It was another 20-point lead, this time against their outer borough rivals, the Brooklyn Nets, and the New York Knicks had them on the ropes.
Even as the lead whittled down, Knicks fans remained resilient in their belief that New York wouldn’t blow another game.
At the end of the third quarter, the Knicks were up 15. Against a deeply depleted Nets team, that should have been enough.
But this is the Knicks.
This is the team that’s broken so many hearts over four decades that loving them has become a form of masochism.
Knicks fandom is a condition similar to that of self-injury. It’s the act of harming your body as a way to, according to the Mayo Clinic, “cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration.”
In other words, your bouts of frustration and eruptions of anger cause you to break furniture, punch walls or just simply cry to deal with the team’s losing ways.
Stephen A. Smith manifested this last night after the Knicks blew a 28-point lead and lost to the Nets at MSG, 111-106.
“The damn Knicks make me sick man,” said an emotionally drained Stephen A. Smith after their seventh loss out of eight games in February. “I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.”
Stephen A., I feel you. I’ve felt that pain since I started following them when I was a little boy.
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