D'ALESSANDRO: With Eastern Conference still lacking a dominant team, there's a good chance Nets could face Knicks in finals



Tuesday, February 17, 2004





Since this is the only repository for demented ideas within the pages of this august journal, we thought we'd take this nut-ball notion out for a spin:

If circumstances break right -- or even continue at the same numbing pace we've witnessed in the last month -- it is conceivable three months hence that the Nets and Knicks will play each other to decide the Eastern Conference championship.

(Pause here for raucous laughter.)


Done? Good.

Consider that the Nets are likely to retain their position as second seed, which is almost a given, as there is a seven-game gap between them and top banana Indiana.

Now consider that the Knicks, when it all shakes out, finish in fifth place. That's hardly a stretch: They will undoubtedly reach sixth before long, as Toronto won't be getting any better with Jalen Rose nursing a broken hand. Also consider that they are simply better than at least one team in front of them -- Milwaukee or New Orleans -- and can advance one more spot.

So humor us. Pencil the Knicks in for the five hole, and for now, assume that with Allan Houston healthy for the stretch, they'll be a very tough out.

Now do the brackets: The Nets will roll over the No. 7 seed and then Detroit. Not exactly an arduous path. The Knicks? They would have to get past the Hornets, an 11-17 team in the last two months; or the Bucks, who are a nice little team, emphasis on the "little." Then, in the most overhyped matchup since the Iowa Caucus, they'd take on the Pacers.

Could the Knicks win such a series? Probably not. Keith Van Horn actually matched up with Ron Artest better than anyone they've had the last two seasons, and he's gone. But check it out: If there's one team that Artest has bombed against in the last two seasons, it's Milwaukee. And Thomas gets some credit for holding him to a 14-point average (40 percent shooting) in 17 career games, which includes 31.3 percent shooting in their two head-to-heads this season. If Thomas can continue to neutralize him, you can imagine the Knicks having a matchup edge at three positions -- and a legitimate chance at an upset.

That would get you Knicks and Nets at seven paces, for the right to get inhaled by Shaq in June.

Hey, we can dream.

And considering where the two locals were just a few weeks ago, this season has already evolved into a wild basketball fantasy.

If you're looking for a common denominator in this unfolding tale, it's coaching -- especially in the Nets' case. For so long, this was a team hung over from the absence of departed friends -- Eddie Jordan, Alonzo Mourning, even Anthony Johnson to a degree -- and it was reflected in their 21-20 record after those two rollovers at San Antonio and Miami.

But Lawrence Frank came in clutching a copy of The Winner Within and flashing a look in his eye that was part sleep deprivation, part fanaticism. Jason Kidd, who had looked as though he were playing with some kind of post-combat stress syndrome, won Player of the Week right away. Kenyon Martin won the award in Frank's second week.

Say what you want about this coach's mission statement, his incessant nagging, his attention to detail, his preparation, and his adjustments on the fly. The thing that really matters is that the point guard is playing as if he is happy again, which reflects the confidence he has on a guy he has to bend down to hear.

"There's no height or weight on respect," Kidd said.

There's no statute of limitations, either, which brings us to the relationship between Lenny Wilkens and Stephon Marbury.

Wilkens has done a lot of things right in his three-week tenure across the river: He has stretched the rotation (motivated mostly by his unfamiliarity with the players), emphasized defense (it's down six points per game), gradually changed the playbook to augment Marbury's brilliance, and now he has the team on a roll despite the loss of its top scorer. And as long as Marbury gets to dominate the stage he was born to direct, he, too, is capable of greatness.

On Christmas Day, the Nets were a game better than .500, the Knicks were nine under. Now, everything has changed, and for once, we don't need to ask why it happened -- it was a convergence of forces that don't exactly satisfy our taste for complexity or demand a search for hidden motives. In this case, it's easy to simply accept the obvious: The Nets and Knicks are two very good teams that will only get better as we enter the drip-drip-drip phase of the season.

Where it ends, nobody knows. But considering where these teams came from, nobody will be surprised if they're the last ones standing, either.
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Knicks and Pacers then Knicks and Nets? I may have a stroke from all the excitement if I could see that