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djsunyc
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Amid Uncertainty, Knicks Focus on Improved Effort
by Tom Kertes
GREENBURGH, NY, February 2, 2006 -- With a healthy Stephon Marbury, the much-improved Knicks won six in a row and appeared to be on the way to a potential playoff spot. After losing Marbury to injury, the Knicks went 0-3, with a highly competitive OT loss in Chicago followed by a couple of not-so-competitive ones. Since Marbury’s return, things haven’t gotten all that much better (1-4), and one of the reasons is that neither has he.
Without putting undue emphasis on the star point guard, the Knicks current situation really can’t be viewed in a fair light without evaluating the impact of his absence (or presence). For one thing, he’s THAT good. For another, no one else on the team’s roster appears to be able to do what Marbury does. His persistent, and highly perceptive, paint penetrations -- leading to quality shots for everyone including himself -- are the igniting generator of the Knicks offense.
At practice, a hurting Marbury (he banged the shoulder hard twice in Tuesday’s Laker game) declared “as of right now, I’m not playing tomorrow (against Toronto). I’ll try to rest the shoulder and be ready for Houston on Sunday.” To make things even more mysterious, Coach Larry Brown said that “the doctors are telling me Stephon is healing. But he’s got pain.’’
Still, how could anyone blame the Knicks for the confusion? What’s preferable, a player of such immeasurably immense impact not playing -- or playing at half strength (as he has been doing), helping the team as much as he’s able (but maybe still not enough to win), and possibly risking a worse injury, and a longer absence, in the process?
It makes it even more frustrating that all this is going on while the Knicks are trying to get things together in a hurry and still fight for a playoff spot. "That is the goal,” forward Trevor Ariza, who might have to play some point guard in Marbury’s absence, said. “We are talking about it in the locker room all the time. There’s a feeling of pulling together in there. There isn’t one player who doesn’t feel we could make the playoffs this season.”
Brown has the same goal but a shorter view. “I’m just looking at playing better. We’ve got to fix the next game, the next quarter, the next practice, the next possession,” he said.
Meanwhile, instead of a possible trade, “We’re trying to make some guys into better point guards,” said Brown. “That’s our first goal. Make Nate (Robinson) and Jamal (Crawford) more comfortable. Obviously, it’s an adjustment to some of them. I think Jamal’s taken it to another extreme -- we need for him to be more aggressive and more assertive -- but he’s trying so hard to get everybody involved. And Nate’s just never played there before. So that’s just something he’s got to keep working on.”
“But, hey, kids when they’re sitting want to play all the time, don’t they?” added Brown. “So here we are -- the little kid wants to play – boom, he’s got his chance. Jamal wants to be a point guard -- boom, he’s got his chance. And it’s good. The way we’re going right now, we’ve got to develop a lot of guys. Get them out on the court in a pressure situation and see how they perform.”
“Steph’s absence hurts us a lot because he is a really big part of our team,” said Ariza. “We have to pick up the slack for him somehow. It’s tough -- but as a team, we’ve got to make it happen.”
“We’ve got to come out as one. We’ve got to get it done on the defensive end. We’ve got to get stops.”
It’s not as if the point guard uncertainty is the team’s only issue. “Today we clarified a lot of things what we need to do,” said Brown. ”Guarding the post, guarding pick-and-rolls, guarding isolation. Keeping people in front of us. Then we talked about how we want to control the tempo of the game. How, if we don’t have something on the break, make sure to get a good shot by getting into some kind of an offense.”
Psychologically, ‘’We’re trying to coach,” said Brown. “If you’re going to take coaching as criticism, we’re not going to make any progress. What we’re trying to tell the players is ‘this is what we expect, this is what we need to do, and if we do those things we’ll be okay.’ Hopefully, they’ll look at that as a positive.”
“Coach and myself have really good communication,” the often-criticized Ariza nodded for emphasis. “Coach is hard on me -- but he’s doing it for the best,” added Robinson. “He’s trying to get the best out of me. I totally understand that.”
Brown took a positively understanding view of up-and-down center Eddy Curry’s play as well. “The hardest thing for any guy coming into the league to do is to defend,” he smiled. “When you consider a kid who came right out of high school…That’s going to make it even more difficult. But I think he wants to do it. I really do. I think one of the things is that he starts struggling when he gets tired. You can really see a drop-off in his game. But defense is effort. There is no hope if you don’t give great effort -- but in Eddy’s mind, he thinks he is. I really believe there’s hope because I KNOW he cares.”
“Effort is doing your best,” added Brown. “Trying your hardest, giving a hundred per cent. And everybody knows when they are doing that. But there are a lot of kids who don’t quite understand that -- yet. You can show them on the film and they’re shocked. But the bottom line is, I’ve never seen anybody fail when they gave a hundred per cent.”
“I never talk offense with Eddy,” said Brown. “Except to tell him to dunk with two hands -- and to try to get dunks instead of settling for less. My thing is to tell him to defend on every possession, rebound every ball, try to block every shot. We already know he’s got the ability to score. What we need from him is to make a commitment every trip down the floor to do those three things.”
Robinson, for one, is looking forward to more minutes. “I’m going to bring that energy,” he smiled. “And hopefully, it’ll bounce off my teammates. With Antonio (Davis) back, we’re looking forward to bringing that tough-man mentality back. That’s the first thing we’ve got to do in order to get on another winning streak.”
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