LAME EXCUSES
By MIKE VACCARO
IT GOES BOTH WAYS:Yes, the Knicks could have
won more games had Stephon Marbury (left),
Jamal Crawford (middle) and David Lee stayed
healthy. But it's also true they won a lot of
game against teams that were missing their stars.
April 22, 2007 -- BOSTON - Apparently, if not for the "I" word, we would be preparing ourselves for some kind of special basketball extravaganza at Madison Square Garden this week. Apparently, if not for injuries, the Knicks were fully revved, fully prepared to take a weed whacker to the rest of the NBA's Eastern Conference.
"I think it's pretty safe to say had we not been so decimated, things would be different tonight," Thomas said the other night, a few minutes after the Knicks' season ended in Charlotte. "But that being said, we would like to have had a better finish. I feel pretty comfortable and confident in saying that, had we not been hit by the injuries the way we'd been hit, I think it's safe to say we would have squeezed out at least six-to-seven more wins and we'd be sitting in a totally different position."
There's a problem with that line of thinking, and it's a simple one: If Thomas or anyone else wants to put an asterisk next to all the games the Knicks may have lost due to their depleted lineup - certainly his prerogative, certainly anyone's prerogative, if that's how they want to go about things - then you also have to do a corresponding exercise.
You need to stamp an asterisk next to the two games the Knicks beat the Grizzlies without Pau Gasol. You need to put one next to the game they beat the Shaq-less Heat, and another next to the game they beat the Dwyane-less Heat. Don't forget beating the Nuggets without Kenyon Martin, or the Hawks without Joe Johnson, or the Magic without Grant Hill, or the Lakers without Kobe (who was suspended that night, but the point is the same). Don't forget beating the Warriors without Stephen Jackson, or even the Bucks, against whom they needed that Eddy Curry miracle even without Charlie Villanueva and Andrew Bogut.
Here's the two-word reality that stands as law in professional sports: Injuries happen. They are a fact of life. They are a byproduct of a physical landscape in which gifted, physical men occasionally come in contact with each other, with a floor, with artificial turf, with an outfield fence, with hamstrings that pop and ankles that snap and knees that get shredded and vertebrae that inflame.
It's difficult to blame Isiah for reminding us what might have been if the Knicks had been able to play David Lee and Quentin Richardson and Jamal Crawford and Stephon Marbury for 82 games. It's hard to be a Knicks fan and not wonder what could have been if Nate Robinson could have been kept in street clothes, if Steve Francis could have been set adrift, if Malik Rose wasn't playing crunch-time minutes night after night.
But those are just fun and games, like real-time Strat-O-Matic.
Injuries happen. They happened to the Nets, who somehow managed to reach .500 despite missing Nenad Krstic for most of the year and Richard Jefferson for almost two months. They happened to the Heat, who only lost one surefire Hall of Famer (Shaq) and one projected Hall of Famer (Wade) and ground their way to the playoffs.
They happened to the Yankees last year, one a week at times, and it didn't halt that train even a little bit (until October anyway). They happen. They must be dealt with.
To Isiah's credit, he never allowed the Knicks to feel sorry for themselves, to play the undermanned card even a little bit in their own minds. If you allow that to happen, you wind up with the 1999 Jets, a team that was a consensus pick to make it to the Super Bowl and then lost Vinny Testaverde about 15 seconds into the season, his Achilles snapping on the soft Meadowlands turf like a dried-out twig.
That was only a small part of the Jets' problems, though. The greater one was the light that immediately extinguished in Bill Parcells' eyes. When he saw Vinny on the ground, when he saw him wheeled off on a gurney, he saw his last best shot at the Super Bowl crumbling. It took him weeks to recover, by which point the season was already lost. When he regained interest, the Jets made a furious recovery, finished 8-8, probably should have finished better, even with a second-string quarterback. But Parcells, who spent his career haranguing players for using injuries as an excuse, found out first-hand that what he'd been preaching wasn't pap. It was truth.
Mets fans wear their knuckles out now, knocking wood, hoping that Jose Reyes and David Wright remain upright for 162 games, to say nothing of the geriatric wing of the team. Rangers fans do the same, realizing that a re-run of Jaromir Jagr wincing in pain could make this splendid playoff push seem a lot less feel-good in about 15 minutes. Injuries happen. And when they do, it isn't only the injured who feel the hurt.
Maybe the Knicks can prove Isiah right. Maybe they can stay healthy next year. And maybe that's the difference between having to clean out their lockers in the middle of April as opposed to the middle of May. It would be nice to find out. But someone's going to get hurt. Injuries happen. It's how you respond to them that tells the larger part of the story.
Mike Vaccaro's e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His book, "1941: The Greatest Year in Sports," will be in bookstores June 5 and can be preordered at www.amazon.com.
