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Sports

Knicks Take another L after Season's Already Over

The Knicks lost the tiebreaker with the Timberwolves and drop a spot in the NBA Draft.

Watch the #NBADraft tiebreaker between the @Timberwolves & @NYKnicks. pic.twitter.com/UDeMQyxLTr
— NBA Draft (@NBADraft) April 18, 2017

Watch every minute of this video, Knicks fans, but especially watch, with increasing dread and despair, the moments leading up to the final selection as three ping pong balls for each franchise are plopped into a lottery air machine thingy with all the pomp and circumstance of a Ben Stein line reading. The Knicks found themselves needing a certain set of ping pong balls to bounce in their favor before another set of ping pong balls bounce in their favor a month from now because both New York and the Minnesota Timberwolves finished the season with the same record, and were tied for the sixth spot in the draft. And the Knicks found themselves in that situation because they somewhat miraculously won the final game of the season. Even when they win, they are losers, etc.

And so that W-induced L came back to haunt the team today, when what every Knicks fan knew would happen, did happen. A ping pong ball with a Wolves logo shot itself up the air shaft into the winner's circle, giving Minnesota the sixth pick in the draft. Of course, either team could make this moot, by winning a Top 3 pick in the actual lottery on May 16, but the way things are going for this franchise—whose president of basketball operations just went scorched earth on the superstar veteran and scared off the youthful future face of the franchise—no one actually believes in their heart of hearts that will happen. If Minnesota should get a Top 3 pick, and the Knicks didn't, then New York would slide into the sixth spot. So that's…something.

The silver lining here, though, is that a high lottery pick is only as good as the person making the pick. So, really, when you get right down to it, the Knicks may not have lost much at all.