To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne, everything’s coming Knicks right now. A day after playing the Thunder sans Kevin Durant, the Knicks get to take on the Rockets without Dwight Howard (the Rockets are resting him on the second night of back-to-backs, which is not a terrible idea, I guess, but seems awfully conservative). I remember looking at this stretch of games before the season and being like, “Damn, that is a tough stretch of games.” Now it actually looks like it will be the Knicks’ favor, as the Rockets have been playing very poorly this season, led primarily by the dramatically diminished overall play of their star player, James Harden, who seems to have just stopped giving a shit. It’s quite astonishing to see such poor character from a star player.
Anyhow, back to Dwight Howard – the Rockets have lost three of the four games they’ve played without him, so that’s obviously good news. The Rockets seem to be in a similar situation to the Thunder. If their star guard has an unreal game, they can win. If not, they’re probably going to lose. Who knew that Josh Smith, of all people, would be missed this much?
On the Knicks’ side of things, they’ve been buoyed by the improved play of late of Jose Calderon, but mostly they are being helped by Melo doing his Melo thing and different players stepping up in different games. I’ve said all season, but it still seems to hold true – if Lance Thomas has a good game, the Knicks are probably going to win. Because that extra production comes out of essentially nowhere and it buoys the overall team dramatically.
Hopefully we get to see more Zinger tonight. Not that they need him to be awesome to win, but come on, it’s just always fun to see him have great games. He’s so fun to watch.
Three in a row – let’s hope they make it four!
Let’s go Knicks!!