Knicks’ audacity of hope
There is still roughly half a season to go in the Knicks’ season, and obviously a lot can still happen because, let’s face it, a lot has happened with the Knicks so far, including a lot of early promise and noise and hope at Madison Square Garden. But for now, they are 10th in their conference in the playoff standings, and a grand whopping total of three games better in the standings than the Brooklyn Nets.
Somehow the rest of the way, if they don’t want to miss the playoffs for the fifth season in a row and 11th time in the last 14 seasons, if they don’t want to continue to be as bad a team in their league as there has been in this century, they have to be better than teams like the 76ers and Pacers and Pistons and maybe even Charlotte Hornets. Not impossible. But because we’re talking about the Knicks not exactly the way to bet right now, either.
A year ago after 41 games, the Knicks were 18-23. This year after 41 games they were 1922, before they lost another game on the road – with a 7-game road trip on the immediate horizon – to the Timberwolves. Since the 2000-01 season, by the way, the Knicks have been in a fight with the T’Wolves for most losses in the NBA. How’s that particular rivalry looking these days?
Can the Knicks turn things around? Again: Not impossible. You can always turn things around in the NBA with the right ownership and management and leadership and coaching and even chemistry. At the halfway point in the 2016-17 season, the Knicks had their 18-23 record. The Miami Heat, which have a great coach in Erik Spoelstra, had a record of 1130 at the time. Since then the Heat have had a record of 54-28, fourthbest in the entire league after the Warriors, Celtics, Spurs. One of the great reversals of fortune of all times.
The Knicks were 32-50, same stretch. It means that over a full season, last half of last season first half of this, the Heat were 22 games better than the Knicks in the standings. The other night against the Pacers, with the win that put the Heat into fourth place in the Eastern Conference playoff standings, here was their starting lineup: Josh Richardson. Derrick Jones Jr. Hassan Whiteside Kelly Olynyk Goran Dragic. Dion Waiters has now been lost to them for the season. James Johnson was out of the Pacers game because of a one-game suspension for fighting with Serge Ibaka. But players like Bam Adebayo and Wayne Ellington backed up Spoelstra’s starters and the Heat, at the time, won its eighth game in its last 10. If another brilliant young coach, Brad Stevens, has done the best coaching job in the conference so far this season, Erik Spoelstra isn’t far behind, if he’s behind at all. Stevens works for Danny Ainge. Spoelstra still works for Pat Riley. Spoelstra has been on the job for a decade, and everybody knows what he did when LeBron and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were with him: Four straight trips to the Finals, two titles. It is interesting to note that in the last season the Heat still had LeBron and Wade and Bosh, their regular-season record was 54-28, same as it was from the middle of last January to the middle of this one. So if you have the right people in place, if you have a culture and a structure, you don’t have to be rebuilding, in some form or fashion, for nearly two decades the way the Knicks have been. Do they have the right structure in place now under their own owner, James L. Dolan? You tell me. The one thing that never seems to change at Madison Square Garden is regime change. So now Phil Jackson, who was supposed to be a Hall of Fame executive because he was a Hall of Fame coach, is gone and Steve Mills is still there and Scott Perry works for him and Jeff Hornacek, whom Jackson hired with an explanation that made hardly any sense at the time, is the coach. Still plenty of time, you bet. The Heat when from 11-30 to 30-11 last season and ended up missing the playoffs because of tiebreakers. It doesn’t mean the Knicks have it in them, with this group, to make that kind of run, or anything close. They have been truly awful on the road. After a home game on Sunday against the Pelicans, they have one home game in their next ten, against the Nets at the end of the month.
The rest of it between now and the first week of February is road games against the Nets, Grizzlies, Jazz, Lakers, Warriors, Nuggets, Suns, Celtics, Bucks. By the time they have played that game in Milwaukee against the Bucks, we should know plenty about where they are, and who they are. And in which direction they’re headed. We’ll know if it will still be just one playoff series victory in the last 18 years, just four trips to the playoffs since Jeff Van Gundy walked away in December 2001, and one season of consequence, when they were 54-28 under Mike Woodson and won the Atlantic Division title, before Jackson came home and Derek Fisher replaced Woodson and down the rabbit hole we went again.
You bet the Knicks gave their fans hope early this season, especially at home, with the same team they will put on their home court against the Pelicans on Sunday. They have the chance to do that the rest of the way if they’re coached well enough and play well enough. They have a chance to make their own run at the playoffs unless, of course, they’re just running in place. Again.
Lot of hope early. Lot of noise. Another new regime in place at the Garden. Some new faces. Just looking like the same old, same old at the Garden lately. Still time for them. But sometimes it seems as if all Knick fans have is time.
“We’re not far off,” Hornacek said Friday night.
For the sake of Knick fans, hope he’s right. But, to be honest, they’ve heard that one before.