Who Is Mike Taylor?

So I was at the Knicks vs. Clippers game here at the Garden on Wednesday night. It was everything you would expect - tons of scoring, absolutely no defense, stupid decisions, Al Harrington hanging on the rim (I swear he was doing it to avoid landing on someone, really), Mike Dunleavy calling time outs at inappropriate points, and of course a Knick collapse which ultimately cost them the game (Clips won 140-135 in OT). The game did contain one thing I did not expect, and that was a player named Mike Taylor.

Image courtesy Getty Images

Since I'm starting a new blog here, let me just back up for a minute. I, being a lifelong New Yorker, am I lifelong Knick fan. I have a friend who went to school out west and he is a Clippers fan, so we have gone to this Knicks/Clippers game the last couple years. In recent years these teams have been pretty dreadful, the exception being 2006 when the Clippers, led by Elton Brand, made it all the way to the West Semis.

Back to Mike Taylor, this dude totally appeared out of nowhere to drop 35 on the Knicks. It was really one of the most dominating performances I had ever seen in person. In fact, it was the most points scored by a rookie at the Garden since AI did it in '96. Of course take into account that the Knicks play virtually no defense and Chris Duhon is quite slow, but nonetheless Taylor was hitting shots from all over the floor and seemed to be taking it to the hole at will. It appeared that he was literally running circles around the Knicks, which you can see here at about 1:57 in.

It seems that Taylor was actually the first player drafted directly from the NBDL into the NBA. SLAM online had a great profile on Taylor yesterday which gives us an idea of where he's been in recent years. Basically he had three run ins with the law while at Iowa State, including stealing a bottle of cold medicine from a convenience store. Hope that cold was worth it Mike, you could have been great in college. I do hope to see him play again, although that could be tough since the Clippers (luckily) are not on TV too much.