You may not be able to tell from the looks on the Raptors' bench, but Toronto won the game. (source: Yardbarker.com)

Toronto annihilated the Knicks last night 131-113 (if we were playing Mastermind we’d say at least the Knicks’ score got all the same correct #s as Toronto, but just in the wrong order).  In the first half, the Raptors shot 70%.  No, not from the free-throw line, but from the field where you’re supposedly allowed to play defense.  The Canadian fans were excited, so why the depressed looks on the bench?  While Toronto needed this final win to get into the playoffs as the eighth seed, they also needed something else: the Chicago Bulls to lose their simultaneous game against the Charlotte Bobcats.  The Bulls didn’t play their part, instead winning and thus hanging onto their last-minute theft of that final playoff spot.

More depressing to the people of Toronto is that perhaps this helped further the death knell of Raptors’ all-time-scoring-and-rebounding-leader Chris Bosh’s stay north of the border.  The man is on record as having said he wants to be surrounded by enough talent to make his team a contender.  It’s pretty clear that Toronto ain’t nowhere near that.

Look, earlier in the season they were as high as fifth in the east, but then Bosh got injured.  Even after he returned, the team never regained it’s mojo.  And what little mojo it had left, that all drained away when Bosh had his face accidentally destroyed by Cleveland’s Antawn Jamison, causing him to miss the season’s final games (& the Raps’ ultimate free-fall out of contention).

However, that fifth place spot was also fool’s gold.  They only were that high ‘cuz several Eastern Conference teams started slow.  After Charlotte acquired Stephen Jackson and Milwaukee traded for John Salmons, both those teams started playing serious ball.  Even Miami’s middling record wasn’t fully accurate ‘cuz the Heat had a tough early schedule (in the past months Miami was able to take advantage of its easy end-of-the-season competition to climb up to 5th).

And let’s be honest, there’s still a big jump from those bottom four teams to the East’s top tier.  If Bosh wants to play for a contender, he’s got a long way to go.  Plus, with Toronto having signed Hedo Turkoglu to that big contract this summer, it ain’t like they can go out and get some more help.  So while the Knicks lost last night, we may get the last laugh if Bosh decides to come here this summer.  Of course, if winning’s what matters, he should only agree to come to New York if he’s sure another big player will come too.  After all, this game proved that even when you take Bosh out of the equation, Toronto still has a better team than New York.

Chris Bosh will look to the future this summer. Hopefully, he'll consider both the Knicks and a new stylist. (source: Yardbarker.com)

Final Notes:

-Bosh and David Lee aren’t the only ones who become free agents this summer.  Knick newcomer Bill Walker went out with a bang, upping his stock by scoring a career high 28 points, hitting a darn impressive 6 of 10 from long range while also nabbing a nice seven boards from the shooting guard spot.

-Tracy McGrady again didn’t play due to lameness injury.  He said that if he can’t get back to his normal self this summer, he’ll retire.  I gotta say, the way his performance petered out with the Knicks, if he wants a shot on some team he’s gonna have to like play summer league or tryout during training camp.  No GM is gonna offer him even the minimum unless he can prove he’s got something left in the tank (actually I guess as long as the contract’s non-guaranteed they would, but I dunno if he’d accept that.  Even Earl Barron refused the non-guaranteed contract we offered him).

David Lee, looking disgusted & scared at the thought of playing D ("Eww, do I have to touch him?"). Alas, will this be our last image of him in a Knicks' uniform? (source: Yardbarker.com)

The Knicks' gave the Garden Faithful something to cheer about as they left their final home game. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

Last night, the final home game of the season, the Knicks gave the crowd something to cheer for on Fan Appreciation Night.  Losing wouldn’t help our lottery chances, winning wouldn’t help our playoff chances.  We were going up against an equally sucky team in the Washington Wizards, a team without even an exciting superstar.  And yet if you listened to the amazing crowd at Madison Square Garden last night, you’d've thought it was Game 7 of the Finals.

The Knicks entered the fourth quarter down by 8 points, yet that didn’t stop a rag-tag group of players staging a remarkable comeback to try and force a fairy-tale end to this nightmare season.  Out of the group of five players on the court during this run, only one of them (Danilo Gallinari) was getting regular NBA minutes earlier in the season.  He was joined by a rookie (Toney Douglas) who initially in the year couldn’t get off the bench even though he was behind a mediocre, underperforming point guard (Chris Duhon).  A guy (Bill Walker) buried on a top playoff team (the Celtics).  A point guard (Sergio Rodriguez) who was third-string and barely saw any minutes on a far-from-playoff-caliber team (the Sacramento Kings).  And of course our end of the season find, D-League call up Earl Barron.  While the Washington Wizards ain’t exactly the Lakers, it was still impressive to see this bunch of castoffs bring home the bacon.

Coach Mike D’Antoni, realizing he had a good thing going with this gang, even kept David Lee on the bench the rest of the way (despite the fact that Lee, as always, had been one of the few bright spots throughout the game).  The fans, showing their class and awareness of the impending free agency’s problems, chanted, “Re-sign David!”

It was the Italian and the Spaniard who lead the fourth quarter run.  Gallo had two three-pointers and an old-fashioned three-point play where he drove and was fouled.  Sergio, Spanish Chocolate himself, had a three pointer after driving to the basket twice in a row and hitting funky wrong-footed layups that caught the Wiz’s shot-blockers off-guard.

Washington's Mike Miller misunderstanding what it means to play "balls out" defense. (source: Yardbarker.com)

However, the unreported story of the night might very well be that Knicks’ announcer Walt “Clyde” Frazier took his game to another level.  The lovable Clyde always injects random “r”s into words, plus you can always count on him using a couple of big words that don’t quite sound right.  I firmly believe he may’ve been a bit drunk or high last night, ‘cuz he went far even for him.  At the beginning he so mangled the name of Washington’s Blatche, that co-announcer Mike Breen had to ask him if he said “Bosh.”  At the end of the first quarter, Washington’s Al Thornton hit a forty-footer as the buzzer went off.  Later on in the game, Clyde saw Thronton re-enter the game and did a Chris-Farley by turning to Breen and saying “Remember when Thornton hit that forty-footer?”  That was it, no follow up.  Breen said yes, he did remember it.

When the Knicks took a twenty-second timeout near the end of the first-half, Clyde pointed out that it was fine because those types of timeouts aren’t “accumulative,” which sorta works, but really it should be “cumulative.”  Later, when Gallo hit a shot with Mike Miller all over him, Clyde said that Gallo was “tantalizing” the Washington player.  Probably Miller didn’t find it too tantalizing, but Danilo might’ve been “taunting” or “teasing” him.  The Garden fans however found it to be rather tantalizing.  Lastly, at another point Breen was talking about how the Knicks’ next (& last) game would be up in Toronto and that the game could have playoff implications.  He mentioned how Chicago currently held the eight seed, but if the Knicks lost Wednesday, the spot could go to Toronto.  Clyde giggled as he simply said, “Another country.”  What can I say, the man rocks.

All in all, a good happy ending point at home for what’s been a long, sad season.