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TrueBlue
Posts: 29144
Alba Posts: 12
Joined: 9/20/2006
Member: #1172
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Get Your Pancakes, Waffles, and French Toast Ready
Isiah pitches 'underdog' role to Knicks
BY ANTHONY RIEBER
Newsday Staff Correspondent
January 18, 2007, 11:29 PM EST
GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- Perhaps it's part of Isiah Thomas' plan to lower expectations so owner James Dolan considers any success a sign of progress. Or maybe it's his way of forming an underdog mentality with his players. Or perhaps he really believes the Nets are much, much, much, much better than the Knicks.
Whatever Thomas' motivation, the Knicks' coach laid it on pretty thick Thursday in .discussing his team's first meeting this season with its cross-river rivals, which will take place Friday night at Madison Square Garden.
How thick?
Think an entire bottle of syrup poured over a stack of sugar-dusted pancakes. Thomas' fawning praise of the Nets was just as gooey and sweet and hard to swallow after the first few sound bites.
To listen to Thomas was to hear that the Knicks are lucky if they don't get blown out by 20 Friday night against a team that is only two games ahead of them in the Atlantic Division standings and is 10-2 at the Garden in the Jason Kidd era, playoffs included. Here's a sample:
"They're playing at a very high level. They know how to do it. They know when to turn it on and our job is to one day be as good as they've been."
"They probably don't view us like we view them because they're the champs. We have to catch them. Our job is to one day be where they are and take what they have."
"We're not at championship-level yet. They've got some guys who've played in championship games, they know how to get up for big games and everything else. They know how to make a statement and we're not in the statement business yet."
"If this becomes a rivalry, that's good, because that means we've gotten to the point where we're looked at as a .pretty good team because New Jersey's a pretty good team. You can only have a rivalry when you have two good teams. We'll see."
"I'm expecting them to play well and I hope we play well."
Thomas has played the "poor-us" card more than once this season, so it's no surprise he's bringing it out now as the Knicks (17-23) begin a stretch of games against good teams, including the 18-20 Nets, who have won seven of nine.
The Knicks fly right to Indiana after Friday night's loss -- sorry, Friday night's game LOL!-- and play the Pacers Saturday.
Then it's at Miami, home for Phoenix and then Miami, at .Milwaukee and home against the Lakers. If things go horribly wrong, 17-22 could become 17-30 pretty fast.
But the Knicks are playing better.
Even Thomas admitted that, though he was unhappy enough about some aspects of Wednesday's heart-breaking 99-98 loss at Washington that he kept the players for an extra hour at practice Thursday. Thomas said he was "cleaning up" some things, but wouldn't specify what those things were. Not allowing a dunk on the other team's final possession when you're up by one point was probably high on the list.
"I think we still have a ways to go," Thomas said.
As for the Nets, they come into the Garden with renewed confidence and a souped-up Kidd, who is playing his best ball of the season despite his very public divorce.
The Nets still have two of the best wing players in the NBA in Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson, but lack meat on their bones up front, especially with center Nenad Krstic lost for the season with a torn ACL.
"Jefferson, Carter, Kidd," .Thomas said. "That's really, really, really good. We definitely have our work cut out for us."
OK. Got it. Pass the syrup.
[Edited by - TrueBlue on 01-19-2007 10:48 AM]
LMFAO @ the Bio [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephon_Marbury[/url]
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1/19/2007 12:03 PM
