Knicks Heroically Win Fourth Quarter By 17, Only Lose By 28

Hey New York resident, how'd you spend the Saturday early afternoon? Maybe finishing up a long brunch? Enjoying a sunny (but chilly) stroll on the High Line? Catching up on the last season of Sherlock? Really, anything would've been great because Saturdays are great and full of promise. Unless you're the tall group of friends masquerading as a professional basketball team, that is, or one of the fans masochistic enough to pay top dollar to watch a smoldering manure pit.

The numbers from Knicks 110-82 loss to the Hornets—it wasn't nearly as close as the final line suggest—are incredible. The Knicks were being doubled up 62-31 at half and 89-44 at the end of the third quarter. Across the final eight minutes of the second quarter and the first six minutes of the third quarter, the Hornets went on a 51-9 run ( h/t Robert Silverman).

I wouldn't normally advise you to blindly follow the lead of celebrities, but Knicks fans, these rich people know what's up.

Before the game—perhaps sensing the danger that the 14-24 Hornets posed—Knicks president Phil Jackson took the blame for what has become a disastrously lost season (via AP):

"In anticipating that we were going to be better, that we were giving hope to our fans that maybe there was a possible playoff opportunity here, that goes on me," Jackson said. "That we have to now take responsibility and move forward and make things happen, that also goes on me and now I have to do the job that I was brought in to do."

To an extent Jackson is right, as operating this offseason like the Knicks were closer to being a playoff team than the league's worst team surely led to poor maneuvering, but it also prompts the obvious question: if he thought the Knicks were going to be good, why did he hire Derek Fisher to lead them? But this team was screwed long before Phil got to New York, with the cupboard left bare (and most of the draft picks traded away) by the parade of incompetent team executives previously in James Dolan's employ.

At least the Knicks fans in attendance seemed get their money's worth of booing: