OK, so it's been an eventful week, with two games against the Wizards (or one against the Wiz and the other against a team in throwback jerseys with "Zephyrs" on it) and the other against a resurgent 76er team at home. After an exhilirating win against the Hornets to end a tough road trip, Coach D'Antoni wanted the team to approach this series of games strong, and avoid letting down. The Knicks sort of did this with the first game against the Wiz, then saved their letdown for the last 2 games...one loss being particularly excruciating.

Summarizing the games:

*  Knicks 128 Wizards 122: This game was distinguished by pretty crisp shooting on both sides -- easy to blame on less than great defense, but there were definitely a number of shots where you just had to give credit to the players. I had that "uh-oh" feeling when the Wizards jumped ahead 20-13 that this might be another one where the Knicks allow an inefficent offensive team to defy their stats and perform lights out at the Garden, but the Knicks took advantage of the Wizards' own defensive issues and it soon became a fast paced shootout. One thing that stood out to me in this game is how effective Washington's guards and forwards were in isolation against the Knicks perimeter D -- Mike James, Caron Butler and especially Nick Young just lit up the Knicks with a series of isolations and short jumpers. You saw this in the box score -- for such a high scoring game, the Wizards only had 15 assists.

Nick Young, in particular, killed the Knicks doing it on his own with a weirdly one dimensional line: 33 points, no assists, steals, or blocks, and two rebounds. The other odd line came from a player I hardly noticed on the Knick end: Jared Jeffries had only 8 points and 8 rebounds in 33 minutes, but had by far the best +/- of +17. Offensive stars for the Knicks were QRich with 26 and David Lee with 30 points and 10 rebounds. Knicks also moved the ball very nicely and had 27 assists to follow up on their 30 assists against the Hornets.

* Wizards/Zephyrs 96 Knicks 89:  My League Pass feed died midway through the second quarter of this game with the Wizards up 10, and I ended up tracking the game through online gamecasts and forum game threads while on the phone with the cable company, before League Pass Broadband (which usually blacks out Knick games) came through for me (sort of -- the feed went in and out toward the end of the game). As it turns out, I think someone was trying to tell me not to bother with this most awful loss of the season for the Knicks.

After a half of extremely lackluster play where both teams made adjustments based on the previous game (the Wizards more successfully), the Knicks turned it on in the third quarter and went ahead comfortably in the 4th by as much as nine, before collapsing at the end, giving up a 15-0 run toward the end of the game. Madly inconsistent performances from all Knicks in this one (no individual performances worth highlighting), and though the Wiz' Nick Young was kept more in check, Mike James again tormented the Knicks with 19 points and a killer 3 during the Wizards's game closing run.

Mike D'Antoni was quoted at the end of the game as saying that he felt like he was kicked in the stomach. (I think most Knick fans could have come up with something even more graphic) As I noted in Twitter, what team other than the Knicks could combine their best win of the season with their worst loss of the season in the same week -- two weeks in a row? (Beat the Celtics -- lose to the Thunder two days later...Beat the Hornets -- lose to the Wizards four days later)

*  76ers 107 Knicks 97:  This game wasn't really a surprise -- if anything, it was notable for its lack of surprise. Hot, very athletic team takes it to the Knicks and wears them down with speed and size. Igoudala and Miller, in particular, torched the Knicks, and the 76ers length really seemed to disrupt the games of Duhon and Lee. Duhon had one of his roughest games in recent memory with 5 points, 5 assists and 3 turnovers, and was limited to 26 minutes due to back problems, while Lee had 15 points and 11 rebounds but only got off nine shots. Turnovers, one of the most frequent Knick bugaboos, reared their head hugely in this game (Sixers scored 24 points off 20 Knick turnovers), and only the poor FT shooting of the Sixers kept the Knicks in the game.

One noteworthy highlight -- the return/belated debut of Danilo Gallinari was a pleasant surprise, and definitely gave the game its few worthy moments of suspense and anticipation. Like most Knick fans, I was very pleased with Galinari's rough but enthusiastic and savvy play, especially on offense -- he clearly has chops when it comes to passing and shooting. On defense, he looked pretty bad on a few possessions (most notably when Igoudala spun on him in the lane and dunked spectacularly), but that's to be expected this early on.

My League Pass problems continue, which meant I had to watch a pretty shaky feed of this game online. The overwhelming impression of this game was how fast the Sixers moved up and down the floor -- my tiny web window featured moving blurs of black colored pixels from left to right and vice versa for good stretches of this game. As many writers aptly noted in their recaps of this game, you had to think Coach D'Antoni wouldn't have minded trading teams given how much better the opponent was at pushing the pace and finishing.

Back later with a recap of the MLK game between the Knicks and Bulls.