There might not be any better expression of how starved Knicks watchers have been for good things than the blog post filed by Frank Isola of the Daily News on Sunday. Isola was still on a high after watching Tracy McGrady's stirring debut as a member of the Knicks in Saturday night's overtime loss to the Thunder so we'll forgive him for getting so caught up in the moment that he started writing craziness about how McGrady is "definitely a better all-around player than Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh."
Where would Isola have gone if McGrady had actually made a pair of free throws with a minute to play and led the Knicks to their second victory in the last 10 games? It's safe to say that the name LeBron James would be followed closely by not worth the fuss, so it's probably for the best that T-Mac's lightly used legs abandoned him down the stretch.
It was a fun night, though. So fun, in fact, that it's easy to forget that this is exactly the kind of loss that has made the last few years at the Garden such a miserable experience. The Knicks looked great for more than three-quarters of the game before blowing it late because they couldn't come up with one stop at the end of the fourth quarter or in overtime. Or make one of those aforementioned free throws. Normally, it's tear out your hair stuff but not on Saturday night and not, hopefully, for the rest of the campaign.
Watching McGrady try to resurrect his career would be interesting enough, but there was so much more to hold the attention. Sergio Rodriguez was the point guard we've been dying to see since Mike D'Antoni came to town. He plays fast, whips passes and makes the other offensive players look better by hitting them in the right spot at the right time. Eddie House's shooting motion a Rube Goldberg machine, full of moving parts and random motion that leave you scratching your head in wonderment that the ball wound up going through the basket.
Utterly entertaining stuff, up and down the line. It didn't hurt that Kevin Durant and Russel Westbrook were playing on the other side, either.
The Knicks aren't any better as a team -- they may actually be worse without Jared Jeffries on defense -- but the injection of new flavor and abundance of hope about a summer filled with cap space make for a welcome giddiness in a season that became quite a grind of late.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
