscores a growing concern within the Knicks organization. Namely that Affalo, who finished with five points on are-you-fucking-kidding-me from the field, has lately struggled to find his way in Derek Fisher’s triangle-hybrid offense.
“Arron will come around,” Fisher noted from just outside Sasha Vujacic’s shower stall, where the Knicks skipper was handing various botanical shower products to his reserve shooting guard through the curtain. “If he doesn’t, we’ll have to adjust the rotation accordingly.”
Vujacic’s head abruptly thrusts forth from the steam. “I said lilac! Not lavender!” he bellowed.
“Motherfucker, how am I supposed to know the motherfucking difference,” Fisher retorted, upending the wicker basket’s myriad contents over the rail and storming off in a huff.
“He gets like this after some losses,” Vujacic confided as he scrambled to gather his wares behind the curtain. “… Do you see my crab comb out there?”
The loss drops the Knicks to 23-27 overall, a full three games behind the No. 8 seed Detroit Pistons and 4.5 games behind the Boston Celtics, who will visit the Garden Tuesday night.
The Warriors, meanwhile, moved to 44-4 on the season, and have seriously considered going on a three-month vacation and “Just trying to win it all with the No. 9 seed,” according to ESPN’s Chris Broussard.
On a night when the Knicks struggled to cull contributions from anyone beyond Anthony and Porzingis, the latter of whom missed much of the first half due to early foul trouble, it was Golden State’s depth—relentless and killer and skilled—that proved the start-to-finish difference.
“When we’re in rhythm, we’re a pretty tough team to beat,” Steve Kerr said of his history-chasing charges. “Luke Walton coached this team to 38 of our 44 wins. And I love Luke Walton. But Luke Walton still thinks Stephen Baldwin was Keyser Soze, okay? You know what I mean?”
“That’s how good this team is.”
One day after completely squandering a 17-point lead to the hapless Philadelphia 76ers, Kerr and the Warriors relied on second-unit stalwarts Leandro Barbosa, Brandon Rush, and Shaun Livingston—aged a combined 125 years—to keep the Knicks largely at bay.
A remarkable feat, given Golden State’s helter-skelter itinerary: catching an 11 P.M. flight from Philadelphia to Newark; chartering a private plane to La Guardia after it was revealed Walton had booked the wrong flight in a fit of vertigo (“The letters kinda blended together for a second,” he would later tell the staff); taking in a VIP performance by noted Bronx rapper French Montana at an undisclosed nightclub (1 OAK), at which point our source stopped responding, ending his communiqués with a cryptic text that read simply, “o no bogut flppng tbles.”
The loss marked the Knicks’ seventh in their last 10 games—a midseason slide that threatens to undo what has otherwise been an encouraging turnaround in the wake of last year’s 17-win debacle.
“Boston is basically a must-win for us,” lamented center Robin Lopez, who finished with six points and five rebounds in a mostly quiet 18 minutes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in serious danger of permadeath here on hardcore Mine Craft mode, and I don’t have a worm in the server to resurrect me.”
Whatever the inherent flaws of Fisher’s squad, the Knicks had a sterling opportunity to capitalize on Golden State’s subpar opening quarter. Sadly, the first 12 minutes were marred by cartoonish turnovers on both sides, along with a lingering sense that the two teams might’ve eschewed the sanctioned Saturday rest for an all-night goodwill ether binge.
The difference being that the Warriors—righteous and splendid as their brand of basketball is—have earned a right to disregard those passage rites.
As for the Knicks? The mantra seems, at this point, a bit simpler in scope: Sometimes, before you run, you gotta stop rifling passes off your teammates’ thighs.
“We’ll lick our wounds, get our rest, and get back to work for Boston tomorrow,” Fisher offered, wads of tissue stuffed to stave a bleeding nose. “Metaphorically lick our wounds. Let’s make that clear. Don’t wanna get Amundson excited.”
(Editor’s Note: No, it didn’t.)
