Brawls Are Good.

It hurts me to have to lead with this picture, which is the second most overblown thing about that black year of 2004. Either way, there've been two close Knicks wins since those famous fisticuffs, which besides the unquanitifiable results of pulling the team together, had the immediate effect of removing Nate Robinson from the team. Robinson is a man about whom cliches clash for dominance. The air surrounding the young guard is thick with the sounds of conflicting idioms and overwraught, breathless sportscasting.

Basketball players should be taller than actors.

He is somehow, both a scrappy undersized underdog and a ballhogging malcontent thug, a high-flying dunking sensation and a non-passing point guard wrestling in the stands. This season we've seen him block Yao Ming and also be called for travelling on an egregious showboating dunk attempt. He leaps for unlikely rebounds, and throws up impossible attempts into coverage that clatter off the rim. He's often to be seen arguing calls and screaming at opponents. Somehow his size has turned him into an emotional fan favorite, and he's cheered nearly everytime he touches the ball. This sentiment won him the dunk contest, despite an infamous fourteen misses. We'll see if it survives the brawl, in which he played the largest part and pretty clearly instigated.
I'm in the unfavorable camp on Robinson. He has really poor shot selection, clock skills, and is clearly a shooting guard, not a point guard. (For those without a game-by-game opinion, I can point to his 1.5 apg.) The Knicks are overloaded with guards, and Robinson bleeds playing time from the famous two plus Richardson and Crawford, all of whom are better players. So he's 5-9 and can dunk. I'd prefer if he'd pass.