Now that's progress
Isiah earns reprieve by uniting the improved Knicks
Posted: Thursday March 8, 2007 4:07PM; Updated: Thursday March 8, 2007 6:25PM

For a town that supposedly loves a winner, why does New York City seemingly cringe every time the Knicks win this season?

It can't be the fact that New York has already won more games than it did all of last season.

Nor can it be that a team picked for the high draft lottery heading into the season finds itself a half game out of the playoffs in early March.

And it's hard to believe it would be a result of Eddy Curry's growth into one of the best scoring big men in the game.

No, New York's internal conflict has nothing to do with anyone in uniform; it has to do with the man who put them in those uniforms, Isiah Thomas. But for as much anger as Thomas has generated among Knicks fans for constructing a $117 million team that hasn't finished a season over .500 since he arrived as team president in December 2003, Thomas has earned a reprieve for his work on the bench this season.

"I think he's done a great job as a coach in a tough situation," said 11th-year veteran Malik Rose, "and I'm one of the guys who has reason to not like him because he benched me. At the start of the year everybody was looking for us to fail, people were trying to pull us down and he stood tall right in front of everybody. He took the brunt [of the criticism] and shielded us as players from a lot of the stuff, and he allowed us to grow and come together as a team. Now we're strong enough to take some of the criticism that we're getting."

Few outside the walls of Madison Square Garden expected a team that won a mere 23 games last season to be any better under the on-court guidance of the man who had assembled a roster seemingly more fit for a fantasy league than the NBA. The sentiment wasn't much more supportive inside MSG, either. In handing Thomas the coaching reins last summer, owner Jim Dolan flatly told the media that Thomas had one season to show "progress," or suffer the fate of Larry Brown, who pushed out as coach after one year on the job.

But as Thomas proved as a player time and time again, there are few in the league more adept at succeeding when backed into a corner than the former 12-time All-Star.

"He told us that you're a lot better than everyone thinks, so play that way," second-year forward Channing Frye said.

With local and national media taking turns at beating up the franchise, Thomas' support for a team he built has given him an influence in the locker room Brown, who increasingly lost the team's ear with each feud he played out in the papers, never had.

"If people are getting maligned in the paper they're going to fire back, either at the media or at each other," Rose said. "It tends to lead to a lot of in-house fighting. ... Zeke's done a good job of putting us all on the same page, making us feel like we're friends. He puts us around each other. When we're on the road, it's not mandatory, but we hang out more. We eat dinner together, we have a lot more together time ... and everybody's falling into line. Nobody's rebelling like they did last year."

Thomas has rewarded the team's compliance by giving it a freedom the fundamentally precise Brown never would have allowed.

"You've got to make [playing] comfortable for [players]," said assistant coach and longtime Thomas confidant Mark Aguirre. "I think we've done that. There are a lot more situations where they're playing more instinctively; they were just indecisive last year."

And that instinct has been to score. Through Wednesday, the Knicks were averaging four more points a game than they were last season (99.7 from 95.6). That New York ranks 11th in scoring is no small feat considering it is running an offense that an opposing team's advance scout described as perhaps the simplest in the league.

Of course, how complicated does an offense need to be when it has a 6-foot-11, 285-pound center who's a career 55 percent shooter? Now in his sixth season, Curry has finally started to demonstrate the potential Thomas banked on when he sent two first-round picks and Tim Thomas to the Bulls before last season for the now 24-year-old big man. After Curry's numbers declined under Brown, Thomas and the coaching staff took pains in the offseason to tap the talent they hoped Curry had yet to reveal, sending Aguirre to work with Curry five days at a time at various points in the summer.

"We worked a lot on positioning and really taking advantage of my size out there on the court," Curry said. "It wasn't the type of work that would leave you extremely tired; it was more mental stuff, slowing down the game and really seeing the court.

"It's one thing for a coach to try to help me offensively, but he's actually teaching me stuff that he did on the court. You kind of take that to heart and [realize] if I can do something similar to what he did, I could have a pretty good career."

So far the work has translated into a pretty good season for Curry, who is averaging a career-high 19.3 points and seven rebounds while likely making the Bulls wonder if they should have kept their former No. 2 overall draft pick, mysterious heart ailment and all.

For all the "progress" that has come out of Thomas' first season on the Knicks' bench, there are -- per usual around Thomas -- ominous signs that the good times might not be long-lived. Victories over the likes of Utah, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Miami (twice) are offset by losses to the likes of Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Golden State. And an offense that can keep pace with any team in the league has no room for an off night with a defense that seemingly can't keep up with any team in the league.

"They don't guard anybody," the scout said. "They have one or two [players] who will try, but those are the young guys; their veterans couldn't care less about playing defense. To cover up their deficiencies, they play more zone than anybody. They play 30 to 40 possessions of zone a night; no other team in the league plays half that. When you're playing [that much] zone a night, it's kind of an indictment. No. 1, it's saying we don't think we can stop you without doing this, and No. 2, we've given up on trying to stop you without doing this."

Underpinning everything is a payroll so far over the salary cap, the team's only avenue for an infusion of NBA-ready talent is through trade, and usually for some team's overpaid, underperforming superstar. And as Thomas has so blatantly shown, his record as president is decidedly mixed at best.

Given all that, it's still difficult for Knicks fans lulled to sleep by last year's debacle not to find some level of grudging contentment with a team playing meaningful games this late in the season.

"Everybody expected us to be at the bottom of the bottom," Quentin Richardson said. "Nobody thought that we would be in the position we're in right now, and that's competing for a spot in the playoffs."

It's enough to make even the most hardened New Yorker smile -- for a moment.

"Everybody expected us to be at the bottom of the bottom," Quentin Richardson said. "Nobody thought that we would be in the position we're in right now, and that's competing for a spot in the playoffs."

In the joke that is the Atlantic division, you can still be bottom and still compete for a spot in the playoffs.

Posted by BigSm00th:

i like how curry admits to having isiah "show him how to see the court" or whatever he says and then when a double team is thrown at him in a game he panics and turns the ball over. isiah 101 baby!

Seeing the court is this year.

Next year it's understanding what you're seeing.

The year after it's learning what to do when you see things.

Then when he's in about his 10th season he'll know what to do when he sees the double and maybe he'll be able to pass out to the open man or even a cutter. I still doubt it though.

this story made me sick to my stomach im not sure if i can pinpoint why just yet

that what isiah told them