Knickerbocker Please
I wanted to write something about the New York Knicks after their last-second loss to the Boston Celtics back in December, which was one of the best & most enjoyable regular season NBA games I can remember seeing (especially since I began following the league again a few years ago). There wasn’t much defense being played (insert your favorite Seven Seconds or Less zinger here), but the flowing back-and-forth those teams engaged in, especially during one critical sequence late in the 4th quarter, was as exciting as the NBA can get. I hesitate to say I was giddy watching these guys go at it, but I’ll admit indulging in the sort of glee that comes from watching people realize remarkable achievements in the actual moment that they happen.
And let me just add my voice to the throng of folks happy to see the New York Knicks’ return to viable basketball entertainment option. Granted, I’ve been known to watch Knick games from time to time during Isiah Thomas’ svengali-esque reign, but that shit was enjoyable purely on a so-bad-it’s-good level (especially when coupled with Mike Breen’s disappointed-parent head-shaking cum play-by-play during MSG broadcasts). See this low-res lowlight involving Zach Randolph’s ball-handling skills for a microcosm of the interminable nonsense those teams perpetrated; the beatific / befuddled look on Isiah’s face at the end of this clip speaks volumes of how fucked up the Knicks were just two years ago.
To be fair, I’m not pro-Knicks because it’s great to have a good professional basketball team in New York, but because it’s great to have a fun professional basketball team in NYC. If these Knicks were getting wins by hearkening back to the “good old days” of Pat Riley introducing a neutral-zone-trap crosscheck mentality to professional basketball, I wouldn’t give a shit about any sort of Big Apple resurgence. However, I’ve been a fan of Mike D’Antoni’s SSOS shtick since the days when Steve Nash had Quentin Richardson and Joe Johnson camping out on the 3 point lines in Phoenix, specifically its brute simplicity: a D’Antoni team is going to get as many possessions as it can from every 48-minute game, and it’s going to score more times with all those possessions than the other team. Well-played defense can be appealing, but for me, nothing beats free-flowing ball movement between athletes allowed to exploit their natural talents fully. That this ideology was derided by “basketball purists” for numerous defense-related reasons only made it more endearing to me; that Phoenix was one leaving-the-bench technical foul from actually getting to the NBA Finals just a few years ago didn’t hurt, either.
That said, watching Chris Duhon play point for the Knicks last year was not that form of ball at its finest, so news of the Knicks signing Raymond Felton, a point guard with honest-to-goodness offensive skills, was much appreciated. Coupled with the Amare Stoudamire signing — which, in hindsight, isn’t the LeBron booby prize most made it out to be at the time — and the pieces already in place (like Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari), I was actually looking forward to seeing the Knicks run themselves silly, score a few buckets, and maybe back themselves into the second half of the Eastern Conference playoff bracket. That they’re, to this point, arguably the 5th best team in the East, and taking it to quality teams like the Celtics and (tonight) the Spurs on a regular basis, isn’t something I saw happening.
I definitely didn’t see this Knicks team dropping 128 points on the best overall team, and one of the best defensive teams, in the NBA. But there they were, Stat and Felton and Chandler and (formerly) unsung rookie Landry Fields, befuddling the Holy Trinity of the San Antonio Spurs almost every time down the court. I’d like to think that Gregg Popovich throwing in the towel & clearing his bench with over three minutes left and a not-insurmountable deficit to overcome was him acknowledging that the Knicks were the better team tonight, & not actually some sort of cagey psychological move to get his best players super-motivated for tomorrow night’s trip to Boston. I don’t doubt that most beat writers filing copy after tonight’s game (and maybe one sporadic blogger) are going to frame that moment in a pro-Knicks fashion: not as a passing of the torch (please), but more an acknowledgement from one coach to another of a job well done. I’m skeptical that the Knicks will do much this post-season, but that there’s a chance they’ll actually be able to make some noise that doesn’t involve a whoopee cushion is a welcome change of pace.
