NEW YORK _ The Knicks' entertainment team tested an old-school concept in the first half of Sunday afternoon's game against the Warriors in Madison Square Garden. They muted all the pumped-in noise, cut out the music and allowed the sounds of the game to fill the arena.
Some liked the experiment. Draymond Green certainly didn't, blasting it passionately in his postgame interview.
"That was pathetic," Green said. "It was ridiculous. It changed the flow of the game. It changed everything. You get so used to playing the game a certain way and to completely change that? To me, I thought it was completely disrespectful to Michael Levine and Rick Welts and all these guys who have done these things to change the game from an entertainment perspective and give the game a great vibe."
Both the Knicks and Warriors struggled throughout the first half. New York shot 18-of-41, while the Warriors finished a brutal 17-of-47. The play was jagged.
"No, I don't think they were trying to change us," Green said. "Because I think it changed their players, too. Did you see that first half? It was just bad, sloppy, all over the place. There was no rhythm to the game. All of that stuff makes a difference, believe it or not. You get rhythm. That's why when guys go in and work out at night, you turn on music. It helps you get into a certain area, a certain place. I don't think they were trying to do it to throw us off, but it definitely threw the entire game off."
The typical arena sound returned in the second half and the game did seem to have a somewhat better rhythm, as Steph Curry's shot returned and the Warriors pulled away late for a win.
"Complete disrespect," Green said. "You advance things in the world to make it better. You don't go back to what was bad. It's like computers can do anything for us and then you go back to paper. Why would you do that? It was ridiculous...They need to trash that because that's exactly what that was."
