Celtics 114, Knicks 107: Wrong
The Knicks lost to the Celtics on the road, but the real story is that both squads, heavily depleted by COVID-19 absences, were even playing in the first place as the NBA continues to play with fire amid an ongoing global pandemic.
A hunch is a funny thing. It used to mean something literal, a push or thrust. Then it took on a figurative dimension, suggesting a hint. Now it suggests premonition. Hunches are easy to have, effortless, really. But it’s often impossible to tell if a hunch is good or bad.
If I told you Taj Gibson played 22 minutes last night in Boston, I suspect you’d have a hunch that he grabbed at least one rebound. You’d be wrong. I had a hunch, looked through his entire career’s game logs and found my hunch was correct: that was the only time Taj has played that many minutes without recording a single rebound. But since that’s never happened before, your initial incorrect hunch is perfectly reasonable, though wrong.
If I told you the Knick starters outscored the Celtics’ 104-67, your hunch would be the Knicks won in a laugher. You’d be wrong. The Knicks lost 114-107, thanks to their reserves being served to the tune of 47-3. New York’s bench was depleted, consisting entirely of Taj, Mitchell Robinson and a Brando-in-Superman brief cameo by Wayne Selden. But no one was asking the shorthanded bench to win the game, or even to play even. They just couldn’t lose 47-3. Even 39-3 would’ve worked. But not 47-3.
If the Knicks’ and Celtics’ team buses collided outside the TD Garden shortly before tip-off and each team had seven players too hurt to play, your hunch would be that the game gets called off. What if instead of a bus crash it was an 21-month global pandemic that shows no signs of relenting? NHL teams are halving crowd sizes. The NFL, the most constipated machine in America, rescheduled games to Monday and Tuesday. The Premier League is cancelling matches. All the hospitals where I live are at capacity, at minimum. If you have to go to the ER you’re waiting 12 hours minimum and you’re not getting a room — COVID or no, you’re out in the hallway. For days.
Last night, Milwaukee lost at home by 29 to Cleveland without Giannis Antetokounmpo or Khris Middleton due to COVID. Golden State, already without Steph Curry and Draymond Green, couldn’t survive losing Jordan Poole to protocol, losing by 19 to a Raptors team missing Pascal Siakam and Danalo Banton for the same reason; team president Masai Ujiri recently tested positive. Kevin Durant and James Harden were DNP-COVIDs for Brooklyn, who lost at home to an Orlando team with five players unavailable due to the virus. Kyrie Irving was placed in the protocol today. The Knicks were without RJ Barrett, Obi Toppin, Quentin Grimes, Kevin Knox, Immanuel Quickley, and Miles McBride ‘cuz COVID, along with Derrick Rose out with ankle soreness. The Celtics were missing Al Horford, Grant Williams, Jabari Parker, Juancho Hernangomez, and Sam Hauser in protocol, along with Dennis Schröder (non-COVID illness) and Romeo Langford (neck injury).
That last paragraph shouldn’t go down easy. People are going to die because the NBA’s psychopathic fixation with playing through ratings-rich Christmas Day is seen as normal, and after a while normal gets to looking familiar, and what’s familiar is eventually what’s respected. But don’t lose the plot. This game going on as scheduled isn’t MacArthur returning to the Philippines. This was a chimera, an implausible mix of a playoff game’s minutes distribution with the je ne sais quoi of a preseason-in-Hartford tilt.
Kemba Walker hasn’t played for three weeks; he played 37 minutes. Remember all our mirthless jokes about what it would take for Tom Thibodeau to ever play Walker again? He literally ran out of every other option. There’s something farcical about watching two teams throwing their chips down on lineups they’ve never used or intended to. It’s not the charming chaos of a National League game going 20 innings and outfielders pitching while pitchers pinch-hit. It could be. Not when it’s happening in this world, our world, now.
Does a single death justify this game taking place? How many deaths make a luxury worthwhile? Last year it took Rudy Gobert getting sick to shut down the NBA. Now every team has a half-dozen players out and the league wants you at Madison Square Garden Christmas morning to scream your screened lungs out at Trae Young (who also just entered the protocol and is probably doubtful for that game now), if not watching in your home or on your phone wherever you are.
A push. A hint. A premonition. Those are precisely the prods Ebeneezer Scrooge gets from the three ghosts who visit him. Christmas Past pushes him out of his normal world and into his own past; Christmas Present’s glimpse into the Cratchit home hints at Scrooge’s ignorance and inhumanity toward even the people he spends the most time with; Christmas Future takes “premonition” to spooky and fairly concrete places. Scrooge sees the error of his ways and pulls a 180. I’ve a hunch Adam Silver, sadly, is no Ebeneezer Scrooge.
