SHOOTING FROM THE LIP

Funny how Mike Woodson took plenty of heat early when Knicks were awful; now, he deserves credit for this recent stellar stretch

Mike Lupica,

THERE IS NO guarantee that the way the Knicks are playing basketball the past couple of weeks will hold, there are still too many holes on this team to see it making a run in the playoffs, even in an Eastern Conference as full of holes as well, the Chris Christie administration.

There is the ongoing presence and problem of one J.R. Smith, who seems to have reverted back to being a career knucklehead, one whose jump shot no longer redeems him. There is still the problem at point guard and the lack of a consistent secondary scorer now that Smith, last season's Sixth Man of the Year, is averaging 11 points a game and shooting 34% from the field.

But what we see now, and pretty clearly, a month after Mike Woodson was supposed to be on his way out of town because he didn't call a last-second timeout against the Washington Wizards in another bad loss for the Knicks, is that Woodson is much more a solution for the Knicks than a problem.

Oh, they chanted "Fire Woodson" at the Garden all right, did that loud as the season seemed to be lost before the Knicks got to 2014, back when Tyson Chandler was still hurt and the Knicks couldn't win a game at home and it seemed that the team would fall apart not just in a big moment but every time the Garden crowd booed them.

So it wasn't just the media acting as if Woodson could be fired at any moment, join the conga line of coaches who have been asked to leave Madison Square Garden since James L. Dolan became the big boss of the place.

Only Woodson stayed. Maybe it was for the simple reason that Dolan didn't have anybody he liked to replace him at the moment, or for the rest of this season, he wanted to wait to go after one of the big names always rumored to be on his wish list, from Phil Jackson on down. Or maybe Dolan was actually made aware that Woodson is the only coach of the Knicks who has had any success since Jeff Van Gundy walked out the door a quarter of the way through the 2001-02 season.

"I'm not gonna worry about that stuff," Woodson kept saying about a firing we kept being told was imminent, as the Woodson Watch became far more interesting in the various media than the dreary season the Knicks were playing, especially at home.

Woodson wouldn't play along or wring his hands or feel sorry for himself, help feed the narrative that he had to go. He just kept coaching his team, and now you start to get the idea that there is a new narrative about how he has changed, or maybe what a better coach he is now than he was a month ago.

The reality of his situation? Mike Woodson has, for now, managed to keep his team from flying apart in all directions the way Tom Coughlin did whenthe Giants were 0-6, the difference — of course — being that Woodson just has two trips to the playoffs with the Knicks on his resume and not two Super Bowls.

Again: Look at the won-loss records for all the other Knick coaches since Van Gundy, and look at Woodson's, and that means even with the way this season started. And please don't buy into the notion that it was somehow just a lot of lucky 3-point shooting that got the Knicks to 54 victories last season and an Atlantic Division title that no one on the planet saw coming.

Woodson has always been worth rooting for, didn't become some to root for because the Knicks shocked everybody by going to Texas and beating the Spurs and nearly getting themselves a three-game sweep. Whatever Dolan's reasons for keeping him, Dolan did the right thing and not the easy thing for a team going sideways. He kept a coach who is not just the right coach for his team but the best basketball man in the entire operation.

This doesn't mean the Knicks are in the clear, doesn't mean they're going to win the Atlantic again, end up with even a .500 record, beat out the Nets, who have started to play for Jason Kidd in 2014 the way the Knicks have started to play for Woody. The Knicks are still just a .500 team since that Washington game and the non-timeout that shook the world.

But they have beaten the Spurs, beaten the Heat, played hard, passed better lately, defended better. Woodson didn't become a good coach because he'd finally had enough of Smith, a player he needed last season when the Knicks were winning the Atlantic. He's not a good coach because Iman Shumpert found his game, after the false narrative that somehow H Woodson was the one who made him lose it. e was a good coach all along. He has been a good coach in the NBA for a long time. There are changes that need to be made for the Knicks going forward, maybe a trade for Smith if the Knicks can somehow find a taker. But changing the coach was never the right answer. Knicks fans have a right to be frustrated, certainly the ones who have stayed with the team as the team's brand diminished as ticket prices kept going up.

But when they were taking it out on the coach, they were taking it out on the wrong guy.