I just got home from the Knicks @ Heat game, it was the first sold out game of the season and a very disappointing loss, the final score was 100-80 in favor of the Knickerbockers. Just a terrible game and we were doomed from the start, this loss also ended the Heat's 5 or 6 game home winning streak. Dwyane Wade did nto start due to a wrist injury from last night against the Wizards, for more details on that follow this linK: http://www.justbball.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10667 Rafer Alston started the game in Wade's place with Bimbo Coles coming off the bench, this was his first game of the season and he only had 2 points. Coles also got into a scuffle with Howard Eisley in the 4th quarter when the heat were down 20 some odd points and the tension was building, they were both issued technical fouls. It's not the best thing to get in a fight and be issued a technical during your first game of the season, but hey, it happens. Eddie Jones had 17 points shooting 7-16 from the field and he was also issued a technical foul in the 1st quarter after a total BS call by the refs. People always joke about refs being blind, well the refs in this game truly were. There were at least 3 or 4 "inadvertant whistles" which were waved off and just a lot of BS calls against the heat. Caron Butler had 13 points with 7 rebounds (4 offensive) and two assists, Rafer Alston had 11 points shooting 4-13 from the field and 6 rebounds. Brian Grant had only 4 points in the 31 minutes he spent on the court with 11 rebounds (3 offensive). Malik Allen and Udonis Haslem spent only a short time on the court, but neither one of them scored any points and they only had 3 and 1 rebounds respectively. This was Allen's first game of the season due to an injury. For the Knicks, Keith Van Horn played a great game, just seeing some of his moves in person, he's a great player. He led the Knicks with 28 points and 8 rebounds. Allan Houston had 15 points, Frank Williams had 14, Antonio McDyess had 12 with 8 rebounds, and Shandon Anderson had 10 points. There are no words to describe this game, the Heat just played awful. There was no fluidity and by Dwyane Wade being out it just threw everything out of whack. Bimbo should have retired a long time ago. Things were really looking up at the beginning of the year once the Heat got out of the 7 game slump, but tonights performance was just terrible. In the post game press conference, Stan Van Gundy didn't try and justify the loss, he flat out said that the Knicks outplayed us and we did terrible. You can't win them all, and in an 82 game season, you're bound to have some horrific games like tonight. At times it seemed like the Heat had never even played together before, it was just pathetic. The largest lead the Knicks had was 28 points, but early in the second half the Heat got that lead down to only 6 points but yet again screwed it up in which the Knicks expanded the lead to 28 points, the largest of the game. The Heat shot a measly 35.9% from the field as opposed to the Knicks shooting 51.3%. For the box score, click on the following link: http://www.nba.com/games/20031227/NYKMIA/boxscore.html On a lighter note (lol), some punk kid ran onto the court in the middle of the 3rd quarter until he was tackled by a bunch of cops and security guards, it was quite entertaining . I also got to meet Walt Clyde Frazier after the game which was awesome; Andy Roddick, Mandy Moore, and A-Rod were at the game too but I didn't meet them.
Ouch, Knicks are putting together some wins now, weird. I hope Wade gets healthy fast, for the Heat to even think about winning they need him 100%.
Dissapointing loss. Odom played good. He is starting to look like he is worth the money they spent on him.
Wade commented on www.NBA.com about his injury: <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"My wrist is really sore," Wade said. "I am taking it day-by-day right now. I know that it is not broken or fractured and X-rays are negative, so hopefully I will get the soreness and the swelling out so I can play again soon." </div>
