For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. Up first: Knicks-Mavs, a game in which Tyson Chandler returned to Dallas and faced the team he won a championship ring with last season. In Dallas's 96-85 victory, Dirk Nowitzki resumed his single-footed heroics and Carmelo Anthony gave more fuel to his growing army of critics.
What Was at Stake
Since the Knicks had amassed their full arsenal of weapons — Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Baron Davis, and Iman Shumpert returned from injury, and J.R. Smith came back from joyriding junkets down the Yangtze River — they’d gone 2-3, with losses to Boston, Miami, and New Jersey going into Tuesday's game. The two wins were in games that presented challenges as daunting as spotting someone in Los Angeles wearing a fedora: One was a trouncing of a depleted Atlanta team, the other a rout of the Cavs. (Even then, the Knicks trailed at the half by 12.)
As the public becomes increasing comfortable with the New York Knicks being a decent team and Jeremy Lin consistently putting up impressive numbers, a new Knicks-related issue has presented itself that no one seems to be able to wrap their foreheads around:
Does he even know that there's a part in his hair?
Why did he let a barber ford his Afro and let the oxen die atop his head?
I, for one, expected the unjust backlash to result in a hairstyle change by J.R.'s second game with New York. Thankfully, I was wrong. He was proudly sporting the same 'do Monday night against the New Jersey Nets. Upon seeing this, it became clear that this was no accident, no botched last-minute haircut, no failure to look in the mirror — this was simply J.R. Smith, on the heels of Fashion Week, in the middle of Black History Month, and during his first week as a New Yorker, making a statement.
I love and respect individuality, but my only words of caution for J.R. moving forward is that he might be attempting to make too many statements at once. It might just be too much for the public to handle. I say this, because if you thought it was a simple haircut, you were sadly mistaken. In J.R.'s world, it's so much deeper.
