Shortest recap yet since the trade, because:

*  Kwame Brown outplayed Amare Stoudemire, and was the Bobcat player of the game on the Charlotte broadcast.

*  Dominic McGuire had 5 offensive rebounds and was a plus 16 in only 10 minutes of play.

*  Matt Carroll ran around screens and scored on every Knick perimeter player in the second quarter. He drove Roger Mason out of the game with two scores, then abused Billups and Douglas on successive possessions.

*  Shelden Williams and Landry Fields had very good games off the bench for the Knicks. They could not make up for the diminished output of starters Douglas and Stoudemire. Amare was so labored in last night's game that nothing short of a hyperbaric chamber and a full body compression sleeve (with holes cut for his eyes and mouth) looked like it would help. He's shooting 42% (61 of 144) in the last eight Knick losses. Forget chemistry or effort or what you think of the trade -- his physical decline is the most alarming development in this losing streak, and it probably would have happened regardless of who his teammates were.

* Having to play Toney Douglas significant minutes next to Billups and Shelden Williams significant minutes next to Amare is a leading indicator of who the most problematic defenders are on the team during this losing streak.

*  Carmelo's 36 point line looked good on paper, but with 25 shots I'd like to see more than one assist. To be fair, at least two or three times (including a critical possession late where he passed to Fields), his teammates didn't help by blowing the shot after a pass out of a double team.

*  Reporters are more loudly campaigning for the coach to scrap the regular rotation patterns and play Carmelo and Amare the entire fourth quarter. A reasonable demand given the erratic bench play and Amare's downward trajectory -- Melo only played nine games of over 40 minutes for Denver this year before the trade, but he played 31 such games last season, including eight in a row at the end of March a year ago. One thing I've observed in his time with the Knicks, though: when Carmelo starts to wear down in the fourth, he gets more foul prone -- picking up offensive fouls, reaching on defense and getting grabbier, running through screens (and knocking over people) rather than around them.  But the team needs a win badly enough that he should get more minutes if the team doesn't have a lead in the fourth.

*  Back in November, the Knicks swept Charlotte in a home and home to get to .500 after a 3-8 start. I remember feeling distinctly encouraged about the new Knicks because sweeping a back to back (and closing out two close games) was beyond the mental and physical means of most past Knick teams. Not sure anyone would have expected that a stripped down Bobcat team with a new coach would be sending the Knicks further south of .500 four months later.

*  The title of this recap is an allusion to the use of ellipses in Japanese manga to indicate speechlessness (and last night's loss rendered me pretty speechless). Did a search and learned that such use of ellipses dates back to at least 1954, and in MAD Magazine no less. The things you learn.


That's nine losses in ten games now, and when you're making the Bobcats -- actually check that, I mean the Bobcat *bench* --  look like world beaters, you're in trouble. I'm not given to despair and still think the team will make the playoffs (the Pacers and Bucks lost again last night), but play as poor as last night's doesn't deserve much detailed analysis. (For what it's worth, I like the spirit of this Bobcats team since Silas replaced Brown, and would root for them to get the eighth seed as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the Knicks).

I'm not sure where the next win is going to come from, but it has to come from somewhere pretty soon for this team to avoid a major meltdown. And to get a win, the Knicks are going to need an Amare that looks more like the early season player that carried the team, rather than the broken down cyborg wearing a Knick uniform last night.