- Carmelo Anthony had another spotty outing. As usual, we got glimpses of brilliance-- a perfect pass here, a pick-and-roll play or isolation bucket there, even some spurts of nice defense-- but there was plenty to stoke the fire. Most notably, Melo was totally useless in the fourth quarter. He did one cool thing, and that was block a Kyle Korver pass into the twentieth row with his face. Besides that, Melo missed some good shots, missed some bad ones, openly pouted after not getting the ball on a post-up (he had a right to be sad, but again, thousands of angry people are watching. Probably lock that **** up.), and inexplicably gave a foul on Kyle Korver down 4 with 48 seconds remaining. (It did not appear, to my eye, that Mike D'Antoni had instructed his team to foul). Some good moments, but definitely not a good outing.

- Amar'e Stoudemire often found himself in the eye of the rebounding storm, just chillin' while Bulls whipped around him snaggling caroms. Three rebounds in a game with this many missed shots is not a good look. That said, Amar'e did involve himself in a small percentage of defensive plays (What? That's a relatively good thing!) and was legitimately cookin' soup in the third quarter, when he had 13 points on some crisp jumpers and finishes around the basket. Not a good game, though, for either well-compensated offensive frontcourt player. Definitely not.

- Speaking of well-compensated, Tyson Chandler got a number of great looks and finishes on the move to open the game, but quieted down as time progressed and was often pulled away from the rebounds because of Rose's drives. He was also matched up with Carlos Boozer-- a tough cover for him-- and let Boozer shoot right over him a couple times. Chandler had a decent outing, but the Bulls managed to cut him off completely in the second half, and he just couldn't defend everyone AND pull down all the rebounds.

- Jeremy Lin opened the game defending Derrick Rose pretty well (with a lot of help from Chandler) but got torched plenty of times, particularly in the second half.

Rose got him back with several ridiculous finishes, but...damn, Jeremy (three blocks!). Anyway, Lin did his darnedest against Rose. Offensively, he had eight assists, many of which came on terrific lead passes in transition. As in the previous game(s), though, Lin picked up his dribbles, lost some dribbles, and forced some shots (including one or two that would have had shirtless Knicks fans running around the court throwing grenades if Melo had attempted them). He was mostly in control and created plenty of plays, though.

http://www.postingandtoasting.com/2012/3/13/2866166/bulls-104-knicks-99-so-tonight-we-dont-rebound

- Will Leitch

Damn, how did we get to 18-26?

misterearl wrote:And so, here we are. Is Mike D'Antoni going to fight back against all this, or just say "screw it?" Today's pre-game press conference should be fascinating. But not nearly as fascinating as the MSG crowd's reaction to Carmelo tonight, in a 7:30 p.m. game against Portland. The Knicks need a win desperately ... but the crowd might need to get out its Carmelo frustration even more. Strap in, folks. It could get a bit crazy tonight.

- Will Leitch

Damn, how did we get to 18-26?

Technically we're 18-24 at the moment. Though 18-26 probably isn't far off.