2023 Playoffs Round 2 Game Thread: The One Foot in the Grave Knicks vs. Heat, Game 5

In his classic song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” Bob Dylan wrote:

When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

The Knicks ain’t got nothing heading into a Game 5 at home down 3-1, so they have nothing to lose in this game, so the Knicks really just have to leave it all out there on the court tonight. I bet we see Randle and Brunson both play 40-plus minutes, as the Knicks will try to see if they can match the intensity of the Heat with their own intensity. All season long, the Knicks have had a drive that exceeded their opponents, so it is very disappointing to see that that hasn’t been the case in the second round against the Heat (it definitely was the case against the Cavaliers in the first round. The Cavs must feel like such bums seeing the Knicks get outworked like this, “Holy shit, then how fucking much did we slack off if the team that pantsed us is getting pantsed themselves? And with the guy we fucking just cut for no reason!” That makes me happy, at least.

In the 1997 playoffs, the Knicks held a 3-1 lead heading into a road Game 5 (just like the Heat tonight), and the Heat won that Game 5 before the series was mysteriously called after Game 5, so if the Heat could pull that off, why can’t the Knicks? Look for Isiah Hartenstein to pick up Gabe Vincent at the end of a Knick blowout tonight and throw him to the ground, and then hopefully Bam Adebayo just leaves the bench and shuffles around aimlessly, not even headed towards the fight, and Udonis Haslem keeps the guys next to him from leaving the bench, but doesn’t bother to do so with the, you know, good players on the team (still smarting about that, Buck Williams! It’s no good for you to know not to leave the bench if you can’t stop your teammates from doing so!).

So, in other words, this series is not over. But it is over, of course. However, while the Knicks have no direction in this series, they are home, so having no direction home is not that much of a problem, so that takes us back to the fact that they have nothing left to lose, and, well, it sure would feel great if they could get a win tonight (but they won’t).

But hey, as a complete unknown to the Knicks, I’ll still give them a meaningless Let’s Go, Knicks!