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holfresh
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Joined: 1/14/2006
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If only the Knicks could refashion themselves as a big-budget film, their season might be considered a big-time hit. Box-office sales are strong. They provide countless thrills and gripping plot twists. And they have won praise from the nation’s leading critics.
Phil Jackson and Pat Riley, two coaching legends with Knicks ties, have praised the team’s direction and newfound competitiveness. Don Nelson, a former Knicks coach, joined the thumbs-up chorus Wednesday.
“I think Isiah has done a really good job,” Nelson, the Golden State Warriors’ coach, said of Isiah Thomas, the Knicks’ coach and president. “They seem to know who they are and the direction they want to go.”
A night earlier, in Los Angeles, Jackson was equally effusive.
“This team is playing every game and competing in games, and that’s what you want,” Jackson, the Lakers’ coach, said. “They’re young and they’re inexperienced, so they’re going to lose some of those games.”
Jackson proved prescient. The Knicks beat his team, 107-106, then were routed the next night by Nelson’s squad, 120-101. Unfortunately for the Knicks, the reviews remain much brighter than the results on the court.
They reached the All-Star Game break with a 23-30 record — six games behind the Toronto Raptors (29-24) for first place in the Atlantic Division, and three and a half games out of a playoff berth in the Eastern Conference.
For all of their apparent progress, the Knicks remain maddeningly inconsistent. Perhaps, as Jackson said, it is to be expected of a young team that went through “a despondency” last season under Coach Larry Brown. But the win-one, lose-one pattern does little to inspire confidence, even if it might be enough to save Thomas’s job.
At their best, the Knicks have been suitably impressive. They have beaten the Lakers (30-23) twice, and have victories over Detroit (32-19), Utah (35-17), Cleveland (30-22) and Washington (29-21). The Knicks have gone 10-13 against winning teams. They have beaten seven of the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference, going 8-10 against that group.
The good feelings never last long. The Knicks followed their two victories over the Lakers with losses to losing teams, Charlotte and Golden State. They followed a rout of Miami with a loss to Milwaukee. They have won consecutive games just once in the last five weeks.
“You learn from these experiences,” Thomas said after the Knicks were thumped by the Warriors, “and unfortunately, we have to go through this to get to the next level. You just don’t jump up in this league and all of a sudden be consistent.”
“We’ll get to the next level,” Thomas added, “but unfortunately it’s not today.”
This begs the questions of when, and will it be soon enough. Stephon Marbury said, “I think we’re a playoff team,” but the results suggest otherwise.
The All-Star Game this weekend will be the sixth consecutive one without a Knicks player. Eddy Curry, for all of his progress, was passed over by fans and coaches. The Knicks’ lone participants this weekend will be David Lee (in the sophomores-rookies game) and Nate Robinson (in the slam-dunk contest).
After the break, the Knicks will have just 29 games left — 15 at home — to make a run at the playoffs. They will have to go 18-11 just to reach .500 — the current record of the No. 8-seeded Miami Heat. But the heavy travel is over, and their 14 road games include two against the Nets.
There is time to catch the Atlantic Division leaders, Toronto, with three games left against the Raptors. The Knicks have 16 games against teams with losing records. They have just eight games left against upper-echelon teams — Dallas (twice), Detroit, Cleveland (twice), Washington, Chicago and Miami.
Yet the schedule and the opponent never seem to matter as much as the Knicks’ personality. They are just as likely to be routed by a lottery-bound team as they are to beat a championship contender. It is, for better and worse, who they are.
Malik Rose, a veteran of two championship teams in San Antonio, said the most critical lesson for the Knicks “is how to handle success.”
“It’s a mental thing, as far as focus and concentration are concerned, a maturity thing, handling your emotions,” Rose said. The implication is that the Knicks get a little too self-satisfied after beating the Lakers or the Pistons. “It’s that whole Napoleon thing,” he said.
Thomas has decisions to make when the season resumes Tuesday night against the Orlando Magic. He has started Jerome James — with visibly poor results — for the last five games. He is reaching for ways to maximize the skills of Channing Frye, whose growth seems stagnant. He will have to proceed cautiously with his two sore-kneed point guards, Marbury and Steve Francis. And he must decide whether there is a logical trade to make — one that ensures a playoff berth without sacrificing the future — before Thursday’s deadline.
Thomas brushed off Wednesday night’s collapse as the product of fatigue and the travel schedule. He has yet to concede even an ounce of worry, noting there is plenty of schedule left.
Rose, for one, said just hearing praise from around the league is not enough to declare the season a success.
“To think that we’ve made some type of improvement, it would have to be measured in wins and losses and in playoff possibilities,” Rose said. “Just like it didn’t matter when everybody in the beginning of the season were saying, ‘They’re terrible, they stink,’ it’s not going to matter now that they’re all saying we’re great.”
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2/16/2007 1:13 AM