The magic's back at Garden

Isiah Thomas has made Garden the place to be again.

Isiah Thomas showed up in town one year ago this week, with no advance warning, a surprise sports hit in New York, where it is almost impossible to have one of those. The Knicks at that time were Charlie Ward and Howard Eisley and Antonio McDyess's surgical knee. There were Dikembe Mutombo and Clarence Weatherspoon. Don Chaney was the coach, mostly because James Dolan thought he was swell. Scott Layden was the GM or so rumor had it. Mostly the offense was an Allan Houston jump shot.

Michael Sweetney was in street clothes at the end of the bench. He could have had a seat almost anywhere in the place, because there were good seats available in almost every section of the Garden, which no longer mattered in basketball. The Nets weren't drawing, either, but they had been in the NBA Finals the last two years, and they were a team you wanted to watch.

Isiah Thomas immediately began changing the place back into something it is supposed to be, no matter who is running it: Somewhere you wanted to be.

Before long Stephon Marbury, a child of Coney Island, had the ball and now he is in the backcourt with Jamal Crawford, who has had more of an impact on the Knicks this season than Tracy McGrady has had on the Houston Rockets. The Knicks hardly ever play a game that does not engage you, whether they are blowing a big lead the way they did to the Pistons, champs of the world, the other night, or coming back the way they did on the 76ers in Philadelphia on Friday night.

We all thought Thomas made one move too many when he traded away Keith Van Horn - he became an instant fan favorite on his way to the airport - but there is something to remember about that one:

You may not love Tim Thomas, but if Thomas doesn't make that deal the way he makes it, the Knicks don't have Nazr Mohammed, a real center who actually has a chance to back up Shaq on the Eastern Conference All-Star Team if he keeps going the way he is going.

Has Isiah spent a ton of dough? He has, and Dolan won't stop him because Isiah happens to be the only thing Dolan has ever done in sports that actually works. Can I tell you for sure how long he is going to be here? People at the Garden say, longer than you think. But it is the same now as when Isiah was a Hall of Fame ballplayer known as Zeke:

He's got too many moves for anybody to cover him for long. Someday he's going to coach again somewhere.

But he has made the Knicks matter again. The Nets have Vince Carter now, and that is supposed to make Thomas go into a dead faint. The Knicks will still be a better team in the end. Kurt Thomas is still here. Allan Houston, who made that 3 to send Friday's game into overtime, is back. Sweetney is in uniform and looks as if he will be here for years. Everything else has changed for the better.

You never know what deal is right around the corner, but it is not impossible to look down the road, just a little bit and see this young and athletic team on the Garden floor:

Marbury, Crawford, Ariza, Sweetney, Mohammad. With Houston and Kurt Thomas still around. And Junkyard Dog Williams creating massive disturbances as an Oakley-like role player.

Once, a long time ago, Dave Checketts became president of the Knicks and he hired Pat Riley to come here and coach, and before you knew it, the Knicks were in their first Game 7 against Michael Jordan and the Bulls. Now, after Riley left and Jeff Van Gundy left and Checketts left because he was getting in the way of Dolan's vision of himself as boy king, here comes Isiah Thomas to get the Knicks back into play, get them younger, get them faster, even get their crowds back.

Last Sunday, you could sit in the Garden at a noon game during football season and feel the life in the place, and watch the Knicks play their best game of the season against the Nuggets. For three quarters they played a better one against the Pistons, fell apart at the end, then came back Friday night the way they did when they easily could have gotten blown out.

Go back and look at the box scores from last December, the last few games before Thomas got there. Look at the names and the minutes and the scores. Then remember a Garden that was as alive as the Port Authority in the middle of the night. Where is all this going? Who knows? For now, be happy with where you are.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/story/263526p-225645c.html

lol

I was saying the same thing when i was reading it......

"The Nets have Vince Carter now, and that is supposed to make Thomas go into a dead faint. The Knicks will still be a better team in the end. Kurt Thomas is still here. Allan Houston, who made that 3 to send Friday's game into overtime, is back. Sweetney is in uniform and looks as if he will be here for years. Everything else has changed for the better."

I couldn't have said it better myself...go knicks.

"Go back and look at the box scores from last December, the last few games before Thomas got there. Look at the names and the minutes and the scores. Then remember a Garden that was as alive as the Port Authority in the middle of the night. Where is all this going? Who knows? For now, be happy with where you are"
- Lupica

Telling it like it is.