For the second time this season, Jeremy Lin ’10 and the New York Knicks have found themselves on a six-game losing streak. On Monday night it was the Chicago Bulls to whom they fell victim, losing, 104-99, in a game in which hardly anyone shined for either team.
Lin, adhering to his recent trend, did not shoot well; once again, his field goal percentage was under 50 as he finished the night 4 for 11 from the field. The Harvard alum also committed five fouls on the night along with a slightly improved three turnovers.
Lin’s counterpart on the Bulls, Derrick Rose, torched the Knicks’ PG for 32 points. But despite that stat, the reigning MVP did not shoot well either. He, too, shot below 50 percent, making only 12 of 29 shots throughout the game.
The tone for the Knicks after the game was, simply put, one of disgust. Forward Amar’e Stoudemire attributed his team’s unfocused play to the too-casual attitude in the locker room.
“The joking around has to stop at some point,” Stoudemire told reporters after the contest. “We’ve got to take this game very serious, especially in a time where now we’re in the eighth seed and we’re not playing well. So the time is now.”
Carmelo Anthony agreed with his teammates, emphasizing his frustration in clear and unmasked terms.
“It sucks,” Anthony said. “The situation we’re in right now, it sucks losing basketball games. The way we’re losing at the end of games, it sucks. It’s not a good feeling right now. We need to get our act together and start winning.”
Currently, the Knicks are tied for the final Eastern conference playoff spot with a record of 18-24. To give perspective, if a team had that record in the West, not only would it not be in the hunt for playoff positioning, but also it’d be third to last in the conference.
Somewhere within the last couple of weeks, both Linsanity and the Knicks’ successful play came to a halt. Until the team begins to rekindle its cohesiveness from the long-lost days of February, it seems that the times of puns plastering the headlines are over, replaced by tick after tick in the loss column.
