Kevin Martin Injury Adds More Embarrassment To New York Knicks’ Loss Wednesday
The Kevin Martin injury adds even more embarrassment to what already was an embarrassing loss for the Knicks.
When the New York Knicks lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night, calling it an embarrassing performance would be a fair assessment. That was prior to finding out that Kevin Martin, who torched the Knicks to the tune of 37 points played hurt.
Now many people will say, “Oh, players play hurt all the time. What’s the big deal with what Martin did?” What makes Martin’s performance so spectacular if you’re a fan of his or the Timberwolves, and even more embarrassing for the Knicks is that he will now be out multiple weeks. That is right; Martin scored 37 points against the Knicks with a pretty major injury as he broke his wrist. I forgot to mention, it was his shooting wrist.
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You read that right. Martin suffered a broken right wrist less than halfway into the first quarter. At the time, Martin knocked down a three-pointer and was fouled on the play by Shane Larkin. Martin made the jumper, but missed the free-throw. He didn’t miss very many shots after that, even with as serious an injury as the broken wrist.
At the time, Martin had six points. That means he poured in another 31 with a broken wrist. There are players in the NBA that couldn’t score 31 points fully healthy, let alone injured. What was even more impressive was the excellent efficiency that he did it with, as he made 12-16 from the field and 5-8 from deep. Again, numbers like that aren’t easy to accomplish when fully healthy or even in practice.
As Jerry Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune points out, this is not actually the first time Martin had an explosive scoring night when an injured wrist. In 2009, while playing with the Sacramento Kings, Martin suffered a “nondisplaced hairline fracture of the navicular bone” in the midst of dropping 48-points on the Memphis Grizzlies. He would follow that up two nights later with another impressive offensive night when he scored 29 against the Atlanta Hawks. This injury was to his non-shooting wrist, which makes it a little easier to shoot, but he did miss an extended period of time as he missed nearly 2.5 months after having surgery.
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For the Knicks this just really drives home how poor they have been defensively this season. They are dead last in the NBA in defending the three-point line, as Martin’s performance helped put that number at an abysmal 43.3 percent. It is the main area of concern for the Knicks, not the installing of the triangle offense. It doesn’t matter how many points the Knicks score in that system, if they cannot stop their opponents they will struggle to beat anyone. If this isn’t enough of a wake up call to get them going on that end of the court, I don’t know what is.